As a business entity you require email solution to communicate with customers and internally between the employees or other partners. Some people will opt for cloud email hosting solutions, while others will want to do in-house email hosting and be in control of everything. When choosing a mail server for your hosting there is the option of commercial or open source solutions. One of the powerful and reliable mail servers available is iRedMail.
iRedMail is packaged with all the features needed to start sending and receiving emails. Furthermore, the company behind the development of this solution offer professional support to back you up in case of major issues with the software. In this article we shall cover the installation and configuration of iRedMail on Rocky / AlmaLinux / CentOS 9 Linux servers. The following are requirements for this setup.
- A server with a public IP address (if receiving emails from the internet)
- A FQDN for the mail server
- A valid A record for the domain configured in your DNS server
Our setup is based on the following.
- Server IP address: 95.217.21.164
- Server Hostname: mail.techwizguru.com
- Primary domain: techwizguru.com
Configure DNS records
Since I’m using cloudflare as my DNS provider, we added the following records.
- A record
- MX record
We can confirm this using dig command:
$ dig mx +short techwizguru.com
10 mail.techwizguru.com.
$ dig A +short mail.techwizguru.com
95.217.21.164Prepare iRedMail Server
We’ll need to configure correct hostname on the server using domain name for the email.
sudo hostnamectl set-hostname mail.techwizguru.comAlso update timezone on the server to ensure correct timestamp is used in your emails.
sudo timedatectl set-timezone Africa/NairobiEdit /etc/hosts file and map manually in case of DNS challenges in resolving the domain name.
$ sudo vi /etc/hosts
95.217.21.164 mail.techwizguru.comIf you have hostname mapped to 127.0.0.1 please comment it.
#127.0.0.1 mail.techwizguru.com
#::1 mail.techwizguru.comSet SELinux in permissive mode
sudo setenforce 0
sudo sed -i 's/^SELINUX=.*/SELINUX=permissive/g' /etc/selinux/configEnable EPEL and CRB repositories on the system.
sudo dnf install epel-release -y
sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled crbUpdate system
Before we perform the installation of iRedMail server on the system, let’s first update it.
sudo dnf -y updateOnce it’s updated we can reboot the system.
sudo rebootDownload and extract iRedMail archive
iRedMail should always be installed on a FRESH server installation. The system you’re working on should not have mail related components installed, e.g. MySQL, OpenLDAP, Postfix, Dovecot, Amavisd, etc.
During installation process, iRedMail will install and configure the components automatically. If you install on system with older packages iRedMail will update existing files/configurations although it will backup files before modifying, and it may not be working as expected.
If doing the installation in a cloud server, confirm that Port 25, required by mail server is not blocked. Please note that many ISPs block port 25 by default. You can open a support ticket to request your cloud provider to open the port for you.
We need the following checked before installing iRedMail on Rocky / AlmaLinux / CentOS 9 system:
- A FRESH, working installation of Rocky / AlmaLinux / CentOS 9.
- At least
4 GBof memory available for a production mail server with spam/virus scanning enabled. - Adequate storage space for mailboxes.
Visit the Downloads page and check supported releases. We are downloading the latest release at the time of updating this article.
VER=1.6.7
wget https://github.com/iredmail/iRedMail/archive/refs/tags/$VER.tar.gzExtract the file you just downloaded
sudo yum -y install tar
tar -xvf $VER.tar.gzSwitch to created folder after extracting the file.
cd iRedMail-*/Make the script executable.
chmod a+x iRedMail.shBegin installation of iRedMail Server
Next we run the script to begin installation of iRedMail on Rocky / AlmaLinux / CentOS 9.
sudo ./iRedMail.shIn the welcome wizard hit “Yes” to begin installation process.
Specify the directory that will store user mailboxes. This can be set to directory or mount point with better free space.
Choose web server that will serve web pages for iRedMail server.
Select backend storage service for your mail accounts.
For LDAP you’ll need to provide domain suffix.
iRedMail installs database server automatically. You’ll need to set the password for root user.
Provide the first domain name for which iRedMail will handle emails for.
Enable extra options during the installation.
At the final step you’re shown a summary of the configurations to be applied. Confirm and accept to proceed by pressing y.
*************************************************************************
***************************** WARNING ***********************************
*************************************************************************
* *
* Below file contains sensitive information (username/password), please *
* do remember to *MOVE* it to a safe place after installation. *
* *
* * /root/iRedMail-1.x.y/config
* *
*************************************************************************
********************** Review your settings *****************************
*************************************************************************
* Storage base directory: /var/vmail
* Mailboxes:
* Daily backup of SQL/LDAP databases:
* Store mail accounts in: OpenLDAP
* Web server: Nginx
* First mail domain name: techwizguru.com
* Mail domain admin: [email protected]
* Additional components: Roundcubemail netdata iRedAdmin Fail2ban
< Question > Continue? [y|N] yAccept default options for all other prompts.
< Question > File: /etc/firewalld/zones/iredmail.xml, with SSHD ports: 22. [Y|n] y
< Question > Restart firewall now (with ssh ports: 22)? [y|N] y
< Question > File: /etc/my.cnf. [Y|n] yAt the end you get a printout of iRedMail access details and credentials.
********************************************************************
* URLs of installed web applications:
*
* - Roundcube webmail: https://mail.techwizguru.com/mail/
* - netdata (monitor): https://mail.techwizguru.com/netdata/
*
* - Web admin panel (iRedAdmin): https://mail.techwizguru.com/iredadmin/
*
* You can login to above links with below credential:
*
* - Username: [email protected]
* - Password: StrongPassw0rd
*
*
********************************************************************
* Congratulations, mail server setup completed successfully. Please
* read below file for more information:
*
* - /root/iRedMail-1.x.y/iRedMail.tips
*
* And it's sent to your mail account [email protected].
*
********************* WARNING **************************************
*
* Please reboot your system to enable all mail services.
*
********************************************************************Reboot iRedMail Server to start all mail services.
sudo rebootAccess iRedMail Admin Web Portal
All iRedMail access information will be stored in the file “/root/iRedMail-1.x/config” if script was run as root user or “~/iRedMail-1.x/config” if the script was executed as normal user.
My web admin panel will be available on https://mail.example.com/iredadmin/
The other URLs for web applications are:
- Roundcube webmail: https://mail.example.com/mail/
- Netdata (monitor): https://mail.example.com/netdata/
The next articles to read are:
- Setup DNS records for your iRedMail server (A, PTR, MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
- How To Add Domains and User Accounts to iRedMail Mail Server
- Secure iRedMail Server with Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate
Epilogue
iRedMail email server has proven to be enterprise ready. It is build from ground up to serve customers of varying email requirements. In this article we just covered the installation process. Kindly refer to the official documentation pages to learn more about available configuration options and recommended hardening tips.
