VMailMgr HOWTO

## 1 Introduction ¶

VMailMgr (an abbreviation for Virtual Mail Manager) is a package of programs designed to manage multiple domains of mail addresses and mailboxes on a single host. It co-operates with qmail for mail delivery and program control.

### 1.1 What is VMailMgr and why should I use it? ¶

VMailMgr is a series of utilities for managing virtual domains, including:

- a password checking interface for qmail, which replaces the usual checkpassword, and
- an authentication module for Courier IMAP

These utilities provide access to the virtual mailboxes by one of three methods:

- IP-based virtual server access (invisible to the POP3 user)
- username-based access (virtual user logs in as ‘`username-virtualuser`’)
- hostname-based access (virtual user logs in as ‘`virtualuser@virtual.host`’ or ‘`virtualuser:virtual.host`’)

You should use VMailMgr if you prefer to have each domain controlled by a seperate username, allowing the use of system quotas and better security.

### 1.2 New versions ¶

The newest version of this document can be found on the VMailMgr homepage http://www.vmailmgr.org/ in various formats, including the texinfo source and HTML and plaintext versions.

### 1.3 Comments ¶

Comments on this HOWTO should be directed to the VMailMgr mailing list. To subscribe, send a blank email to vmailmgr-subscribe@lists.untroubled.org.

### 1.4 History ¶

This document was started by Bruce Guenter and reworked by Dan Kuykendall, then by Charles Cazabon.

### 1.5 Copyrights and Trademarks ¶

Copyright © Dan Kuykendall.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation

A copy of the license is available at GNU Free Documentation License.

### 1.6 Acknowledgements and Thanks ¶

Thanks to Bruce Guenter for VMailMgr and the core of this HOWTO. Thanks to Mike Bell, who always seems to have the answers to my questions. Finally, thanks to all those on the vmailmgr@lists.untroubled.org mailing list who have helped me, or asked the same stuff so many times that I had to write this to stop the repeat questions.

## 2 Installation ¶

### 2.1 Get the files ¶

Visit the VMailMgr website http://www.vmailmgr.org/ or one of its mirror sites to download the package. There are two primary methods of installing:

- from source
- from a binary package – specifically, an `RPM` binary package

If you get the binary RPMS you will need at least the vmailmgr package.

### 2.2 Install with RPMS ¶

To install from binary `RPM` packages, you can download the binaries, or build them from the source RPM package.

#### 2.2.1 Compiling the Source RPM (SRPM) Package ¶

If you download the binary packages directly, skip to the next step.

Download the source rpm package (‘`vmailmgr-VERSION.src.rpm`’), and then use the `rpm` tool to build the binary RPM package from it with the ‘`rpm --rebuild`’ command as follows:

    rpm --rebuild vmailmgr-1.0.0-1.src.rpm

#### 2.2.2 Installing the Binary RPM packages ¶

After compiling the source RPM, the binary RPM packages will be located in the appropriate output directory (typically `/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/`).

Install each package using the ‘`-i`’ option of `rpm` (i.e. ‘`rpm -ivh PACKAGE.i386.rpm`’) as follows:

    rpm -ivh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/vmailmgr-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm
    rpm -ivh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/vmailmgr-daemon-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm

### 2.3 Install from source ¶

If you dont use RPM packages, you can install from source with the following commands. First, as a regular, non-root user:

    tar xzf vmailmgr-VERSION.tar.gz
    cd vmailmgr-VERSION
    ./configure
    make

Then, as user ‘`root`’:

    make install

## 3 Setup ¶

In the following setup examples, it is assumed that your binaries are installed in the `/usr/pkg/bin]` directory, and configuration files are located in the `/usr/pkg/etc/vmailmgr/` directory, as is the case if you installed from the RPMs.

If you installed from source, configure instead puts the binaries into `/usr/local/bin/` and the configuration into `/usr/local/usr/pkg/etc/vmailmgr/` by default.

### 3.1 Setting Up a Virtual Domain ¶

The following steps are necessary to set up a virtual domain with vmailmgr (assuming vmailmgr has been compiled and installed). As an example, we’ll set up a virtual user ‘`me@mydomain.org`’, with aliases of ‘`myself@mydomain.org`’ and ‘`myname@mydomain.org`’.

1. Set up a DNS entry for the domain. This is not covered here, as it is dependant on far too many other things. I will mention that to make IP based virtual domains work a ‘`PTR`’ record which matches an entry in virtualdomains is nessesary, for example, if nslookup 10.56.33.122 returns ‘`mail.mydomain.com`’, `control/virtualdomains` needs an entry like ‘`mail.mydomain.com:myuser`’.

   For the example, we’ll assume that the mail exchanger for ‘`mydomain.org`’ is already set up to point to your computer.

2. Set up a base user for the domain. Create a user, with a name of your choosing. Since the maildirs for all the users in the virtual domain will be stored under this user’s home directory, make sure you set the user up in a partition or disk that is appropriate for such storage. The tools that you should use to accomplish this step vary greatly between different systems. For our example, I’ll add a user ‘`myuser`’.
3. Configure qmail to recognize the domain. To do this, you need to modify two of qmail’s configuration files in `/var/qmail/control`: `rcpthosts` and `virtualdomains`.
   - To `rcpthosts`, add the line ‘`mydomain.org`’.
   - To `virtualdomains`, add the line ‘`mydomain.org:myuser`’.

