Mailman

Mailman is a SPA written in React to help you to manage your email server database.

Table of contents

• Prerequisites
• Docker
• Deployment
  • Reverse Proxy
• Update Mailman
• Catch All email addresses
• License
• Acknowledgments

Features

• create, update and delete domains, accounts, aliases and TLS policies
• accounts can create aliases and change their passwords
• responsive web interface
• admins per domain
• UI customization

Prerequisites

You must have a functional mailserver with the database model provided by Thomas Leister in his awesome mailserver tutorial: Mailserver mit Dovecot, Postfix, MySQL und Rspamd unter Debian 9 Stretch

Update the permissions of the vmail database user to allow insert, update and delete queries:

grant select, insert, update, delete on vmail.* to 'vmail'@'localhost' identified by 'vmaildbpass';

Or create a new user:

grant select, insert, update, delete on vmail.* to 'vmail_mailman'@'localhost' identified by 'vmaildbpass';

Docker

If you have docker installed on your server you can run Mailman in a docker container otherwise go to the Deployment section to see how to deploy it manually.

Download the sample.env file

wget https://github.com/phiilu/mailman/raw/master/sample.env -O .env

Update the variables in .env and then start mailman:

docker run -d --net="host" --env-file .env --restart=always --name mailman phiilu/mailman

Explanation:

• -d runs the container as a daemon process a.k.a. in the background
• --net="host" instructs docker to share the network with the host. This is required to access the vmail database
• --env-file .env sets the environment variables in the container
• --name mailman sets the name for the docker container to mailman

---

Docker with Subfolder configuration:

If you want to access mailman via a subfolder /mailman instead of the http root /, you have to modify the following:

Download the sample.subfolder.env file

wget https://github.com/phiilu/mailman/raw/master/sample.subfolder.env -O .env

Update the variables in .env and then start mailman with the :subfolder tag:

docker run -d --net="host" --env-file .env --restart=always --name mailman phiilu/mailman:subfolder

Note: This Docker Image is for the path /mailman only! It can not be changed.

---

Deployment

Install required build tools

sudo apt install build-essential python

Install Node.js with nvm

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.33.6/install.sh | bash

After nvm is installed you most logout and login again.

Install node with nvm

nvm install 9.1.0

Verify if Node.js is installed

$ node -v
v9.1.0

$ npm -v
5.5.1

Install PM2 a Node.js process manager

npm i -g pm2

Clone Mailman from GitHub

It is easiest if you clone Mailman into a non-root user's home directory.

git clone https://github.com/phiilu/mailman.git

Create a .env file

cp sample.env .env

Open .env with a text editor and adapt the environment variables with your configuration:

• MAILMAN_SECRET a long unique random string to sign the JWT token
• MAILMAN_DB_ENGINE the engine used by mailman. defaults to maria if no value given.
• MAILMAN_DB_USER the vmail database user
• MAILMAN_DB_PASSWORD the password for the vmail database user
• MAILMAN_DB_DATABASE the vmail database
• MAILMAN_HOST the IP address which mailman binds to. Default is 0.0.0.0
• MAILMAN_PORT the TCP port mailman binds to. Default is 4000
• MAILMAN_BASENAME the HTTP base. Default is /
• MAILMAN_ADMIN the email address of the user, which is allowed to administrate the vmail database

---

Subfolder configuration:

If you want to access mailman via a subfolder /mailman instead of the http root /, you have to modify the following:

These steps need to be done BEFORE you build Mailman!

1. open mailman/client/package.json and change "homepage": "http://localhost:4000/" to "homepage": "http://localhost:4000/mailman"
2. open mailman/client/.env.production and change REACT_APP_BASENAME=/ to REACT_APP_BASENAME=/mailman
3. open mailman/.env and change MAILMAN_BASENAME=/ to MAILMAN_BASENAME=/mailman
4. build Mailman npm install && cd client && npm install && cd - && npm run build
5. kill pm2 if it is already running with pm2 kill
6. start Mailman again: npm start

---

To generate a random hash you can use command in your terminal:

head /dev/urandom | tr -dc A-Za-z0-9 | head -c 128 ; echo ''

Build the app

cd mailman && npm install && cd client && npm install && cd - && npm run build

Start Mailman

npm start

Mailman should now be running on port 4000 of the server.

Update Mailman

Manual deployment

Run the following command inside the mailman directory

git stash && git pull && npm install && cd client && npm install && cd - && npm run build && pm2 restart all

Docker

docker pull phiilu/mailman:latest

After pulling the new image just start a new container.

Reverse Proxy

NGINX

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name mailman.example.org;

    ##
    ## Uncomment one of the two possibilities
    ##

    # Subdomain
    #location / {
    #  proxy_pass       http://localhost:4000;
    #  proxy_set_header Host      $host;
    #  proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    #}

    # Subfolder
    #location /mailman {
    #  proxy_pass       http://localhost:4000;
    #  proxy_set_header Host      $host;
    #  proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    #}
}

Catch All email addresses

If you want to use Catch All email addresses please refer to Thomas's Guide:

Wie kann ich mit diesem Setup Catch-All Adressen realisieren? (German)

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License

Acknowledgments

• Thank you Thomas Leister for your excellent mailserver installation instructions