Compilation Status (from Github Actions)

indimail-virtualdomains Introduction

Messaging Platform based on indimail-mta for MTA (modified qmail), IndiMail-VirtualDomains for Virtual Domains, Courier-IMAP for IMAP/POP3

• Look at README-indimail for details on IndiMail, indimail-mta. indimail needs indimail-mta to be installed, instructions for installing the same are included below. You can also read this README for details specific to installing indimail-mta alone.
• Look at README-CLUSTER for details on setting up an IndiMail Cluster. You don't need this if you don't need to distribute your domain across multiple servers. If you have a decent network, you don't require this. However, an IndiMail cluster allows you to exploit your good last-mile connectivity.
• Look at INSTALL for very detailed Source Installation instructions. You may not need that if you follow instructions below in this document itself.
• Look at INSTALL-MYSQL for instructions on configuring a MySQL/MariaDB server for IndiMail.
• Look at INSTALL-RPM for instructions on setting up IndiMail using RPM or Debian packages
• Look at Quick-INSTALL for instructions on installation and setup of an IndiMail server.
• Look at INSTALL-MINI for instructions on setting up an MINI Indimail Installation which uses QMQP protocol. indimail-mini is part of the indimail-mta package. You can use this for diskless clients, small devices, SBCs like the Raspberry PI, to push mails to any server running IndiMail or indimail-mta.
• Look at QMTA for instructions on settig a minimal MTA that runs as a single daemon and uses minimal resources.
• Look at Docker/Podman for instructions on using docker / podman containers for indimail. The big advantage of using a docker / podman image is you can save your configuration with the docker commit .. or podman commit to checkpoint your entire build and deploy the exact configuration on multiple hosts.

README-indimail is a detailed wiki for indimail-virtualdomains.

This document contains instructions for building indimail-virtualdomains from source. indimail-virtualdomains compiles and runs on all linux distros (Fedora, Debian, openSUSE, SLES), Arch Linux, Gentoo, Alpine Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X. Let me know if you want it on any other OS not mentioned in this document. The correct way to read this document is from top to bottom and follow the instructions serially. If you click on any link, you need to come back to this document.

To install you need to do the following

Building the Source - Compilation and Linking

The steps below give instructions to build from source. If you need to deploy indimail-mta on multiple hosts, it is better to create a set of RPM / Deb binary packages. Once generated, the package/packages can be deployed on multiple hosts. To generate RPM packages for all components refer to Create Local Binary Packages. This document contains instructions for building indimail-virtualdomains from source. indimail-virtualdomains compiles and runs on all linux distros, Arch Linux, Gentoo, FreeBSD and Mac OS X. Let me know if you want me to try it on any other OS.

You can also use docker / podman images to deploy indimail. Look at the chapter Docker / Podman Repository below on how to do that. The big advantage of using a docker / podman image is you can save your configuration with the docker commit .. or podman commit to checkpoint your entire build and deploy the exact configuration on multiple hosts.

Doing a source build can be daunting for many. There are total of 18 sub-packages to be built, out of which 6 (libdkim2, libsrs2, ucspi-tcp, courier-imap, indimail-mta, indimail) are required, 6 (bogofilter, bogofilter-wordlist, fetchmail, nssd, pam-multi, iwebadmin) are recommended and remaining 6 are optional. On Linux, you can always use the pre-built binaries from the DNF / YUM / APT repositories given in the chapter Binary Builds on OBS towards the end of this document.

Doing a source build requires you to have all the development packages installed. Linux distributions are known to be crazy. You will have different package names for different distirbutions. e.g.

db-devel, libdb-devel, db4-devel on different systems, just to get Berkeley db installed. There is an easy way out to find out what your distribution needs.

• For RPM based distribtions, locate your .spec file (e.g. indimail.spec in indimail-virtualdomains/indimail-x directory, libqmail/libqmail.spec). Open the RPM spec file and look for BuildRequires. This will tell you what you require for your distribution. If there is a specific version of development package required, you will find %if %else statements. Use dnf / yum / zypper to install your development package.
• For debian based distribution, locate your debian subdirectory (e.g. indimail-virtualdomains/indimail-x/debian, libqmail/debian). In this directory you will find files with .dsc extension. Look at the line having Build-Depends. Use apt-get install package to install the package. If your debian distribution has few libraries different than the default, you will find a .dsc filename with a name corresponding to your distribution. (e.g. indimail-Debain_10.dsc)

Note

This is a rough list of packages required. If you want the exact packages, look BuildRequires in the *.spec file or Build-Depends in the debian/control or debian/*.dsc files

