Debian 11 Groupware Server

Dovecot Postfix PostfixAdmin Rspamd SOGo/NextCloud

Installing a mailserver on a Debian 11 LXC Container with Groupware Features contained in SOGo

Since Google has decided to retire their Google Apps for Business and force migration to thier paid Workspace Product, I found the need to migrate some of my deployed domains to a self-hosted Mail Service. My requirements were for a groupware server which can deal with shared calendars, mailboxes and contacts.

Solutions like iRedMail insisting on charging for realy basic functionality (Alias) and Mailcow's refusal to support deployment outside of Docker and thier maintainers refusal to engage on the issues raised when they implenment changes for no reason other than to break Docker on LXC lead me down a realy deep rabit hole to build my solution from existing standards and open-source software.

The short-term goal is to get the deployment to actually work (Done), medium term to get some advanced features to work (Partially Working) and ultimately develop an installation script to automate the deployment.

After finally deploying this in a working state using SOGo, I realized that it would be fairly easy to give the user the choice between SOGo or NextCloud or, if he so chooses, both, so I moved SOGo into a seperate part and added a part for NextCloud.

I give thanks, attribution and recognition to the following projects which gave sufficient insight into making all of these disparate products work:

1. The original ISPMail tutorial (I suggest this as a great starting point) which expertly describes the disparate technologies and how they are brought together in the modern email server.

2. PostfixAdmin Guidle for ISPMail to get PostfixAdmin to work on earlier Debian versions, however does not describe the deployment steps in sufficient detail for a complete newbie to use on a fresh Debian 11 system.

3. This tutorial on vogan which got me moving in the right direction (I hope) in getting IMAP Mailbox Sharing to work (It's all ACL's and Databases and right now, not yet in a working state).

4. The SOGo Installation Guide which, while not very well written, does get you there in the end.

5. This tutorial from ComputingForGeeks, which has a few minor errors and deviations from best practices which I have changed here.

So let's get started with this process, again, if you want to understand the steps involved in getting a working Email Server off the ground, read the ISPMail tutorial, this is not about holding your hand, it's about getting your server working.

Why Debian 11?

Because it's what I prefer for server deployments, stable and mostly secure, if you want to use any other distro, you can, but I chose Debian and I also chose to use only the official Debian repos becuase, again, stability is the most important aspect in deploying servers.

Conventions

To make this guide more universal, I am using some conventions which therefore assumes the following, you can replace the conventional terms with those you will be deploying. I am also assuming that you have a static IPv4 address pointing to your server and that your existing DNS records are correctly configured. I am also assuming that you are running all of this as root, while this is not absolutely required, if you choose to run as a non-root user with sudo privileges, add sudo in front of each command.

Domain Name: example.org

Server Name (fqdn): mail.example.org

MX Record (DNS): mail.example.org

Database name: mailserver

Database read only user: [email protected]

Database read only password: {userpassword}

Database admin user: mailadmin@localhost

Database admin password: {adminpassword}

In order to get secure passwords, use https://passwordsgenerator.net/ make sure that you exclude special characters when generating the passwords to avoid problems in .config files, I suggest 30 character length.

What Are We Installing?

Debian shifts with nano by default (I know VIM could be better, but I prefer the interface and simplicity of nano). We will assume a fresh base install of Debian 11 (Bullseye) and will be installing the following additional packages (And their dependencies):

1. Debian 11 (GNU/Linux OS)
2. MariaDB (Database Server)
3. Postfix (Mail Server)
4. Dovecot (Mailbox Server)
5. Apache (Webserver, properly apache2)
6. PHP (Scripting Language)
7. Redis (Caching Server)
8. Rspamd (Spam Filter Server)
9. Certbot (LetsEncrypt SSL Certificate Provider)
10. SOGo (Groupware Software including IMAP client)
11. NextCLoud (Cloud File Server with support for Mail through an IMAP Client plugin)

A huge thank you to the developers and maintainers of each of the above packages, without whom, none of this would work. Seriously, support these people.

Ensure that we are starting with an up to date server

apt update && apt upgrade -y

Install required packages

This installs all the packages we require to get everything to work:

apt install -y mariadb-server postfix postfix-mysql apache2 php php-{imap,mbstring,mysql} rspamd redis-server certbot dovecot-mysql dovecot-pop3d dovecot-imapd dovecot-managesieved dovecot-lmtpd ca-certificates

Prepare MariaDB

We need to create the mailserver database, as well as give permissions to both an admin user and a read-only user, note that the admin user is only given rights on localhost, while the read-only user is given rights via 127.0.0.1, this is important.

mysql

CREATE DATABASE mailserver;

GRANT ALL ON mailserver.* TO 'mailadmin'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '{adminpassword}';

GRANT SELECT ON mailserver.* to 'mailserver'@'127.0.0.1' IDENTIFIED BY '{userpassword}';

CREATE DATABASE mailshares;

GRANT ALL ON mailshares.* to 'mailadmin'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '{adminpassword}';

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

quit

Configure Apache Webserver and get a LetsEncrypt SSL Certificate

Eventually I would like to move over to NginX for this, however deploying on Apache is easier at a small perormance cost and will work fine for our purposes until I can figure out the NginX recipe for the same deployment.

1. Enable required Apache modules

a2enmod ssl rewrite headers proxy proxy_http

2. Disable the Apache default site

a2dissite 000-default.conf

3. Remove the Apache default site config file

rm /etc/apache2/sites-available/*.conf

4. Create the intial config for the new apache2 site (we are using the fqdn of the mailserver, mail.example.org, feel free to use your own fqdn, the only thing that actually matters is that it is in the right folder and ends as .conf

nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/mail.example.org-http.conf

Make sure that the contents look like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName mail.example.org
  DocumentRoot /var/www/html
</VirtualHost>

5. Enable your newly created site:

a2ensite mail.example.org

6. Restart Apache:

systemctl restart apache2

7. Get your SSL Certificate from LetsEncrypt:

certbot certonly --webroot --webroot-path /var/www/html -d mail.example.org --agree-tos --email [email protected]

8. Give the apache user (www-data) access to the certificates, this is necessary to address a known bug with PostfixAdmin:

usermod -aG dovecot www-data

chown www-data:www-data /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.example.org/privkey.pem

chown www-data:www-data /etc/letsencrypt/live

chown www-data:www-data /etc/letsencrypt/archive

9. Configure Certbot to restart the update ownership of the certificates and restart the mailserver whenever the certificate is updated:

nano /etc/letsencrypt/cli.ini

Add the following to the end of the file:

post-hook = chown www-data:www-data /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.example.org/privkey.pem && chown www-data:www-data /etc/letsencrypt/live && chown www-data:www-data /etc/letsencrypt/archive && systemctl restart postfix dovecot apache2

