mail-server

Ansible Playbooks for setting up a secured ssh, mail, and web server.

Branches

The scripts and playbooks here track https://github.com/hardware/mailserver

• master is in step with the latest stable branch (currently v1.1-stable)
• develop is bleeding edge (docker tag v1.1-latest, git branch master)

Quick Start

Prerequisite: Recent version of Ansible installed on your control host.

Set up your host's domain name entries as documented here: https://github.com/hardware/mailserver (you can add the DKIM signature when the stack is up).

To start, you'll need to have the following set up in your DNS (A.B.C.D represents your IP address):

HOSTNAME	CLASS	TYPE	PRIORITY	VALUE
@	IN	A/AAAA	any	A.B.C.D
mail	IN	A/AAAA	any	A.B.C.D
@	IN	MX	10	mail.domain.tld.
www	IN	CNAME	any	mail.domain.tld.
postfixadmin	IN	CNAME	any	mail.domain.tld.
webmail	IN	CNAME	any	mail.domain.tld.
spam	IN	CNAME	any	mail.domain.tld.

• Create a recent Debian or Fedora server, using whatever process you choose. I created a Debian 9 (Stretch) server in the cloud. Also tested with a Fedora 26 Server instance.

• make

• Reboot the installed server.

• Add additional DNS records (for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) as documented here to increase your reputation score.

Once your server is up, from your control host, do ssh [email protected] so you can look at the generated secrets. e.g. to get the DKIM key to add to your DNS, do:

  ssh [email protected]
  cat /mnt/docker/mail/dkim/{your-domain-name}/public.key

• At this point, visit your postfixadmin setup script and follow the instructions here: https://github.com/hardware/mailserver/wiki/Postfixadmin-initial-configuration

• Using postfixadmin, set up your super-administrator account, then set up your domain, and proceed to set up mailboxes for admin and contact. Now set up aliases for the following:

ALIAS	MAILBOX
abuse	[email protected]
hostmaster	[email protected]
noc	[email protected]
postmaster	[email protected]
spam	[email protected]
sales	[email protected]
webform	[email protected]

• Set up your Rainloop (webmail) configuration. Follow the instructions here: https://github.com/hardware/mailserver/wiki/Rainloop-initial-configuration

• Using the RainLoop admin panel, make sure to set up your ManageSieve and white-lists for users you allow to login to your domain.

• In the RainLoop admin, go to the Plugins and enable the postfixadmin-change-password plugin. You will have to ensure that the plugin settings are set like this:

PLUGIN SETTING	VALUE
MySQL Host	mariadb
MySQL Port	3306
MySQL Database	postfix
MySQL table	mailbox
MySQL username column	username
MySQL password column	password
MySQL User	postfix
MySQL Password	{MYSQL postfix user password}
Encrypt	md5encrypt
Allowed Emails	*

The password to use in the change password settings is the postfix database user password. You can get it by ssh into your host and examining the docker-compose.yml file:

$ ssh [email protected]
$ grep MYSQL_PASSWORD docker-compose.yml
  - MYSQL_PASSWORD=XXXXXXXXX

Setting up the postfixadmin-change-password plugin will allow users to change their mailbox passwords.

Postfix Config customization

You can add postfix customizations to /mnt/docker/mail/postfix/custom.conf on your mailserver machine and restart the stack.

More info about postfix overrides here: https://github.com/hardware/mailserver#override-postfix-configuration

Web Site files

The site at www.yourdomain.tld simply directs to the contact app which renders a simple Contact Form as the front page of your your domain.

If you place files in www/yourdomain.tld/, the Ansible playbook will create an alterate setup:

• /contact will refer to the Contact form served by the PHP container.
• / will refer to what you place in www/yourdomain.tld/files/
• /~user will refer to what you place in www/yourdomain.tld/people/user/

Note that files placed in www/ are ignored by git and will have to be backed up.

Ansible task tags for website setup

The website setup tasks are tagged with website.

To only deploy web site files, run this:

make web

To run the mailserver playbook but skip web site deployment:

make noweb

Run make help for a quick explanation of all Makefile tasks.

Redeploying, starting over.

On your control host, the first time you run this, it will run ./bin/setup and set your ./inventory files and variable files in ./group_vars/all/.

Subsequent runs of ./bin/setup will read the stored values and present them as defaults.

Use make reset to remove these files and start over.

You can also make do if you make changes to your base variables and want to push those changes to your server.

If you want to make changes to your secrets (e.g. change passwords), use make edit_secrets. This task decrypts and re-encrypts your secrets using ansible-vault.

User password hashes

Refer to the Ansible docs regarding user passwords to understand how we generate the Linux user password hashes.

To ensure this works, make sure that the ./bin/mkpasswd script works:

  ./bin/mkpasswd TestTheHash
  $6$JBPVsmzre/hFkiFF$RfmrOFdkXs.QNF515TIGtokseUafj[...]

If you wish to edit your secrets, use the edit task, like this:

  $ EDITOR=vi make edit
  Decryption successful

  NOTE: Run "make do" to push your changes.

  $ make do

Saving your settings

After running the process the first time, you can do:

  $ make save

This will create a file backup/{domain}-YYYYMMDD-hhmm.tar.gz which you can stash and will include your inventory file, variables and vault password.

References

• Simple and full-featured mail server using Docker
• Securing a Server with Ansible
• Deploying a mail server with Ansible