RPM Based Distributions Install the following packages using dnf/yum

Universal
gcc gcc-c++ make autoconf automake libtool pkgconfig
file sed findutils diffutils gzip xz binutils coreutils grep flex bison
glibc glibc-devel procps openssl openssl-devel mysql-devel
readline readline-devel ncurses-devel libtirpc-devel
pam-devel libgcrypt-devel gdbm-devel pcre-devel pcre2-devel libidn2-devel
libgsasl-devel gettext-devel python3 python3-devel (python python-devel on ancient distros)

opensuse - openldap2-devel instead of openldap-devel

Debian Based Distributions Install the following packages using apt

Universal
cdbs debhelper gcc g++ automake autoconf libtool
libldap2-dev libssl-dev libtirpc-dev
mime-support m4 gawk openssl procps file sed bison
findutils diffutils readline-common libreadline-dev xz gzip
binutils coreutils grep flex libncurses5-dev libncurses5
libpam0g-dev libpcre2-dev libpcre3-dev libgdbm-dev libdb-dev libgcrypt20-dev
python libidn2-0-dev libgsasl7-dev

Ubuntu 16.04, Debian 8 - libmysqlclient-dev
Ubuntu 16.04 - libcom-err2
Remaining - default-libmysqlclient-dev

Arch Linux

# pacman -S --refresh --sysupgrade
# pacman -S --needed archlinux-keyring
# pacman -S base-devel diffutils coreutils openssl openldap mysql libidn2 python gsasl libtirpc

Gentoo Linux

# emaint -a sync
# emerge-webrsync
# emerge -a app-portage/eix
# eix-sync
# emerge -a app-portage/layman
# layman -S
# etc-update
# emerge -a systemd
# emerge -a dev-db/mysql
# emerge -a openldap
# emerge -a net-libs/libgsasl
# emerge -a net-libs/libtirpc

alpine Linux

# apk add gcc g++ make git autoconf automake libtool m4 sed
# apk add openssl-dev mysql-dev musl-nscd-dev fts-dev
# apk add libidn2-dev pcre-dev pcre2-dev libtirpc-dev ncurses-dev
# apk add linux-pam-dev gdbm-dev db-dev gsl-dev xmlto

NOTES

You need libidn2 to get indimail-mta built with Internationalized Email Addresses (RFC6530) You need libgsasl for SCRAM AUTH methods (SCRAM-SHA-1, SCRAM-SHA-256, SCRAM-SHA-1-PLUS, SCRAM-SHA-256-PLUS)

FreeBSD
# pkg install pkgconf libidn2 libgsasl base64

Darwin
# port install pkgconfig libidn2 gsasl

FreeBSD / Darwin OSX

You require a MySQL server provided either by Oracle or by MariaDB. You also require the MySQL client libraries (either libmysqlclient or libmariadb). The steps below will help you do that.

FreeBSD - Install the following using pkg

# pkg install mysql80-server mysql80-client

• You also need either MariaDB (Linux only) or MySQL community server (All Unix distributions)
• You can get mysql-community-server for all distributions here
• You can get MariaDB here

If you need MariaDB for Mac OSX, you can try MacPorts or Brew.

Compile libqmail

$ cd /usr/local/src
$ git clone https://github.com/indimail/libqmail.git
$ cd /usr/local/src/libqmail
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

(check version in libqmail/conf-version)

Download indimail, indimail-mta and components

$ cd /usr/local/src
$ git clone https://github.com/indimail/indimail-virtualdomains.git
$ git clone https://github.com/indimail/indimail-mta.git

NOTE: For Darwin (Mac OSX), install MacPorts or brew. You can look at this document for installing MacPorts.

# port install autoconf libtool automake pkgconfig openssl
# port update outdated

Compile libdkim2-x (with dynamic libaries)

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-mta/libdkim2-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make -s install-strip

(check version in indimail-mta/libdkim2-x/conf-version)

Compile libsrs2-x (with dynamic libaries)

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-mta/libsrs2-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

(check version in indimail-mta/libsrs2-x/conf-version)

Build daemontools

To configure the build for daemontools, you need to configure conf-prefix, conf-qmail, conf-sysconfdir, conf-shared, conf-libexec and conf-servicedir. Defaults are given in the table below. If you are ok with defaults, you can run the script default.configure to set the below values.

Linux

config file	value
conf-prefix	/usr
conf-qmail	/var/indimail
conf-sysconfdir	/etc/indimail
conf-shared	/usr/share/indimail
conf-libexec	/usr/libexec/indimail
conf-servicedir	/service

FreeBSD, Darwin

config file	value
conf-prefix	/usr/local
conf-qmail	/var/indimail
conf-sysconfdir	/usr/local/etc/indimail
conf-shared	/usr/local/share/indimail
conf-libexec	/usr/local/libexec/indimail
conf-servicedir	/usr/local/etc/indimail/sv

The build below depends on several Makefiles. For the build to operate without errors, you need to run default.configure the first time and everytime after you do a make distclean. If you don't run default.configure, you can replace make with ./qmake

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-mta/daemontools-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make or ./qmake
$ sudo make install or sudo ./qmake install

(check version in indimail-mta/daemontools-x/conf-version)

Build ucspi-tcp

To configure the build for ucspi-tcp, you need to configure conf-prefix, conf-sysconfdir and conf-shared. Defaults are given in the table below. You can also use the script default.configure to set the below values.