10. Make a autoconfig-mail file (Works with Mozilla Thunderbird), if nothing else, to give you a reference when deploying users. Make a note of the contents of this file as well, these are the IMAP and SMTP client configurations we are going to configure later.

mkdir /var/www/html/autoconfig-mail

chown www-data /var/www/html/autoconfig-mail/

nano /var/www/html/autoconfig-mail/config-v1.1.xml

Paste the following contents into the new file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<clientConfig version="1.1">
  <emailProvider id="My Mail Server">
    <domain>example.org</domain>
    <displayName>My Mail Server</displayName>
    <displayShortName>Mailserver</displayShortName>
    <incomingServer type="imap">
      <hostname>mail.example.org</hostname>
      <port>143</port>
      <socketType>STARTTLS</socketType>
      <authentication>password-cleartext</authentication>
      <username>%EMAILADDRESS%</username>
    </incomingServer>
    <outgoingServer type="smtp">
      <hostname>mail.example.org</hostname>
      <port>587</port>
      <socketType>STARTTLS</socketType>
      <authentication>password-cleartext</authentication>
      <username>%EMAILADDRESS%</username>
    </outgoingServer>
  </emailProvider>
</clientConfig>

11. Create the SSL version of your site config file, this is the one which will direct all your website traffic to the appropriate apps.

nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/mail.example.org-https.conf

Paste the following contents there, this will be the site which points to all the apps we will be deploying in this guide.

<VirtualHost *:443>
 ServerName mail.example.org
 DocumentRoot /var/www/html
 <Location /rspamd>
  Require all granted
 </Location>
 RewriteEngine On
 RewriteRule ^/rspamd$ /rspamd/ [R,L]
 RewriteRule ^/rspamd/(.*) http://localhost:11334/$1 [P,L]
 Alias /.well-known/autoconfig/mail /var/www/html/autoconfig-mail
 Alias /admin /srv/postfixadmin/public
 <Location /admin>
   Options FollowSymLinks
   AllowOverride All
   Require all granted
 </Location>
   SSLEngine on
   SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.example.org/fullchain.pem
   SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.example.org/privkey.pem
</VirtualHost>

12. Let's enable this site

a2ensite mail.example.org-https

13. And now let's direct all non-SSL traffic to the secured SSL site

nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/mail.example.org-http.conf

And edit the file to include the redirects:

<VirtualHost *:80>
 ServerName mail.example.org
 DocumentRoot /var/www/html
 RewriteEngine On
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.well-known/acme-challenge
 RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}$1 [R=301,L]
</VirtualHost>

14. Finally, reload the Apache configs so that it works

systemctl reload apache2

Install PostfixAdmin and let it create the required database tables we will be using

Note, that since we haven't configured Dovevot to use the SSL certificates yet, you CAN NOT CREATE AN ADMIN USER YET!!!

1. Download the latest version of PostfixAdmin from thier GitHub repo and move it to the right folder, at the time of writing this, it was 3.3.10:

wget -O postfixadmin.tgz https://github.com/postfixadmin/postfixadmin/archive/postfixadmin-3.3.11.tar.gz

tar -zxvf postfixadmin.tgz

mv postfixadmin-postfixadmin-3.3.11 /srv/postfixadmin

2. Create the required templates_c folder and give Apache privileges to write to it:

mkdir -p /srv/postfixadmin/templates_c

chown -R www-data /srv/postfixadmin/templates_c

3. Create the required config.local.php file with the following contents (For Now):

nano /srv/postfixadmin/config.local.php

And Edit it to work with your database configured earlier {adminpassword} is the one you configured in MariaDB:

<?php
$CONF['database_type'] = 'mysqli';
$CONF['database_host'] = 'localhost';
$CONF['database_user'] = 'mailadmin';
$CONF['database_password'] = '{adminpassword}';
$CONF['database_name'] = 'mailserver';
$CONF['encrypt'] = 'dovecot:BLF-CRYPT';
$CONF['quota'] = 'YES';
$CONF['quota_multiplier'] = '1024000';
$CONF['new_quota_table'] = 'YES';
$CONF['default_aliases'] = array (
'abuse' => '[email protected]',
'hostmaster' => '[email protected]',
'postmaster' => '[email protected]',
'webmaster' => '[email protected]');
$CONF['footer_text'] = 'Return to mail.example.org';
$CONF['footer_link'] = 'https://mail.example.org';
$CONF['domain_path'] = 'NO';
$CONF['domain_in_mailbox'] = 'YES';
$CONF['configured'] = true;
?>

4. Get a Secure Setup Password:

On your webbrowser, connect to https://mail.example.org/admin/setup.php and enter a secure Setup Password, it will show you a configuration string which you need to copy into your .conf file, it will look something like this:

$CONF['setup_password'] = '{Some Secure Password String}';

5. Configure the Setup Password in your PostfixAdmin config file:

nano /srv/postfixadmin/config.local.php

Paste the string from step 4 above so your file should now look something like this:

<?php
$CONF['database_type'] = 'mysqli';
$CONF['database_host'] = 'localhost';
$CONF['database_user'] = 'mailadmin';
$CONF['database_password'] = '{adminpassword}';
$CONF['database_name'] = 'mailserver';
$CONF['encrypt'] = 'dovecot:BLF-CRYPT';
$CONF['quota'] = 'YES';
$CONF['quota_multiplier'] = '1024000';
$CONF['new_quota_table'] = 'YES';
$CONF['default_aliases'] = array (
'abuse' => '[email protected]',
'hostmaster' => '[email protected]',
'postmaster' => '[email protected]',
'webmaster' => '[email protected]');
$CONF['footer_text'] = 'Return to mail.example.org';
$CONF['footer_link'] = 'https://mail.example.org';
$CONF['domain_path'] = 'NO';
$CONF['domain_in_mailbox'] = 'YES';
$CONF['setup_password'] = '{Some Secure Password String}';
$CONF['configured'] = true;
?>

6. Allow PostfixAdmin to deploy your database tables for you:

From your webbrowser, go back to https://mail.example.org/admin/setup.php and login in with the Setup Password you used to create the secure string in step 4. It will tell you that there's a problem with the encryption, that is fine, it will still generate the tables in your database (You will see a string saying that tables were succesfully updated or, are up to date). For now, we are done with this, once we have finished configuring Dovecot, this will work fine.

