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Install iRedMail on Debian or Ubuntu Linux

Attention

Check out the lightweight on-premises email archiving software developed by iRedMail team: Spider Email Archiver.

Install iRedMail on Debian or Ubuntu Linux

Attention

It's recommended to use the new iRedMail Easy deployment and support platform to deploy and keep your mail server up to date, technical support is available through the ticket system.

System Requirements

Warning

iRedMail is designed to be deployed on a FRESH server system, which means your server does NOT have mail related components installed, e.g. MySQL, OpenLDAP, Postfix, Dovecot, Amavisd, etc. iRedMail will install and configure them for you automatically. Otherwise it may override your existing files/configurations although it will backup files before modifying, and it may not be working as expected.
Port 25 is required by mail server but many ISPs block it by default.

Port 25 is used for communication between mail servers, it must be open, otherwise your mail server won't be able to receive and send emails. Please contact your ISP to make sure it's not blocked, or ask them to unblock it.
- Linode. Explained in the blog post, you can open a support ticket to ask the Linode team to open it. If you sign up to Linode with our reference, iRedMail Team's Linode account will receive a credit of $15-20.00. Thanks.
- Vultr. Port 25 is blocked by default, you may request these blocks be removed by opening a support ticket.
- Amazon AWS EC2. Request to remove the throttle on port 25.
- Google Cloud Platform.
- Microsoft Azure.
- DigitalOcean. According to a post in their community, SEEMS impossible to unblock port 25, that means you can NOT run mail server on DigitalOcean VPS.

To install iRedMail on Debian or Ubuntu Linux, you need:

A FRESH, working Debian/Ubuntu Linux. Supported releases are listed on Download page.
At least 4 GB memory is required for a low traffic production mail server with spam/virus scanning enabled.
Make sure 3 UID/GID are not used by other user/group: 2000, 2001, 2002.

Notes:

All binary packages will be installed from Debian/Ubuntu official apt repositories.
If you choose Ubuntu Linux, it's recommended to use the latest Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) release for production use.

Preparations

Set a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) hostname on your server

No matter your server is a testing machine or production server, it's strongly recommended to set a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) hostname.

Enter command hostname -f to view the current hostname:

$ hostname -f
mx.example.com

On Debian/Ubuntu Linux, hostname is set in two files: /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts.

/etc/hostname: short hostname, not FQDN.

mx

/etc/hosts: static table lookup for hostnames. Warning: Please list the FQDN hostname as first item.

# Part of file: /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1   mx.example.com mx localhost localhost.localdomain

Verify the FQDN hostname. If it wasn't changed after updating above two files, please reboot server to make it work.

$ hostname -f
mx.example.com

Enable default official Debian/Ubuntu apt repositories

iRedMail needs official Debian/Ubuntu apt repositories, please enable them in /etc/apt/sources.list.
Install packages required by iRedMail installer:

sudo apt-get install -y gzip dialog

Download the latest release of iRedMail

Visit Download page to get the latest stable release of iRedMail.
Upload iRedMail to your mail server via ftp or scp or whatever method you can use, login to the server to install iRedMail. We assume you uploaded it to /root/iRedMail-x.y.z.tar.gz (replace x.y.z by the real version number).
Uncompress iRedMail tarball:

cd /root/
tar zxf iRedMail-x.y.z.tar.gz

Start iRedMail installer

It's now ready to start iRedMail installer, it will ask you several simple questions, that's all required to setup a full-featured mail server.

cd /root/iRedMail-x.y.z/
bash iRedMail.sh

Screenshots of installation:

Welcome and thanks for your use

Specify location to store all mailboxes. Default is /var/vmail/.

Choose backend used to store mail accounts. You can manage mail accounts with iRedAdmin, our web-based iRedMail admin panel.

Note

There's no big difference between available backends, so it's strongly recommended to choose the one you're familiar with for easier management and maintenance after installation.

If you choose to store mail accounts in OpenLDAP, iRedMail installer will ask to set the LDAP suffix.

To MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL users

If you choose to store mail accounts in MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL, iRedMail installer will generate a random, strong password for you. You can find it in file iRedMail.tips.

Add your first mail domain name

Set password of admin account of your first mail domain.

Note: This account is an admin account and a mail user. That means you can login to webmail and admin panel (iRedAdmin) with this account, login username is full email address.

Choose optional components
Attention

Which webmail should you choose? Roundcube or SOGo?
- Roundcube is a fast and lightweight webmail, and webmail only. If all you need is a webmail to access mailbox and manage mail filters, then Roundcube is the best option.
- SOGo offers webmail, calendar (CalDAV), contacts (CardDAV) and ActiveSync. If you need calendar and contacts support, also syncing them to mobile or PC mail client applications, then SOGo is the one to go. Note: If you have many ActiveSync clients, it requires a lot RAM.
- It's ok to install both, but you can only manage mail filters with Roundcube in this case, because the filter rules generated by Roundcube and SOGo are not compatible. You can force to enable it in SOGo, but please inform end users and ask them to stick to one of them for managing mail filters.

After answered above questions, iRedMail installer will ask you to review and confirm to start installation. It will install and configure required packages automatically. Type y or Y and press Enter to start.

Important things you MUST know after installation

Warning

The weakest part of a mail server is user's weak password. Spammers don't want to hack your server, they just want to send spam from your server. Please ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS force users to use a strong password.

Read file /root/iRedMail-x.y.z/iRedMail.tips first, it contains:
- URLs, usernames and passwords of web-based applications
- Location of mail service related software configuration files. You can also check this tutorial instead: Locations of configuration and log files of major components.
- Some other important and sensitive information
Setup DNS records for your mail server
How to configure your mail clients
Locations of configuration and log files of major components
It's highly recommended to get a SSL cert to avoid annonying warning message in web browser or mail clients when accessing mailbox via HTTPS/IMAPS/POP3/SMTPS. Let's Encrypt offers FREE SSL certificate. We have a document for you to use a SSL certificate.
If you need to bulk create mail users, check our document for OpenLDAP and MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL.
If you're running a busy mail server, we have some suggestions for better performance.

Access webmail and other web applications

After installation successfully completed, you can access web-based programs if you choose to install them. Replace your_server below by your real server hostname or IP address.

Roundcube webmail: https://your_server/mail/
SOGo Groupware: https://your_server/SOGo
Web admin panel (iRedAdmin): https://your_server/iredadmin/

Get technical support

You are welcome to post issues, feedbacks, feature requests, suggestions in our online support forum, it's more responsive than you expected.
We offer paid professional support service too, check our web site for more details: Get Professional Support from iRedMail Team.