Linux

config file	value
conf-prefix	/usr
conf-sysconfdir	/etc/indimail
conf-shared	/usr/share/indimail

FreeBSD / Darwin

config file	value
conf-prefix	/usr/local
conf-sysconfdir	/usr/local/etc/indimail
conf-shared	/usr/local/share/indimail

The build below depens on several Makefiles. For the build to operate without errors, you need to run default.configure the first time and everytime after you do a make distclean. If you don't run default.configure, you can run replace make with ./qmake

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-mta/ucspi-tcp-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make or ./qmake
$ sudo make install or sudo ./qmake install

(check version in indimail-mta/ucspi-tcp-x/conf-version)

Build bogofilter

Optional. Required only if you want to use bogofilter for spam filtering

RPM Based Distributions Install the following packages using dnf/yum

Universal
gcc gcc-c++ make coreutils grep glibc glibc-devel xmlto
gzip autoconf automake libtool sed findutils gsl-devel
flex bison libdb-devel

openSUSE
db-devel

Debian Based Distributions Install the following packages using apt

Universal
gcc, g++, automake, libgsl-dev, bison, flex, libdb-dev, m4

Debian 8
libgsl0-dev

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-virtualdomains/bogofilter-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

NOTE: for FreeBSD

# pkg install db5 xmto

NOTE: for Darwin

# port install db48

(check version in indimail-virtualdomains/bogofilter-x/conf-version)

Build bogofilter-wordlist

Optional. Required only if you want to use bogofilter for spam filtering

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-virtualdomains/bogofilter-wordlist-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

Build indimail-mta-x

To configure the build for indimail-mta, you need to configure conf-prefix, conf-qmail, conf-sysconfdir, conf-shared, conf-libexec and conf-servicedir. Defaults are given in the table below. You can also use the script default.configure to set the below values.

Linux

config file	value
conf-prefix	/usr
conf-qmail	/var/indimail
conf-sysconfdir	/etc/indimail
conf-shared	/usr/share/indimail
conf-libexec	/usr/libexec/indimail
conf-servicedir	/service

FreeBSD / Darwin

config file	value
conf-prefix	/usr/local
conf-qmail	/var/indimail
conf-sysconfdir	/usr/local/etc/indimail
conf-shared	/usr/local/share/indimail
conf-libexec	/usr/local/libexec/indimail
conf-servicedir	/usr/local/etc/indimail/sv

You can refer to the detailed installation for indimail-mta here

But in short you can install indimail-mta by following the steps below

The build below depends on several Makefiles. For the build to operate without errors, you need to run default.configure the first time and everytime after you do a make distclean. If you don't run default.configure, you can run replace make with ./qmake

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-mta/indimail-mta-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make or ./qmake
# create users required by indimail-mta in /etc/passwd
$ sudo ./svctool --config=users --nolog
$ sudo make install or sudo ./qmake install

(check version in indimail-mta/indimail-mta-x/conf-version)

Note: for Darwin

# port install openldap mrtg

Build indimail

Rquired for providng multiple virtual domains on a single host.

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-virtualdomains/indimail-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

(check version in indimail-virtualdomains/indimail-x/conf-version)

Build courier-imap

Required for IMAP, POP3 to retreive your mails

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-virtualdomains/courier-imap-x
$ ./default.configure
$ sudo make install-strip

NOTE: for FreeBSD

# pkg install pcre pcre2 libidn2 gdbm

NOTE: for Darwin

$ sudo port install pcre pcre2 db48 gdbm libidn2
$ sudo brew install pcre pcre2 berkeley-db gdbm libidn2

(check version in indimail-virtualdomains/courier-imap-x/conf-version)

Build fetchmail

Optional. Required only if you want fetchmail to retreive your mails

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-virtualdomans/fetchmail-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

NOTE: For FreeBSD

# pkg install gettext bison

NOTE: For Darwin

$ sudo port install gettext

(check version in indimail-virtualdomains/fetchmail-x/conf-version)

Build nssd

Optional component. Required only if you require the Standard C library routines to use Name Service Switch to authenticate from a MySQL db (e.g. for authenticated SMTP, IMAP, POP3, etc). Your passwd(5) database gets extended to indimail's MySQL database. You will also need to edit /etc/nsswitch.conf and have a line like this passwd: files nssd. Check the man page for nssd(8) and nsswitch.conf(5)

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-virtualdomains/nssd-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

NOTE: Darwin doesn't have nsswitch. So don't waste time compiling this package

(check version in indimail-virtualdomains/nssd-x/conf-version)

Build pam-multi

Optional. Required only if you require PAM authentication for authenticated SMTP or extra PAM other than /etc/shadow authentication for IMAP / POP3

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-virtualdomains/pam-multi-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

(check version in indimail-virtualdomains/pam-multi-x/conf-version)

indimail-utils

Indimail-utils stands for a collection of package having altermime, ripmime, fortune, mpack and flash

The steps for compiling and bulding each one of these components is below

Build altermime

Optional. Required only if you want altermime to add content to your emails before delivery. e.g. adding disclaimers

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-virtualdomans/altermime-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

(check version in indimail-virtualdomains/altermime-x/conf-version)

Build ripmime

Optional. Required only if you want extract attachments from your emails

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-virtualdomans/ripmime-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

(check version in indimail-virtualdomains/ripmime-x/conf-version)

Build mpack

Optional. Required only if you want to pack a zip file and attach it to your email.