Configure Postfix

1. Configure Postfix to Map mailboxes to the Database

Earlier we configured a database in MariaDB and then populated that database with tables with PostfixAdmin. We need Postfix to actually use the data in those databases and therefore, we need to tell it where the database is as well as which fields it needs to get from each table.

a. Virtual Domains

Virtual Domains are simply the Domains for which your mailserver accepts email (example.org or as many other as you want to add), we need to tell Postfix which domains it is allowed to accept mail for so we need to create a MAP file:

nano /etc/postfix/mysql-virtual-mailbox-domains.cf

And configure it as follows (Again, use your {userpassword}):

user = mailserver
password = {userpassword}
hosts = 127.0.0.1
dbname = mailserver
query = SELECT 1 FROM domain WHERE domain='%s'

Now tell Postfix that this is the MAP file:

postconf virtual_mailbox_domains=mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual-mailbox-domains.cf

b. Virtual Mailboxes

A Virtual Mailbox is basically the mail user' ([email protected]) specific mailbox, so again, like in step a above, we need to tell Postfix how to verify the mailboxes:

nano /etc/postfix/mysql-virtual-mailbox-maps.cf

Configure this file as follows:

user = mailserver
password = {userpassword}
hosts = 127.0.0.1
dbname = mailserver
query = SELECT 1 FROM mailbox WHERE username='%s'

And tell Postfix to use this MAP:

postconf virtual_mailbox_maps=mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual-mailbox-maps.cf

c. Virtual Aliases

A Virtual Alias is where we configure an alias (or an internal mailing list) so that an emali sent to [email protected] will be received by any users configured to that alias. You can create an alias in PostfixAdmin.

nano /etc/postfix/mysql-virtual-alias-maps.cf

Configure this file as follows:

user = mailserver
password = {userpassword}
hosts = 127.0.0.1
dbname = mailserver
query = SELECT goto FROM alias WHERE address='%s'

And tell Postfix to use this MAP:

postconf virtual_alias_maps=mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual-alias-maps.cf

d. Email2Email

This will allow a logged-in user to be able to send email as another user on the domain (Mailbox Delegation).

nano /etc/postfix/mysql-email2email.cf

Configure the file as follows:

user = mailserver
password = {userpassword}
hosts = 127.0.0.1
dbname = mailserver
query = SELECT username FROM mailbox WHERE username='%s'

And tell Postfix to use this MAP:

postconf virtual_alias_maps=mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual-alias-maps.cf,mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-email2email.cf

e. Set Permissions for these files

We need Postfix to have access to these files in order to use them, so we change permissions as follows:

chgrp postfix /etc/postfix/mysql-*.cf

chmod u=rw,g=r,o= /etc/postfix/mysql-*.cf

Configure Dovecot

Dovecot does all the important mail handling, moving emails to the appropriate users folder and we need to make some changes so that we don't use systemmail (Where each user must be a specific PAM user) but rather use vmail.

1. Create vmail user and group

We want to use UID 5000 for this, so make sure that it is not used (On a clean install this should not be an issue)

groupadd -g 5000 vmail

useradd -g vmail -u 5000 vmail -d /var/vmail -m

chown -R vmail:vmail /var/vmail

2. Configure Dovecot

Dovecot has several .conf files stored in /etc/dovecot/conf.d/ and we will be modifying some of these to enable the plugins we will be using in our deployment.

a. User Authentication:

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-auth.conf

Find and edit the auth_mechanisms line:

auth_mechanisms = plain login

And at the bottom, comment out the !include auth-system.conf.ext line and uncomment the !include auth-sql.conf.ext lines:

#!include auth-system.conf.ext
!include auth-sql.conf.ext
#!include auth-ldap.conf.ext
#!include auth-passwdfile.conf.ext
#!include auth-checkpassword.conf.ext
#!include auth-static.conf.ext

b. Mail Directory Format

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf

Uncomment and edit the mail_location line:

mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir

Modify the namespace inbox { line section to resemble this:

namespace {
  type = private
  separator = /
  prefix =
  inbox = yes
}

Also Uncomment and edit the mail_plugins line:

mail_plugins = quota

c. Master Config File

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-master.conf

Here we need to edit the service lmtp and service auth sections as follows:

service lmtp {
  unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/dovecot-lmtp {
    group = postfix
    mode = 0600
    user = postfix
  }
}

service auth { section
  unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth {
    mode = 0660
    user = postfix
    group = postfix
  }

And add the following at the end of the file (This is for PostfixAdmin):

service stats {
  unix_listener stats-reader {
    user = www-data
    group = www-data
    mode = 0660
}
  unix_listener stats-writer {
    user = www-data
    group = www-data
    mode = 0660
  }
}

d. SSL Configuration

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-ssl.conf

Adit the following three lines to match our configuration:

ssl = required

ssl_cert = </etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.example.org/fullchain.pem
ssl_key = </etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.example.org/privkey.pem

e. SQL Connectoin

We need to tell Dovecot to authenticate against our MariaDB database:

nano /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf.ext

Add the following to the end of the file (Again, note the {userpassword}):

driver = mysql
 connect = \
 host=127.0.0.1 \
 dbname=mailserver \
 user=mailserver \
 password={userpassword}
user_query = SELECT username as user, \
concat('*:bytes=', quota) AS quota_rule, \
'/var/vmail/%d/%n' AS home, \
5000 AS uid, 5000 AS gid \
FROM mailbox WHERE username='%u'
password_query = SELECT password FROM mailbox WHERE username='%u'
iterate_query = SELECT username AS user FROM mailbox

Since we don't want this password to leak to non-root users:

chown root:root /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf.ext

chmod go= /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf.ext

f. Map Virtual Mail Folders for Outlook (And SOGo) Compatibility:

If you loog at our sogo.conf file from earlier, you will note the fields SOGoSentFolderName, SOGoTrashFolderName and SOGoJunkFolderName are mapped to Microsoft Outlook style names, well, we should tell Dovecot to "Alias" these folders to IMAP standard folders:

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/15-mailboxes.conf

You can add these lines below the mailbox "Sent Mail" mapping:

mailbox "Sent Items" {
    special_use = \Sent
  }

mailbox "Junk Email" {
    special_use = \Junk
  }

mailbox "Deleted Items" {
    special_use = \Trash
  }

g. Configure lmtp

postconf virtual_transport=lmtp:unix:private/dovecot-lmtp

Edit the lmtp.conf file

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-lmtp.conf

In the protocol lmtp { section, edit the mail_plugins line as follows:

mail_plugins = $mail_plugins sieve

h. Configure Quotas

We need to configure Quotas to work, which is used to set storage limits per user in PostfixAdmin:

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/90-quota.conf

Edit any plugin { section to look like this:

plugin {
  quota = maildir:User quota
  quota_status_success = DUNNO
  quota_status_nouser = DUNNO
  quota_status_overquota = "452 4.2.2 Mailbox is full and cannot receive any more emails"
}

Add the following new sections:

service quota-status {
  executable = /usr/lib/dovecot/quota-status -p postfix
  unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/quota-status {
    user = postfix
  }
}

plugin {
 quota_warning = storage=95%% quota-warning 95 %u
 quota_warning2 = storage=80%% quota-warning 80 %u
}
service quota-warning {
   executable = script /usr/local/bin/quota-warning.sh
   unix_listener quota-warning {
     user = vmail
     group = vmail
     mode = 0660
   }
}

Create a shell script to set the email which will be sent to your users when they approach or reach thier quota:

nano /usr/local/bin/quota-warning.sh

And make it look like this (Note tha From: email line, change this to your postmaster address):

#!/bin/sh
PERCENT=$1
USER=$2
cat << EOF | /usr/lib/dovecot/dovecot-lda -d $USER -o "plugin/quota=maildir:User quota:noenforcing"
From: [email protected]
Subject: Quota warning - $PERCENT% reached

Your mailbox can only store a limited amount of emails.
Currently it is $PERCENT% full. If you reach 100% then
new emails cannot be stored. Thanks for your understanding.
EOF

Make this file executable:

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/quota-warning.sh

i. Restart Dovecot

systemctl restart dovecot

Finalize Postfix Configuration

Now that we have Dovecot configured, we can finalize our Postfix configuration.

1. Enable some Postfix configurations:

postconf smtpd_sasl_type=dovecot

postconf smtpd_sasl_path=private/auth

postconf smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes

postconf smtpd_tls_security_level=may

postconf smtpd_tls_auth_only=yes

postconf smtpd_tls_cert_file=/etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.example.org/fullchain.pem

postconf smtpd_tls_key_file=/etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.example.org/privkey.pem

postconf smtp_tls_security_level=may

2. Make some changes to the Postfix master.cf file:

nano /etc/postfix/master.cf

Uncomment the submission inet line and uncomment the listed options, note, the indentation is important, only delete the preceding # and not any spaces:

submission inet n       -       y       -       -       smtpd
 -o syslog_name=postfix/submission
 -o smtpd_tls_security_level=encrypt
 -o smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes
 -o smtpd_tls_auth_only=yes
 -o smtpd_reject_unlisted_recipient=no
 -o smtpd_recipient_restrictions=
 -o smtpd_relay_restrictions=permit_sasl_authenticated,reject
 -o milter_macro_daemon_name=ORIGINATING

Enable our configurations:

postconf smtpd_sender_login_maps=mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-email2email.cf

postconf inet_interfaces=all

postconf 'smtpd_recipient_restrictions = reject_unauth_destination check_policy_service unix:private/quota-status'

postconf smtpd_milters=inet:127.0.0.1:11332

postconf non_smtpd_milters=inet:127.0.0.1:11332

postconf milter_mail_macros="i {mail_addr} {client_addr} {client_name} {auth_authen}"

3. Restart Postfix

systemctl restart postfix

Configure Rspamd

Rspamd is a very good Spam Filter, we need to make some configurations to allow Rspamd to work with Dovecot and our Sieve Plugin.

1. Set "Sensitivity" for Rspamd to be quite permissive

Create a new actions.conf file:

nano /etc/rspamd/local.d/actions.conf

Make the settings:

reject = 150;
add_header = 6;
greylist = 4;

2. Enable Extended Headers

This will allow RSAPMD to add fields to the email headers which will tell recipients that the email is trusted (Subject to DKIM being configured).

Create a milter_headers.conf file:

nano /etc/rspamd/override.d/milter_headers.conf

Enter the following string:

extended_spam_headers = true;

3. Configure Dovecot's Sieve plugin

We want Dovecot to filter messages flagged as Spam to the user's Junk folder, so we need to configure this:

a. Enable the use of a sieve-after folder:

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/90-sieve.conf

Uncomment and Edit the sieve_after string:

sieve_after = /etc/dovecot/sieve-after

b. Create the sieve-after folder as configured in step a. above, and create a spam-to-folder sieve instruction:

mkdir /etc/dovecot/sieve-after

Create spam-to-folder.sieve file:

nano /etc/dovecot/sieve-after/spam-to-folder.sieve

And add the following string:

require ["fileinto"];
if header :contains "X-Spam" "Yes" {
 fileinto "Junk";
 stop;
}

Now convert this human-readable file to a sieve instruction:

sievec /etc/dovecot/sieve-after/spam-to-folder.sieve

4. Configure Rspamd Redis server:

Create a file so Rspamd knows where to find Redis:

nano /etc/rspamd/override.d/redis.conf

And enter the following string:

servers = "127.0.0.1";

Restart Rspamd:

systemctl restart rspamd

5. Configure Rspamd to learn

Rspamd can learn to identify spam by monitoring user actions (When users move an email to their Junk folder, it will be marked as ham, and if this action is repeated by other users, it will be marked as Spam).

a. Enable learning:

nano /etc/rspamd/override.d/classifier-bayes.conf

Paste this line to the file:

autolearn = true;

b. Configure the Dovecot Sieve plugin for IMAP folders:

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-imap.conf

Uncomment and edit the mail_plugins line:

mail_plugins = $mail_plugins quota imap_sieve

c. Configure the Dovecot Sieve plugin:

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/90-sieve.conf

Add the following lines in the plugin { section:

# From elsewhere to Junk folder
imapsieve_mailbox1_name = Junk
imapsieve_mailbox1_causes = COPY
imapsieve_mailbox1_before = file:/etc/dovecot/sieve/learn-spam.sieve