   If you wish to have mail to ‘`anything.mydomain.org`’ be delivered in the same way:

   - To `rcpthosts`, add the line ‘`.mydomain.org`’.
   - To `virtualdomains`, add the line ‘`.mydomain.org:myuser`’.
4. Configure `qmail-popup`/`qmail-pop3d` to use `checkvpw` as the password checker. This step is dependant on how you have installed qmail.
   - Replace `checkpassword` in the command you use to invoke `qmail-popup`/`qmail-pop3d` (either in `/etc/inet.conf` or in a `tcpserver` command) with `checkvpw`.
   - And/Or at the prompt type ‘`echo checkvpw > `/var/qmail/control/checkpassword``’.
5. Set up the vmailmgr files:
   - Either change user to the user you just created (for example, type ‘`su - myuser`’) or log in (with either telnet or at the console) as the new user.
   - Set up the base vmailmgr files by running `vsetup`.
   - Use the included programs to add users and aliases. For our example, we would type the following commands:

         vadduser me
         vaddalias myself me
         vaddalias myname me

After you have completed all these steps, you will need to kill and restart `qmail-send` to make it read the new `virtualdomains` control file.

If you are using `inetd` to launch `qmail-popup`, ‘`kill -HUP`’ the `inetd` process as well.

### 3.2 Using one IP address for mutiple domains ¶

There are two ways to log in without using multiple IP addresses.

1. The first way is to log in as ‘`userSEPvirtual.domain.org`’, where ‘`user`’ is the mailbox name of the virtual user, SEP is one of ‘`@`’ or ‘`:`’ (by default; this is configurable in the `/usr/pkg/etc/vmailmgr/` directory), and ‘`virtual.domain.org`’ is the virtual domain’s name, as listed in `/var/qmail/control/virtualdomains`.
2. The second way is to use the internal form of the mailbox name – that is, ‘`baseuser-user`’, where ‘`user`’ is the same as above, and ‘`baseuser`’ is the username of the managing user.

For example, if `/var/qmail/control/virtualdomains` contains ‘`mydomain.com:myuser`’ and user ‘`myuser`’ exists and has set up a virtual mailbox with the name ‘`me`’, and the `separators` configuration file `/usr/pkg/etc/vmailmgr/` contains ‘`@`’, this virtual user could log in as ‘`me@mydomain.com`’, ‘`me:mydomain.com`’, or ‘`myuser-me`’.

### 3.3 Catching all misdirected mail in a virtual domain ¶

In the `vmailmgr` configuration directory, there is a file called `default-username`. If mail to a virtual domain does not match any users or aliases in that domain, it is delivered to the name listed in this configuration item if it exists (which defaults to ‘`+`’). To make this deliver to you, simply type ‘`vaddalias + me`’.

### 3.4 VMailMgr IMAP support ¶

VMailMgr supports Courier-IMAP, but Courier-IMAP does not come with an authentication module for VMailMgr. This means that some minor work is required for making the two work together.

The steps are:

- Copy `/usr/pkg/bin/authvmailmgr` to `/usr/pkg/libexec/courier-authlib/authvmailmgr`.
- Modify the `AUTHMODULES` statement in `/usr/pkg/etc/courier/imapd.cnf` and add ‘`authvmailmgr`’ as the first authentication module.

### 3.5 Enabling enforcement of virtual user quotas ¶

VMailMgr supports per-virtual-user quotas, but not out of the box, as it is not needed by the majority of users, and requires an extra program to be run on each delivery.

To configure quota support, create the file `/usr/pkg/etc/vmailmgr/vdeliver-predeliver`, containing the following:

    #!/bin/sh
    /usr/pkg/bin/vcheckquota

This is executed as a shell script, so you will need to make it executable by running the command ‘`chmod +x /usr/pkg/etc/vmailmgr/vdeliver-predeliver`’.

### 3.6 Enabling processing of autoresponses ¶

Download and install the qmail-autoresponder package, found at http://untroubled.org/qmail-autoresponder/.

As with the above section, create a shell script `/usr/pkg/etc/vmailmgr/vdeliver-postdeliver`, containing the following:

    #!/bin/sh
    if test -s $MAILDIR/autoresponse/message.txt ; then
      qmail-autoresponder $MAILDIR/autoresponse/message.txt $MAILDIR/autoresponse
    fi

### 3.7 Web-based interfaces for vmailmgr ¶

There are currently a few working solutions to administrate your vmailmgr system via a web interface. Only requirement is that the vmailmgrd daemon is running, and that you have a webserver on your system.

- For Python fans, there is vpyadmin by Bruce Guenter. The files can be downloaded at http://untroubled.org/vpyadmin/, and the development code is online at http://bruce-guenter.dyndns.org/cgi-bin/vpyadmin/ (sample.org / samplevm).
- And if you like PHP, you can use oMail-admin by Olivier Müller: it fully supports all vmailmgr functions, and speaks englich, french, italian, spanish, german and russian. Project homepage: http://omail.omnis.ch. Online demo: http://admin.omnis.ch/omail/ (test.com / test).
- And there are also C-based CGI scripts in the `cgi` subdirectory of the vmailmgr distribution.