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-virtualdomans/mpack-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

(check version in indimail-virtualdomains/mpack-x/conf-version)

Build flash

Optional. Required only if you want a configurable ncurses based menu system to configure a system for administering indimail using a dumb terminal

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-virtualdomans/flash-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

(check version in indimail-virtualdomains/flash-x/conf-version)

Build fortune

Optional. Required only if you want fortune cookies to be sent out in your outgoing emails.

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-virtualdomans/fortune-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

(check version in indimail-virtualdomains/fortune-x/conf-version)

Build iwebadmin

Required for a web administration front-end for administering your indimail-users and ezmlm mailing lists. You can do tasks like adding, deleting, modifying users, change user password, update quota, set vacation messages, etc.

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-virtualdomains/iwebadmin-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

(check version in indimail-virtualdomains/iwebadmin-x/conf-version)

Build indium

Optional. This is a desktop based gui that runs under your desktop manager gnome, kde, etc. You need to have tcl-devel and tk-devel installed.

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-virtualdomains/indium-x
$ ./default.configure
$ make
$ sudo make install-strip

(check version in indimail-virtualdomains/indium-x/conf-version)

NOTE

For arch linux
$ sudo pacman -S tcl tk

Setup & Configuration

You are here because you decided to do a complete source installation. If you use source installation method, you need to setup various configuration and services. You can configure indimail/indimail-mta using /usr/sbin/svctool. svctool is a general purpose utility to configure indimail/indimail-mta services and configuration. At this point you should stop MySQL/MariaDB service if it is up.

You can also run the script create_services which invokes svctool to setup few default services to start a fully configured system. If you pass --add-boot argument to create_services, create_services will also put a systemd(1) unit file svscan.service in /lib/systemd/system. For FreeBSD systems, it will configure indimail to be started by rc(8) by creating a rc script in /usr/local/rc.d/svscan. For Darwin (Mac OSX), it will put a LaunchDaemon unit file in /Library/LauncDaemons. You can enable automatic later (detailed in the next section).

$ cd /usr/local/src/indimail-mta/indimail-mta-x
$ sudo ./create_services

The script create_services does the following.

1. Creates MySQL user 'indimail' with password 'ssh-1.5-'. This user has access to indimail database. You must use the mysql(1) client program to change this password after installation. After changing the password you have to edit /etc/indimail/control/host.mysql (on FreeBSD/Darwin /usr/local/etc/indimail/control/host.mysql)
2. Creates MySQL user 'mysql' with 'password 4-57343-'. This user has all MySQL privileges. You must use the mysql(1) client program to change this password after installation.
3. Creates MySQL user 'admin' with password 'benhur20'. This user has shutdown privilege in MySQL. You must use the mysql(1) client program to change this password after installation. After changing the password edit the file /service/mysql.3306/shutdown (/usr/local/etc/indimail/sv/mysql.3306/shutown on FreeBSD/Darwin).
4. Creates MySQL user 'repl' with password 'slaveserver'. This user has privilege to replicate binlogs from the master. You must use the mysql(1) client program to change this password after installation.
5. Creates user 'admin' in indimail internal database for adminclient(8). This is used by indisrvr(8) for access to various IndiMail(7) programs when indimail has been configured as a cluster/distributed domain. The password of this user is 'benhur20'. You can use mgmtpass(8) to change the password.

IMPORTANT NOTE

1. You can also set MYSQL_PASS, PRIV_PASS, ADMIN_PASS environent variables to set your own passwords before running create_services.
2. If you change the MySQL password for indimail after running create_services, edit /etc/indimail/control/host.mysql. On FreeBSD/Darwin this file will be /usr/local/etc/indimail/control/host.mysql
3. svctool requires credentials for MySQL user 'admin' for the mysqldump option. You can set credentials for privileged users in /etc/indimail/.svctool.cnf and make sure only root user has read privileges on this file. You are encouraged to read Setting MySQL Guide, on how to save MySQL credentials.

NOTE: The Darwin Mac OSX system is broken for sending emails because you can't remove /usr/sbin/sendmail. System Integrity Protection (SIP) ensures that you cannot modify anything in /bin, /sbin, /usr, /System, etc. You could disable it by using csrutil in recover mode but that is not adviseable. See this. indimail-mta requires services in /service to configure all startup items. On Mac OS X, it uses `/etc/synthetic.conf' to create a virtual symlink of /service to /usr/local/etc/indimail/sv. This file is created/modified by 'svctool --add-boot' command. For program that need to send mails, you will need to call /usr/local/bin/sendmail (indimal-mta's sendmail replacement). The OS and all utilites like cron, mailx, etc will continue to use /usr/sbin/sendmail. There is nothing you can do about it, other than fooling around with SIP.

