SparrowMail

Introduction

SparrowMail is a web app written in python using the framework Flask.
The project goal is to be able to manage mails through a web interface such as quickly adding new mailboxes or edit filters for each mailbox.
The project is currently designed for use with postfix (configured with virtual user), dovecot and pigeonhole (a dovecot plugin for sieve filters).

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This project has been written by Maël "MoaMoaK" Kervella

List of features

• Mailboxes and aliases managed through a database
  • Add mailboxes and aliases
  • Delete mailboxes and aliases
  • Mailboxes and aliases can have a time limit
  • When time limit is reached, mail account is deactivated (not deleted)
  • Edit options of mailboxes (time limit and password) and aliases (time limit)
• Users are also maanged through the database
  • User created upon installation
  • Edit options for the user (username, password)7
• Connection is mandatory for seeing any infos or any modification
  • Password are salted and hashed inside the database of course
• Sieve filter can be edited for each mailbox
  • Syntax verification before each sieve filter modification

Requirements

As the app is mainly written in python, a Python interpreter is mandatory. Works with python2.7.
The app installation is done through pip so, this tool is needed for a simple installation. If not desired all needed packages can be installed manually but, finding the required one is the sole responsability of the user.
Also, wheel is required for some used packages install it with : pip install wheel
As the app is meant to have a web interface, having a web server can be usefull.

Production setup

For security reasons, the adviced installation is done with a non root user dedicated to sparrowmail. That way thing are more complicated but more safer.

Installation

Create a system user for this app that can modify dovecot, postfix and sieve files.
For example :
sudo adduser sparrowmail --system
sudo adduser sparrowmail dovecot
sudo adduser sparrowmail postfix
sudo adduser sparrowmail vmail

This users also need to be able to reload postfix and dovecot, so add the following to the sudo file (via visudo command executed as root) :
sparrowmail ALL = NOPASSWD: /etc/init.d/postfix reload, /etc/init.d/dovecot reload

Simply clone the git repository (as the newly create user) here you want it to be installed (must be installed on the mail server) :
sudo -u sparrowmail git clone https://moamoak@gitlab.rez-rennes.fr/moamoak/sparrowmail.git

Configuration

All needed configuration is located in /<install_path>/sparrowmail/sparrowmail/config.py.
See comments and default values for signification of each parameter.

Initialisation

Once the configuration is done, the initialisation can be proceed through :
sudo -u sparrowmail pip install sparrowmail/
cd /<install_path>/sparrowmail/
sudo -u sparrowmail python init_sparrowmail.py

Starting the web server

Once the previous steps are successfully done, simply start the web server with :
cd /<install_path>/sparrowmail/
sudo -u sparrowmail python start_sparrowmail.py