# From Junk folder to elsewhere
imapsieve_mailbox2_name = *
imapsieve_mailbox2_from = Junk
imapsieve_mailbox2_causes = COPY
imapsieve_mailbox2_before = file:/etc/dovecot/sieve/learn-ham.sieve

sieve_pipe_bin_dir = /etc/dovecot/sieve
sieve_global_extensions = +vnd.dovecot.pipe
sieve_plugins = sieve_imapsieve sieve_extprograms

d. Create the Dovecot sieve folder:

mkdir /etc/dovecot/sieve

e. Create Sieve files

Create a learn-spam file:

nano /etc/dovecot/sieve/learn-spam.sieve

Enter the following strings:

require ["vnd.dovecot.pipe", "copy", "imapsieve"];
pipe :copy "rspamd-learn-spam.sh";

Create a learn-ham file:

nano /etc/dovecot/sieve/learn-ham.sieve

Enter the following strings:

require ["vnd.dovecot.pipe", "copy", "imapsieve", "variables"];
if string "${mailbox}" "Trash" {
  stop;
}
pipe :copy "rspamd-learn-ham.sh";

f. Restart Dovecot

systemctl restart dovecot

g. Convert sieve files

sievec /etc/dovecot/sieve/learn-spam.sieve

sievec /etc/dovecot/sieve/learn-ham.sieve

chmod u=rw,go= /etc/dovecot/sieve/learn-{spam,ham}.{sieve,svbin}

chown vmail.vmail /etc/dovecot/sieve/learn-{spam,ham}.{sieve,svbin}

h. Create Learning Scripts for Rspamd

Create learn-spam.sh

nano /etc/dovecot/sieve/rspamd-learn-spam.sh

Enter follwowing script:

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/rspamc learn_spam

Create learn-ham.sh

nano /etc/dovecot/sieve/rspamd-learn-ham.sh

Enter following script:

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/rspamc learn_ham

Make these .sh files executible by the vmail user:

chmod u=rwx,go= /etc/dovecot/sieve/rspamd-learn-{spam,ham}.sh

chown vmail.vmail /etc/dovecot/sieve/rspamd-learn-{spam,ham}.sh

i. Restart Dovecot

systemctl restart dovecot

j. Configure Rspamd Password

Generate password hash:

rspamadm pw

Copy the hashed paswowrd {Rspamd Password Hash} Create the Rspamd controller.inc file

nano /etc/rspamd/local.d/worker-controller.inc

Edit the file using the hashed password generated above (Note the leading and trailing ":

password = "{Rspamd Password Hash}"

k. Restart Rspamd

systemctl restart rspamd

Configure DKIM

DKIM verifies that emails received by other persons and purporting to be from your domain, are, in-fact, from your domain, it relies on a DNS Record with your public key to do this.

1. Create dkim folder and give Rspamd privileges:

mkdir /var/lib/rspamd/dkim

chown _rspamd:_rspamd /var/lib/rspamd/dkim

2. Generate DKIM Key

Choose a string of around 8 characters (I use the date on the day, ex. 20220209), we will refer to this as {DKIMKey}:

rspamadm dkim_keygen -d example.org -s {DKIMKey}

Copy the PUBLIC part of the key (p={RANDOM STRING OF NUMBERS}). This should be one uninterrupted line so edit any spaces or linebreaks out. This is your {DKIMPublikKey}

3. Configure your DNS Server for DKIM

Create a TXT Record in your DNS Server for the maildomain you wish to certify, the name of the record will be:

{DKIMKey}._domainkey.example.org

And the Content of the TXT Record will be {DKIMPublicKey} (including the p= section).

4. Configure Rspamd to use the DKIM Key:

a. Create the dkim_signing.conf file

nano /etc/rspamd/local.d/dkim_signing.conf

Paste the following strings:

path = "/var/lib/rspamd/dkim/$domain.$selector.key";
selector_map = "/etc/rspamd/dkim_selectors.map";

b. Link Rspamd to the DKIM Key you created

Edit dkim_selectors.map

nano /etc/rspamd/dkim_selectors.map

Enter a string which is based on your domain {DKIMKey}:

example.org {DKIMKey}

c. Reload Rspamd

systemctl reload rspamd

Deploy your first user

You can now login to https://mail.example.org/admin/setup.php with your setup password and create an admin user. Once you have done this, you can browse to https://mail.example.org/admin and login with your admin user created in this step.

From here, you can create your first domain (example.org) and your first mailuser ([email protected]) as well as your first alias ([email protected]) and test that everything works.

Username: [email protected] Password: Whatever you configured for the user

You can login with any IMAP mail client (Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, KMail, etc.) and the configurations are:

IMAP Server: mail.example.org Port: 143

SMTP Server: mail.example.org Port: 587

Encryption: STARTTLS Password Type: PLAIN

CalDAV/CarDAV (WebDAV) Access to Shared Calendars and Contacts:

WebDAV Server: https://mail.example.org/SOGo/dav

Enable Mailbox Sharing (Testing)

This appears to be working, however is still being tested.

doveadm acl debug -u [email protected] shared/[email protected] indicates that the user does not have permission to view the folder.

1. Create additional tables in the existing database:

mysql

USE mailshares;

CREATE TABLE user_shares (
 from_user varchar(100) not null,
 to_user varchar(100) not null,
 dummy char(1) DEFAULT '1',    -- always '1' currently
 primary key (from_user, to_user)
 );

CREATE TABLE anyone_shares (
 from_user varchar(100) not null,
 dummy char(1) DEFAULT '1',    -- always '1' currently
 primary key (from_user)
);

quit

2. Edit Dovecot mail.conf file to enable shared mailboxes:

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf

Uncomment and edit the sample shared namespace section to look like this:

namespace {
 type = shared
 seperator - /
 prefix = shared/%%u/
 # a) Per-user seen flags. Maildir indexes are shared. (INDEXPVT requires v2.2+)
 location = maildir:%%h/Maildir:INDEXPVT=~/Maildir/shared/%%u
 # b) Per-user seen flags. Maildir indexes are not shared. If users have direct filesystem level access to their mails, this is a safer option:
 #location = maildir:%%h/Maildir:INDEX=~/Maildir/shared/%%u:INDEXPVT=~/Maildir/shared/%%u
 subscriptions = no
 list = children
}

Edit the mail_plugins section to enable acl

mail_plugins = quota acl

3. Configure the Dovecot ACL plugin

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/90-acl.conf

Edit it to look as follows:

plugin {
  acl = vfile
}

plugin {
  acl_shared_dict = proxy::acl
}

dict {
  acl = mysql:/etc/dovecot/dovecot-dict-sql.conf.ext
}

4. Enable the dict service in master.conf

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-master.conf

Uncomment and edit the service dict { section like this:

service dict {
  unix_listener dict {
    mode = 0600
    user = vmail
    group = vmail
  }
}