Enable svscan to be started at boot

$ sudo /usr/sbin/svctool --config=add-boot

You can enable indimail-mta as an alternative mta (if your system supports the alternatives commaand)

$ sudo  /usr/bin/svctool --config=add-alt

You can remove automatic startup at boot by running the command

$ sudo /usr/sbin/svctool --config=rm-boot

Start Services

indimail, indimail-mta uses systemd.unit file to load all indimail services. This is the standard unit file that gets installed as /lib/systemd/system/svscan.service

[Unit]
Description=SVscan Service
After=local-fs.target network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/libexec/indimail/svscanboot /service
ExecStop=/etc/init.d/svscan stop
Restart=on-failure
Type=simple
PrivateTmp=yes

[Install]
Alias=indimail.service
Alias=indimail-mta.service
WantedBy=multi-user.target

You can override values by creating a file override.conf in /lib/systemd/system/svscan.service.d. As an example, on a raspberry pi system, you should have svscan started only after the system clock is synchronized with a NTP source (many SBC don't have battery backed Real Time Clock - RTC). This ensures that svscan gets started when the system has a correct date, time so that logs created will not have absurd timestamps.

[Unit]
Wants=time-sync.target
After=local-fs.target remote-fs.target time-sync.target network.target network-online.target systemd-networkd-wait-online.service

So if you have a system without a battery backed RTC, you should do this (even when you do a binary installation)

$ sudo mkdir /lib/systemd/system/svscan.service.d
$ sudo cp /usr/share/indimail/boot/systemd.override.conf /lib/systemd/system/svscan.service.d/override.conf
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Now you can start the indimail/indimail-mta service

$ sudo systemctl start svscan # Linux
or
$ sudo service svscan start # Linux/FreeBSD
or
$ /etc/init.d/svscan start # Linux
or
$ sudo launchctl start org.indimail.svscan # Mac OSX
or
$ qmailctl start # Universal

After starting svscan as given above, your system will be ready to send and receive mails, provided you have set your system hostname, domain name IP addresses and setup mail exchanger in DNS. You can look at this guide to do that.

Check Status of Services

The svstat command can be used to query the status of various services. You can query for all services like below. You can query the status of a single service like running a command like this.

% sudo svstat /service/qmail-smtpd.25

The argument to svstat should be a directory in /service. Each directory in /service refers to an indimail-mta/indimail service. e.g. /service/qmail-smtpd.25 refers to the SMTP service serving port 25.

If you don't have /service create a link to /etc/indimail/sv (/usr/local/etc/indimail/sv on FreeBSD/Darwin). I'm working on creating this link automatically during setup.

$ sudo svstat /service/*
/service/fetchmail: down 9226 seconds spid 45058 
/service/greylist.1999: up 9226 seconds pid 45102 
/service/indisrvr.4000: up 9226 seconds pid 45090 
/service/inlookup.infifo: up 9196 seconds pid 46146 
/service/mrtg: up 9226 seconds pid 45125 
/service/mysql.3306: up 9226 seconds pid 45148 
/service/proxy-imapd.4143: up 9226 seconds pid 45128 
/service/proxy-imapd-ssl.9143: up 9226 seconds pid 45141 
/service/proxy-pop3d.4110: up 9226 seconds pid 45147 
/service/proxy-pop3d-ssl.9110: up 9226 seconds pid 45120 
/service/pwdlookup: up 9196 seconds pid 46148 
/service/qmail-daned.1998: up 9226 seconds pid 45067 
/service/qmail-imapd.143: up 9226 seconds pid 45064 
/service/qmail-imapd-ssl.993: up 9226 seconds pid 45072 
/service/qmail-logfifo: up 9226 seconds pid 45091 
/service/qmail-pop3d.110: up 9226 seconds pid 45104 
/service/qmail-pop3d-ssl.995: up 9226 seconds pid 45114 
/service/qmail-poppass.106: up 9226 seconds pid 45081 
/service/qmail-qmqpd.628: down 9226 seconds spid 45007 
/service/qmail-qmtpd.209: up 9226 seconds pid 45107 
/service/qmail-send.25: up 9226 seconds pid 45131 
/service/qmail-smtpd.25: up 9226 seconds pid 45066 
/service/qmail-smtpd.366: up 9226 seconds pid 45065 
/service/qmail-smtpd.465: up 9226 seconds pid 45124 
/service/qmail-smtpd.587: up 9226 seconds pid 45136 
/service/qscanq: up 9226 seconds pid 45096 
/service/udplogger.3000: up 9226 seconds pid 45150 

or you could use svps command

$ sudo svps -a
------------ svscan ---------------
/usr/sbin/svscan /service          up      9227 secs  pid   44997

