Setting up a mailserver

1. Install Qmail
2. Install Apache
3. Install VQadmin
4. Install Qmailadmin
5. Install Dovecot
6. Install sqwebmail
7. Configure all of them

Voila, Qmail-based mailserver that supports POP3, IMAP, blindingly fast webmail interface, web-based controls for setup of multiple mail domains, and control of user accounts / catch-alls / mail forwards / auto-responders / you-name it fine-grained enough to be handed down to the user level, both the "individual user" level and the "single domain admin on a multi-domain mailserver" level.

Obviously, this article needs some a lot of polishing, but there's a start.

Getting SMTP Authentication running

Note: I'm assuming here that you're 1. running FreeBSD, 2. using vpopmail, 3. using rblsmtpd with a few RBL servers, and 4. using tcpserver/ucspi-tcp. If you aren't doing any of the above, you're going to need to CAREFULLY read the following and adapt to your environment. Good luck.

set up qmail from /usr/ports/mail/qmail-smtp_auth+tls (on amd64 you may need to hack the Makefile first in order to get it to NOT refuse to build because you aren't on i386), then use the following info to build a certificate, making sure that you use certificate info that matches the servername (to minimize the number of warnings that clients receive the first time they connect and accept the certificate):

ph34r# cp /usr/local/openssl/openssl.cnf.sample /usr/local/openssl/openssl.cnf
ph34r# make certificate

Now change the permissions on vpopmail's vchkpw:

ph34r# chmod 4755 /usr/local/vpopmail/bin/vchkpw
ph34r# chown root /usr/local/vpopmail/bin/vchkpw

Change the server name in the following, and use it to start tcpserver (assumes you're also wanting to use rblsmtpd with the listed RBLs). (note: escaping line breaks with \ as shown may or may not work, and is not recommended - I strongly recommend you get rid of the \'s and turn the following into one single line in your tcpserver.sh startup script)

/usr/local/bin/tcpserver -H -l0 -R -c 512 -p -x /etc/tcp.smtp.cdb -u 82 -g 81 0 smtp \
/usr/local/bin/rblsmtpd -r bl.spamcop.net -r dnsbl.njabl.org /var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd \
ph34r.tehinterweb.net /usr/local/vpopmail/bin/vchkpw /usr/bin/true | \
/var/qmail/bin/splogger rblsmtpd &

You should be ready to go now. Note: I did have some difficulty getting this working; I did the above steps once, did not have joy, then rebuilt and reinstalled /usr/ports/mail/qmail-smtp_auth+tls with no changes or tweaking and magically it worked (and worked without changing any config files, or even looking at them again from what I'd changed them to the last time). Beats hell out of me. I'll tighten this up in the final article, when I'm a little more confident of having done it "once and had it work right the first time." In the meantime, I'm pretty stoked!