5. Configure dict-sql-conf.ext

nano /etc/dovecot/dovecot-dict-sql.conf.ext

Uncomment and Edit the file to resemble this:

connect = host=localhost dbname=mailshares user=mailadmin password={adminpassword}

map {
  pattern = shared/shared-boxes/user/$to/$from
  table = user_shares
  value_field = dummy

  fields {
    from_user = $from
    to_user = $to
  }
}

map {
  pattern = shared/shared-boxes/anyone/$from
  table = anyone_shares
  value_field = dummy

  fields {
    from_user = $from
  }
}

6. Enable imap_acl and acl plugins in imap.conf

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-imap.conf

Edit the mail_plugins section to resemble this:

mail_plugins = $mail_plugins quota imap_sieve imap_acl acl

7. Enable acl plugin in lmtp.conf

nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-lmtp.conf

Edit the mail_plugins section to resemble this:

mail_plugins = $mail_plugins quota sieve acl

Enable ClamAV Scanning - Testing (Packages not included in first step)

ClamAV is an opensource Antivirus Scanner and while it is not as effective as some commercial options, integration with Rspamd is quite simple. Antivirus scanning on a mail server by itself is not good enough and a holistic approach to security is still necessary, but every little bit helps.

1. Install ClamAV Components:

apt install -y clamav clamav-daemon clamav-unofficial-sigs

2. Configure Rspamd to use ClamAV

nano /etc/rspamd/modules.d/antivirus.conf

Modify file to resemble (This rejects mail with Virus, modify to move to Junk):

clamav {
  scan_mime_parts = false;
  scan_text_mime = true;
  scan_image_mime = true;
  symbol = "CLAM_VIRUS";
  type = "clamav";
  log_clean = true;
  servers = "clamd:3310";
  max_size = 20971520;
}

3. Enable ClamAV daemon

systemctl enable clamav-daemon

4. Restart Rspamd

systemctl restart rspamd

Enable Firewall with nftables - Testing (Packages not included in first step)

1. Install nftables:

apt install -y nftables

2. Change Debian settings to have the iptables command use nftables

update-alternatives --config iptables

3. Create Firewall Rules file:

nano /etc/nftables.conf

Configuring as follows:

#!/usr/sbin/nft -f
flush ruleset
table inet filter {
  chain input {
    type filter hook input priority 0; policy drop;

    iifname lo accept
    ct state established,related accept
    tcp dport { ssh, http, https, imap2, imaps, pop3, pop3s, submission, smtp } ct state new accept

    # ICMP: errors, pings
    ip protocol icmp icmp type { echo-request, echo-reply, destination-unreachable, time-exceeded, parameter-problem, router-solicitation, router-advertisement } accept
    # ICMPv6: errors, pings, routing
    ip6 nexthdr icmpv6 counter accept comment "accept all ICMP types"

    # Reject other packets
    ip protocol tcp reject with tcp reset
  }
}

4. Have nftables start at boot

systemctl enable nftables

5. Start nftables

systemctl start nftables

Brute force mitigation with fail2ban - Testing (Packages not included in first step)

We will use fail2ban to monitor various system logs and look for patterns which might suggest abuse. Ideally this will prevent bad actors from gaining access to your system, however it can result in legitimate users being blocked too.

Fail2ban uses "Jails" along with your firewall to block IP addresses that are missbehaving.

You can use fail2ban-client status to see which jails are active, and you can use fail2ban-client status sshd to see which clients are currently rejected and why.

1. Install fail2ban

apt install -y fail2ban

2. Restart nftables

systemctl restart nftables

3. Enable Postfix and Dovecot monitoring to fail2ban

While you can look at /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf for some sample configs for various servers, we need to create a config for our servers:

nano /etc/fail2ban/jail.local

Making it look like this:

[apache-auth]
enabled = true

[dovecot]
enabled = true
port    = pop3,pop3s,imap2,imaps,submission,465,sieve

[postfix]
enabled = true

[sieve]
enabled = true

Test your config

fail2ban-server -t

Restart fail2ban

systemctl restart fail2ban

Install SOGo Groupware (Optional)

1. Install SOGo from default Debian repositories:

apt install -y sogo

2. Create a database for SOGo specific information (Seperate from the PostfixAdmin Database):

mysql

CREATE DATABASE sogo;

GRANT ALL ON sogo.* to 'mailadmin'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '{adminpassword}';

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

3. Create a database view for SOGo:

Firstly, SOGo relies on some specific table columns to authenticate users, since we don't want duplicates and since we want PostfixAdmin to manage users, domains and aliases, we want to make SOGo use this information to authenticate users. To do that, we will create a VIEW, which is like a fake table made up of data from other tables in MariaDB.

mysql

USE mailserver;

CREATE VIEW sogo_view AS SELECT username AS c_uid, username AS c_name, password AS c_password, name AS c_cn, username AS mail FROM mailserver.mailbox;

quit

3. Configure SOGo:

I suggest going through every line, however key issues will be {adminpassword}, {userpassword} and your timezone (I use Africa/Johannesburg).

nano /etc/sogo/sogo.conf

The Debian standard sogo.conf (For clarity on each of the configurable fields, check out the SOGo Installation Guide) (sucks, clear out everything (Don't rm the file unless you know how to fix permissions on a newly created file). Once you are finished, your sogo.conf file will look something like this:

{
  /* *********************  Main SOGo configuration file  **********************
   *                                                                           *
   * Since the content of this file is a dictionary in OpenStep plist format,  *
   * the curly braces enclosing the body of the configuration are mandatory.   *
   * See the Installation Guide for details on the format.                     *
   *                                                                           *
   * C and C++ style comments are supported.                                   *
   *                                                                           *
   * This example configuration contains only a subset of all available        *
   * configuration parameters. Please see the installation guide more details. *
   *                                                                           *
   * ~sogo/GNUstep/Defaults/.GNUstepDefaults has precedence over this file,    *
   * make sure to move it away to avoid unwanted parameter overrides.          *
   *                                                                           *
   * **************************************************************************/

  /* Database configuration (mysql://, postgresql:// or oracle://) */
  SOGoProfileURL = "mysql://mailadmin:{adminpassword}@localhost:3306/sogo/sogo_user_profile";
  OCSFolderInfoURL = "mysql://mailadmin:{adminpassword}@localhost:3306/sogo/sogo_folder_info";
  OCSSessionsFolderURL = "mysql://mailadmin:{adminpassword}@localhost:3306/sogo/sogo_sessions_folder";
  OCSEMailAlarmsFolderURL = "mysql://mailadmin:{adminpassword}@localhost:3306/sogo/sogo_emailalarms_folder";