------------ main -----------------
/service/fetchmail                 down    9226 secs spid   45058
/service/qmail-qmqpd.628           down    9226 secs spid   45007
/service/inlookup.infifo           up      9196 secs  pid   46146
/service/pwdlookup                 up      9196 secs  pid   46148
/service/dnscache                  up      9226 secs  pid   45119
/service/freshclam                 up      9226 secs  pid   45069
/service/greylist.1999             up      9226 secs  pid   45102
/service/indisrvr.4000             up      9226 secs  pid   45090
/service/mrtg                      up      9226 secs  pid   45125
/service/mysql.3306                up      9226 secs  pid   45148
/service/proxy-imapd.4143          up      9226 secs  pid   45128
/service/proxy-imapd-ssl.9143      up      9226 secs  pid   45141
/service/proxy-pop3d.4110          up      9226 secs  pid   45147
/service/proxy-pop3d-ssl.9110      up      9226 secs  pid   45120
/service/qmail-daned.1998          up      9226 secs  pid   45067
/service/qmail-imapd.143           up      9226 secs  pid   45064
/service/qmail-imapd-ssl.993       up      9226 secs  pid   45072
/service/qmail-logfifo             up      9226 secs  pid   45091
/service/qmail-pop3d.110           up      9226 secs  pid   45104
/service/qmail-pop3d-ssl.995       up      9226 secs  pid   45114
/service/qmail-poppass.106         up      9226 secs  pid   45081
/service/qmail-qmtpd.209           up      9226 secs  pid   45107
/service/qmail-send.25             up      9226 secs  pid   45131
/service/qmail-smtpd.25            up      9226 secs  pid   45066
/service/qmail-smtpd.366           up      9226 secs  pid   45065
/service/qmail-smtpd.465           up      9226 secs  pid   45124
/service/qmail-smtpd.587           up      9226 secs  pid   45136
/service/qscanq                    up      9226 secs  pid   45096
/service/udplogger.3000            up      9226 secs  pid   45150

------------ logs -----------------
/service/.svscan/log               up      9226 secs  pid   45024
/service/clamd/log                 up      9226 secs  pid   45123
/service/fetchmail/log             up      9226 secs  pid   45137
/service/freshclam/log             up      9226 secs  pid   45074
/service/greylist.1999/log         up      9226 secs  pid   45097
/service/indisrvr.4000/log         up      9226 secs  pid   45063
/service/inlookup.infifo/log       up      9226 secs  pid   45118
/service/mrtg/log                  up      9226 secs  pid   45099
/service/mysql.3306/log            up      9226 secs  pid   45142
/service/proxy-imapd.4143/log      up      9226 secs  pid   45101
/service/proxy-imapd-ssl.9143/log  up      9226 secs  pid   45126
/service/proxy-pop3d.4110/log      up      9226 secs  pid   45143
/service/proxy-pop3d-ssl.9110/log  up      9226 secs  pid   45117
/service/pwdlookup/log             up      9226 secs  pid   45132
/service/qmail-daned.1998/log      up      9226 secs  pid   45044
/service/qmail-imapd.143/log       up      9226 secs  pid   45075
/service/qmail-imapd-ssl.993/log   up      9226 secs  pid   45070
/service/qmail-logfifo/log         up      9226 secs  pid   45135
/service/qmail-pop3d.110/log       up      9226 secs  pid   45103
/service/qmail-pop3d-ssl.995/log   up      9226 secs  pid   45105
/service/qmail-poppass.106/log     up      9226 secs  pid   45046
/service/qmail-qmqpd.628/log       up      9226 secs  pid   45113
/service/qmail-qmtpd.209/log       up      9226 secs  pid   45106
/service/qmail-send.25/log         up      9226 secs  pid   45129
/service/qmail-smtpd.25/log        up      9226 secs  pid   45073
/service/qmail-smtpd.366/log       up      9226 secs  pid   45068
/service/qmail-smtpd.465/log       up      9226 secs  pid   45140
/service/qmail-smtpd.587/log       up      9226 secs  pid   45121
/service/qscanq/log                up      9226 secs  pid   45139
/service/udplogger.3000/log        up      9226 secs  pid   45149

Create Virtual Domains

The commands below will look familiar to you if you have used vpopmail. IndiMail-virtualdomains has many commands with the same name but is a totally new package with all code written in djb style. Also the feature list is extensive compated to vpopmail. But unlike vpopmail, indimail-virtualdomains supports MySQL database only. The idea for doing indimail-virtualdomains comes from looking at how vpopmail works (See #History). You can extend what many of indimail-virtualdomains programs by creating a script with the same name in /usr/libexec/indimail. These scripts will be passed the same arguments that you pass the original programs. The man pages for the commands will have more details.

STEP 1

Add a virtual domain

For this example, we will add a domain "indimail.org"

For a non-clustered domain you would execute the following command

% sudo /usr/bin/vadddomain indimail.org
    or
% sudo /usr/bin/vadddomain indimail.org password-for-postmaster

For a clustered domain you would execute the following command

% sudo /usr/bin/vadddomain -D indimail -S localhost \
    -U indimail -P ssh-1.5- -p 3306 -c indimail.org password-for-postmaster
    or
% sudo /usr/bin/vadddomain -D indimail -S localhost \
    -U indimail -P ssh-1.5- -p 3306 -c indimail.org password-for-postmaster

vadddomain will modify the following qmail files (default locations used) /etc/indimail/control/locals /etc/indimail/control/rcpthosts /etc/indimail/control/morercpthosts (if rcpthosts > than 50 lines) /etc/indimail/control/virtualdomains /etc/indimail/users/assign /etc/indimail/users/cdb

NOTE: FreeBSD/Darwin has /usr/local/etc/indimail instead of /etc/indimail

It will also create a domains directory ~indimail/domains/indimail.org and user's home directory and Maildir ~indimail/domains/indimail.org/postmaster/Maildir

If you do not specify a password on the command line, it will prompt for a password for the postmaster.