  OCSStoreURL = "mysql://mailadmin:{adminpassword}@localhost:3306/sogo/sogo_store";
  OCSAclURL = "mysql://mailadmin:{adminpassword}@localhost:3306/sogo/sogo_acl";
  OCSCacheFolderURL = "mysql://mailadmin:{adminpassword}@localhost:3306/sogo/sogo_cache";

  /* Mail */
  SOGoSentFolderName = "Sent Items";
  SOGoTrashFolderName = "Deleted Items";
  SOGoDraftsFolderName = Drafts;
  SOGoJunkFolderName = "Junk Email";
  SOGoIMAPServer = "localhost";
  SOGoSieveServer = "sieve://127.0.0.1:4190";
  SOGoSMTPServer = "smtp://mail.example.org:587/?tls=YES";
  SOGoSMTPAuthenticationType = PLAIN;
  //SOGoMailDomain = acme.com;
  SOGoMailingMechanism = smtp;
  SOGoForceExternalLoginWithEmail = YES;
  SOGoMemcachedhost = 127.0.0.1;
  //SOGoMailSpoolPath = /var/spool/sogo;
  NGImap4ConnectionStringSeparator = "/";
  SOGoIMAPAclConformsToIMAPExt = YES;
  //SOGoMailAuxiliaryUserAccountsEnabled = NO;
  
  /* Calendar Settings */
  SOGoCalendarDefaultRoles = (
       PublicModifier,
       ConfidentialDAndTViewer,
       PrivateDandTViewer,
       ObjectCreator
   );
  SOGoDayStartTime = 8;
  SOGoDayEndTime = 17;
  SOGoFirstDayOfWeek = 1;
  SOGoCalendarEventsDefaultClassification = PUBLIC;
  SOGoCalendarTasksDefaultClassification = PUBLIC;
  

  /* Notifications */
  //SOGoAppointmentSendEMailNotifications = NO;
  SOGoACLsSendEMailNotifications = YES;
  //SOGoFoldersSendEMailNotifications = NO;

  /* Authentication */
  //SOGoPasswordChangeEnabled = YES;

  /* LDAP authentication example */
  //SOGoUserSources = (
  //  {
  //    type = ldap;
  //    CNFieldName = cn;
  //    UIDFieldName = uid;
  //    IDFieldName = uid; // first field of the DN for direct binds
  //    bindFields = (uid, mail); // array of fields to use for indirect binds
  //    baseDN = "ou=users,dc=acme,dc=com";
  //    bindDN = "uid=sogo,ou=users,dc=acme,dc=com";
  //    bindPassword = qwerty;
  //    canAuthenticate = YES;
  //    displayName = "Shared Addresses";
  //    hostname = "ldap://127.0.0.1:389";
  //    id = public;
  //    isAddressBook = YES;
  //  }
  //);

  /* LDAP AD/Samba4 example */
  //SOGoUserSources = (
  //  {
  //    type = ldap;
  //    CNFieldName = cn;
  //    UIDFieldName = sAMAccountName;
  //    baseDN = "CN=users,dc=domain,dc=tld";
  //    bindDN = "CN=sogo,CN=users,DC=domain,DC=tld";
  //    bindFields = (sAMAccountName, mail);
  //    bindPassword = password;
  //    canAuthenticate = YES;
  //    displayName = "Public";
  //    hostname = "ldap://127.0.0.1:389";
  //    filter = "mail = '*'";
  //    id = directory;
  //    isAddressBook = YES;
  //  }
  //);


  /* SQL authentication example */
  /*  These database columns MUST be present in the view/table:
   *    c_uid - will be used for authentication -  it's the username or [email protected])
   *    c_name - which can be identical to c_uid -  will be used to uniquely identify entries
   *    c_password - password of the user, plain-text, md5 or sha encoded for now
   *    c_cn - the user's common name - such as "John Doe"
   *    mail - the user's mail address
   *  See the installation guide for more details
   */
  SOGoUserSources =
    (
      {
        type = sql;
        id = directory;
        viewURL = "mysql://mailserver:{userpassword}@127.0.0.1:3306/mailserver/sogo_view";
        canAuthenticate = YES;
        isAddressBook = YES;
        userPasswordAlgorithm = blf-crypt;
      }
    );

  /* Web Interface */
  SOGoPageTitle = "My Mail Server";
  SOGoVacationEnabled = YES;
  SOGoForwardEnabled = YES;
  SOGoSieveScriptsEnabled = YES;
  SOGoMailAuxiliaryUserAccountsEnabled = YES;
  // SOGoTrustProxyAuthentication = NO;
  //SOGoXSRFValidationEnabled = NO;

  /* General - SOGoTimeZone *MUST* be defined */
  SOGoLanguage = English;
  SOGoTimeZone = Africa/Johannesburg;
  //SOGoSuperUsernames = (sogo1, sogo2); // This is an array - keep the parens!
  //SxVMemLimit = 384;
  //WOPidFile = "/var/run/sogo/sogo.pid";
  SOGoMemcachedHost = 127.0.0.1;
  
  /* Debug */
  //SOGoDebugRequests = YES;
  //SoDebugBaseURL = YES;
  //ImapDebugEnabled = YES;
  //LDAPDebugEnabled = YES;
  //PGDebugEnabled = YES;
  //MySQL4DebugEnabled = YES;
  //SOGoUIxDebugEnabled = YES;
  //WODontZipResponse = YES;
  //WOLogFile = /var/log/sogo/sogo.log;
}

4. Restart SOGo

systemctl restart sogo

5. Create a SOGo cofiguration file for Apache:

nano /etc/apache2/conf-available/SOGo.conf

And Paste the following in there (Note the RedirectMatch line and point to your fqnd, this makes the SOGo app the default app when brosing to https://mail.example.org):

Alias /SOGo.woa/WebServerResources/ \
      /usr/lib/GNUstep/SOGo/WebServerResources/
Alias /SOGo/WebServerResources/ \
      /usr/lib/GNUstep/SOGo/WebServerResources/

<Directory /usr/lib/GNUstep/SOGo/>
    AllowOverride None

    <IfVersion < 2.4>
        Order deny,allow
        Allow from all
    </IfVersion>
    <IfVersion >= 2.4>
        Require all granted
    </IfVersion>

    # Explicitly allow caching of static content to avoid browser specific behavior.
    # A resource's URL MUST change in order to have the client load the new version.
    <IfModule expires_module>
      ExpiresActive On
      ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"
    </IfModule>
</Directory>

# Don't send the Referer header for cross-origin requests
Header always set Referrer-Policy "same-origin"

## Uncomment the following to enable proxy-side authentication, you will then
## need to set the "SOGoTrustProxyAuthentication" SOGo user default to YES and
## adjust the "x-webobjects-remote-user" proxy header in the "Proxy" section
## below.
#
## For full proxy-side authentication:
#<Location /SOGo>
#  AuthType XXX
#  Require valid-user
#  SetEnv proxy-nokeepalive 1
#  Allow from all
#</Location>
#
## For proxy-side authentication only for CardDAV and GroupDAV from external
## clients:
#<Location /SOGo/dav>
#  AuthType XXX
#  Require valid-user
#  SetEnv proxy-nokeepalive 1
#  Allow from all
#</Location>

ProxyRequests Off
SetEnv proxy-nokeepalive 1
ProxyPreserveHost On

# When using CAS, you should uncomment this and install cas-proxy-validate.py
# in /usr/lib/cgi-bin to reduce server overloading
#
# ProxyPass /SOGo/casProxy http://localhost/cgi-bin/cas-proxy-validate.py
# <Proxy http://localhost/app/cas-proxy-validate.py>
#   Order deny,allow
#   Allow from your-cas-host-addr
# </Proxy>

# Redirect / to /SOGo
RedirectMatch ^/$ https://mail.example.org/SOGo

# Enable to use Microsoft ActiveSync support
# Note that you MUST have many sogod workers to use ActiveSync.
# See the SOGo Installation and Configuration guide for more details.
#
#ProxyPass /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync \
# http://127.0.0.1:20000/SOGo/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync \
# retry=60 connectiontimeout=5 timeout=360

ProxyPass /SOGo http://127.0.0.1:20000/SOGo retry=0 nocanon

<Proxy http://127.0.0.1:20000/SOGo>
## Adjust the following to your configuration
## and make sure to enable the headers module
<IfModule headers_module>
  RequestHeader set "x-webobjects-server-port" "443"
  SetEnvIf Host (.*) HTTP_HOST=$1
  RequestHeader set "x-webobjects-server-name" "%{HTTP_HOST}e" env=HTTP_HOST
  RequestHeader set "x-webobjects-server-url" "https://%{HTTP_HOST}e" env=HTTP_HOST

## When using proxy-side autentication, you need to uncomment and
## adjust the following line:
  RequestHeader unset "x-webobjects-remote-user"
#  RequestHeader set "x-webobjects-remote-user" "%{REMOTE_USER}e" env=REMOTE_USER

  RequestHeader set "x-webobjects-server-protocol" "HTTP/1.0"
</IfModule>

  AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

  Order allow,deny
  Allow from all
</Proxy>

# For Apple autoconfiguration
<IfModule rewrite_module>
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteRule ^/.well-known/caldav/?$ /SOGo/dav [R=301]
  RewriteRule ^/.well-known/carddav/?$ /SOGo/dav [R=301]
</IfModule>

6. Enable the SOGo Apache configuration:

a2enconf SOGo

7. Reload Apache Configuration

systemctl reload apache2

That is it, SOGo should now be accessible at https://mail.example.org/SOGo and you should be able to log in with any user created in postfixadmin.

Installing NextCloud (Optional)

Note that While NextCloud is not natively an email client, it has apps which include mail. Unfortunately, they do not support mailbox sharing through IMAP, however I'm sure if enough people ask for that feature it will be implemented.

1. Add some additional PHP modules which the standard installation above doesn't need, as well as sudo (in case you need to manually install a NextCloud Plugin from the command line as www-data user and unzip to decompress the NextCloud zip file.

apt install -y php-{cli,xml,zip,curl,gd,cgi} unzip sudo

2. Create a database for NextCloud to use:

mysql

CREATE USER 'nextcloud'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'StrongDBP@SSwo$d';

CREATE DATABASE nextcloud;

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON nextcloud.* TO 'nextcloud'@'localhost';

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

quit

3. Edit the php.ini file:

nano /etc/php/*/apache2/php.ini

And make sure the following lines look correct for your environment:

date.timezone = Africa/Johannesburg
memory_limit = 512M
upload_max_filesize = 500M
post_max_size = 500M
max_execution_time = 300

4. Add an Alias for NextCloud to your

nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/mail.example.org-https.conf

If you followed this guide, you need to add an Alias and Location block for NextCloud:

<VirtualHost *:443>
 ServerName mail.example.org
 DocumentRoot /var/www/html
 <Location /rspamd>
  Require all granted
 </Location>
 RewriteEngine On
 RewriteRule ^/rspamd$ /rspamd/ [R,L]
 RewriteRule ^/rspamd/(.*) http://localhost:11334/$1 [P,L]
 Alias /.well-known/autoconfig/mail /var/www/html/autoconfig-mail
 Alias /admin /srv/postfixadmin/public
 <Location /admin>
   Options FollowSymLinks
   AllowOverride All
   Require all granted
 </Location>
 Alias /nextcloud /srv/nextcloud
 <Location /nextcloud>
   Require all granted
 </Location>
   SSLEngine on
   SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.example.org/fullchain.pem
   SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.example.org/privkey.pem
</VirtualHost>

5. Restart Apache

systemctl restart apache2

6. Download the latest version of NextCloud (23.0.2 at the time of writing):

wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-23.0.2.zip

7. Unzip the file:

unzip nextcloud-23.0.2.zip

8. Move the NextCloud folder to your /srv folder

mv /nextcloud /srv/nextcloud

9. Fix permissions for the NextCloud Folder

chown -R www-data:www-data /srv/nextcloud

chmod -R 755 /srv/nextcloud

You should now be able to login to your NextCloud installation at https://mail.example.org/nextcloud, create an admin user, use the database credentials you configured earlier and let it complete the installation. A known bug is that when installation competes it tries to go to the wrong page. Just navigate back to https://mail.example.org/nextcloud and you should be fine.

10. Install Collabora Online - Built-in CODE Server (Testing):

This installation generally fails from the apps store in NextCloud due to its size, you can manually install this app as follows using the occ command from the console:

cd /srv/nextcloud

sudo -u www-data php -d memory_limit=512M ./occ app:install richdocumentscode