Then it will send a kill -HUP signal to qmail-send telling it to re-read the control files.

Note: setting up DNS MX records for the virtual domain is not covered in this INSTALL file. You can look at this guide to do that.

STEP 2

Add a new user.

You can use vadduser to add users.

% sudo /usr/bin/vadduser newuser@indimail.org
    or
% sudo /usr/bin/vadduser newuser@indimail.org <password-for-newuser>

STEP 3

Delete a user

% sudo /usr/bin/vdeluser newuser@indimail.org (for the indimail.org virtualdomain example)

STEP 4

Delete a virtual domain

% sudo /usr/bin/vdeldomain indimail.org

STEP 5

Changing a users password

% sudo /usr/bin/vpasswd user@indimail.org
        or
% sudo /usr/bin/vpasswd user@indimail.org <password-for-user@indimail.org>

STEP 6

Man pages

A lot of the underlying indimail details are not covered in this file. This is on purpose. If you want to find out the internal workings of indimail and qmail look into all files in /usr/share/indimail/doc and /usr/share/man/man?

As a first step, do

% man indimail

Send / Receive Mails

At this stage, your setup is ready to send mails to the outside world. To receive mails, you need to create your actual domain (instead of example.com) using vadddomain and setup a mail exchanger record for your domain (MX record). To send mails, you can either use SMTP or use sendmail (which is actually /usr/bin/sendmail). You can do the following to send a test mail. The mail command is part of the BSD mail/mailx package

% ( echo 'First M. Last'; uname -a) | mail -s "IndiMail Installation" manvendra@indimail.org

You can also play around with the system at this point. Try POP3 (110), POP3s (995), IMAP (143), IMAPs (993), SMTP (25), SMTPS (465), Submission (587). You can use telnet or nc command to connect to these ports. You could also configure your mail client to connect to this ports and set it up for regular mail usage.

Replace First M. Last with your name.

Create Local Binary Packages

If you need to have indimail on multiple machines, you can build binary packages once and install the same package on multiple machines. The other big advantage of using a binary build is that the binary installation will give you fully functional, configured system using your hostname for defaults. You can always change these configuration files in /etc/indimail to cater to your requirements later. With a binary build, you don't need to run the create_services command. To generate RPM packages locally for all components refer to Binary Packages.

You can also download pre-built binary packages from openSUSE Build Service, described in the chapter Binary Builds on OBS.

NOTE: binary package for FreeBSD and OSX is in my TODO list and I need help to figure this out.

Binary Builds on openSUSE Build Service and Copr

Build Status on Open Build Service

Build Status on copr

You can get binary RPM / Debian packages at

• Stable Releases
• Experimental Releases
• copr Releases

If you want to use DNF / YUM / apt-get, the corresponding install instructions for the three repositories, depending on whether you want to install a stable, an experimental or copr release, are

• Stable
• Experimental
• copr Releases. The copr repository can be enabled by running the command $ sudo dnf copr enable cprogrammer/indimail

NOTE: Once you have setup your DNF / YUM / apt-get repo, you an also decide to install the additional software

1. indimail-access - IMAP/POP3 & fetchmail for mail retreival
2. indimail-auth (nssd - providing Name Service Switch and pam-multi providing multiple PAM modules for flexible, configurable authentication methods)
3. indimail-spamfilter - SPAM filter capabillity using bogofilter - https://bogofilter.sourceforge.io
4. indimail-utils (Multiple utilities that can work with indimail/indimail-mta - altermime, ripMIME, mpack, fortune and flash - customizable menu based admin interface)

Currently, the list of supported binary distributions for IndiMail is

    * Arch Linux

    * SUSE
          o openSUSE_Leap_15.4
          o openSUSE_Leap_15.5
          o openSUSE_Leap_15.6
          o openSUSE_Tumbleweed
          o SUSE Linux Enterprise 12
          o SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP1
          o SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP2
          o SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP3
          o SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP4
          o SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP5
          o SUSE Linux Enterprise 15
          o SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP1
          o SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP2
          o SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP3
          o SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP4
          o SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP5
          o SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP6

    * Red Hat
          o Fedora 39
          o Fedora 40
          o Fedora Rawhide
          o Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
          o Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 +
          o Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 +
          o EPEL 8 +
          o EPEL 9 +
          o Scientific Linux 7
          o CentOS 7
          o CentOS 8
          o CentOS 8  Stream
          o CentOS 9  Stream
          o CentOS 10 Stream
          o RockyLinux 8
          o RockyLinux 9
          o OracleLinux 8
          o OracleLinux 9
          o AlmaLinux 8
          o AlmaLinux 9
          o AmazonLinux 2023

          +: Some of the above Red Hat flavoured distributions are available
             only on copr (RHEL 8, RHEL9, EPEL9, EPEL9)

    * Debian
          o Debian 10.0
          o Debian 11.0
          o Debian 12.0

    * Ubuntu
          o Ubuntu 18.04
          o Ubuntu 20.04
          o Ubuntu 22.04
          o Ubuntu 23.04
          o Ubuntu 24.04

    * Mageia
          o Mageia 8
          o Mageia 9

Docker / Podman Containers

The docker repository can be used to pull docker/podman images for indimail/indimail-mta

For latest details refer to README

Earlier I used to provide docker / podman container images on docker hub. But recently (Jul 25, 2021) docker, without any warning or communication, on the sly, has removed the ability to connect with a github account unless you pay them dollars every month - a questionable business practice. As a principle, I no longer support docker. I have deleted all container images that were hosted there. Instead of the Docker Container Registry, I now use the Github Container Registry. You can also build your own images. Refer to README on how to build your own container images. If you cannot build it on your own, ping me and I will be happy to build it for you.

SUPPORT INFORMATION

IRC / Matrix

• Matrix Invite Link #indimail:matrix.org
• IndiMail has an IRC channel on libera #indimail-mta

Mailing list

There are two Mailing Lists for IndiMail

1. indimail-support - You can subscribe for Support here. You can mail indimail-support for support Old discussions can be seen here
2. Archive at Google Groups. This groups acts as a remote archive for indimail-support and indimail-devel.

There is also a Project Tracker for IndiMail (Bugs, Feature Requests, Patches, Support Requests)

History

Both indimail-mta and indimail-virtualdomains started in late 1999 as a combined package of unmodified qmail and modified vpopmail.

indimail-mta started as a unmodified qmail-1.03. This was when I was employed by an ISP in late 1999. The ISP was using Critical Path's ISOCOR for providing Free and Paid email service. Then the dot com burst happened and ISP didn't have money to spend on upgrading the Sun Enterprise servers. The mandate was to move to an OSS/FS solution. After evaluating sendmail, postfix and qmail, we chose qmail. During production deployment, qmail couldn't scale on these servers. The issue was the queue's todo count kept on increasing. We applied the qmail-todo patch, but still we couldn't handle the incoming email rate. By now the customers were screaming, the corporate users were shooting out nasty emails. We tried a small hack the solved this problem. Compiled 20 different qmail setups, with conf-qmail as /var/qmail1, /var/qmail2, etc. Run qmail-send for each of these instance. A small shim was written which would get the current time and divide by 20. The remainder was used to do exec of /var/qmail1/bin/qmail-queue, /var/qmail2/bin/qmail-queue, etc. The shim was copied as /var/qmail/bin/qmail-queue. The IO problem got solved. But the problem with this solution was compiling the qmail source 20 times and copying the shim as qmail-queue. You couldn't compile qmail on one machine and use the backup of binaries on another machine. Things like uid, gid, the paths were all hardcoded in the source. That is how the base of indimail-mta took form by removing each and every hard coded uids, gids and paths. indimail-mta still does the same thing that was done in the year 2000. The installation creates multiple queues - /var/indimail/queue/queue1, /var/indimail/queue/queue2, etc. A new daemon named qmail-daemon uses QUEUE_COUNT env variable to run multiple qmail-send instances. Each qmail-send instance can instruct qmail-queue to deposit mail in any of the queues installed. All programs use qmail-multi, a qmail-queue frontend to load balance the incoming email across multiple queues.

indimail-virtualdomain started with a modified vpopmail base that could handle a distributed setup - Same domain on multiple servers. Having this kind of setup made the control file smtproutes unviable. email would arrive at a relay server for user@domain. But the domain '@domain' was preset on multiple hosts, with each host having it's own set of users. This required special routing and modification of qmail (especially qmail-remote) to route the traffic to the correct host. vdelivermail to had to be written to deliver email for a local domain to a remote host, in case the user wasn't present on the current host. New MySQL tables were created to store the host information for a user. This table would be used by qmail-local, qmail-remote, vdelivermail to route the mail to the write host. All this complicated stuff had to be done because the ISP where I worked, had no money to buy/upgrade costly servers to cater to users, who were multiplying at an exponential rate. The govt had just opened the license for providing internet services to private players. These were Indians who were tasting internet and free email for the first time. So the solution we decided was to buy multiple intel servers Compaq Proliant running Linux and make the qmail/vpopmail solution horizontally scalable. This was the origin of indimail-1.x which borrowed code from vpopmail, modified it for a domain on multiple hosts. indimail-2.x was a complete rewrite using djb style, using libqmail as the standard library for all basic operations. All functions were discarded because they used the standard C library. The problem with indimail-2.x was linking with MySQL libraries, which caused significant issues building binary packages on openSUSE build service. Binaries got built with MySQL/MariaDB libraries pulled by OBS, but when installed on a target machine, the user would have a completely different MySQL/MariaDB setup. Hence a decision was taken to load the library at runtime using dlopen/dlsym. This was the start of indimail-3.x. The source was moved from sourceforge.net to github and the project renamed as indimail-virtualdomains from the original name IndiMail. The modified source code of qmail was moved to github as indimail-mta.