Hosting Web/Email services on Alpine

The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed. Reason: Various passages are based on the obsolete Protecting your email server with Alpine page (Discuss in Talk:Hosting Web/Email services on Alpine)

This material is proposed for merging ... It should be merged with Hosting services on Alpine. (Discuss)

Introduction

This information was pulled from a few other pages on this Alpine Wiki website: see links, along with the websites for the particular packages. It is a suggestion list and step-by-step instruction guide.

You might be wondering, why would anyone want to run Web and Email services off a Linux install that runs in ram? Good question. With Vservers, we can run the host in memory and do all sorts of things with the guests. Put the guests on DAS in the host machine or do raided iSCSI for the guest. This way, if your disks start going bad or drop off entirely, you most likely will be able to get at the data from a running system.

                    Guest OS here or
[Host Alpine Box] --------------------- [DAS]
    |    |
    |    |Guest OS here
    |    |
  iSCSI  iSCSI 

Web Services

There are many http servers out there. Alpine comes with a few different ones. For this guide, we installed lighttpd.

apk update
apk add lighttpd openssl php

Most everything is already taken care of with lighttpd. Make sure to uncomment the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) options:-

ssl.engine = "enable"
ssl.pemfile = "/etc/lighttpd/server.pem"

rc-service lighttpd start

See below for generating the server.pem.

Now, you can start using lighttpd and start making your own website. Alpine Linux comes with phpBB and MediaWiki, if you want to use those. You may have to use an SQL database. The place to put your pages is:

/var/www/localhost/htdocs/

By default, lighttpd uses symlinks and does so correctly. So, you can just symlink to directories when your pages may be also:

ln -s /home/user/htdocs /var/www/localhost/htdocs/user

Generating the Server.pem

For other services, we are also going to be using SSL. An easy way to just start using it is by generating your own self-sign cert. Script and configuration files are taken from the setup-webconf script (now-deprecated).

ssl.cnf

[ req ]
default_bits = 1024
encrypt_key = yes
distinguished_name = req_dn
x509_extensions = cert_type
prompt = no
[ req_dn ]
OU=HTTPS server
CN=example.net
emailAddress=postmaster@example.net
[ cert_type ]
nsCertType = server

ssl.sh

#/bin/sh
openssl genrsa 512/1024 >server.pem
openssl req -new -key server.pem -days 365 -out request.pem
openssl genrsa 2048 > keyfile.pem
openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -sha1 -days 3650 -key keyfile.pem \
-config ssl.cnf > server.pem
cat keyfile.pem >> server.pem

If you use this to generate the SSL certs for other services, then you may just change the req_dn information.

Mail Services

Some of the information presented here can be found in the Protecting your email server with Alpine page, now obsolete. This, however, is for an email gateway.

apk add postfix dovecot clamav clamsmtp gross

Postfix

Postfix has a few things that need to be added to its configuration so that it can send email through clamav, and also so that it will accept mail for domains and users.

Main.cf

vi /etc/postfix/main.cf

#/etc/postfix/main.cf
myhostname = mx.example.net
mydomain = example.net
relayhost = #blank will do dns lookups for destinations
home_maildir = Maildir/
smtpd_banner = $myhostname ESMTP #The way postfix answers. 
transport_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/transport #Place to add how you want to route domains. See example below. Show how to host more than one domain.
local_transport = virtual
virtual_mailbox_domains = example.net, bobo.net #list of hosted domains
virtual_mailbox_base = /var/spool/vhosts
virtual_uid_maps = static:1004 # uid of user to be used to read/write mail  
virtual_gid_maps = static:1004 # gid of user to be used to read/write mail 
virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/valias #alias for each different hosted domain. See below.
virtual_mailbox_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/vmap #where and what mailbox to drop the mail to. See below.
smtpd_helo_required = yes
disable_vrfy_command = yes
content_filter = scan:[127.0.0.1]:10025 # clamscan to be configured later
smtpd_recipient_restrictions = reject_unauth_pipelining, permit_sasl_authenticated,permit_mynetworks,reject_invalid_hostname, reject_non_fqdn_hostname,reject_non_fqdn_sender, reject_non_fqdn_recipient,reject_unknown_sender_domain, reject_unknown_recipient_domain,reject_unauth_destination, check_policy_service inet:127.0.0.1:5525,permit
smtpd_data_restrictions = reject_unauth_pipelining, permit
smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes
broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes
smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot
smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth
smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/ssl/postfix/server.pem
smtpd_tls_key_file = $smtpd_tls_cert_file

Master.cf

Settings in the master.cf file for virus/spam scanning. Add these to the end of the file, similar to those found in Protecting your email server with Alpine.

scan    unix    -       -       n       -       16      smtp
       -o smtp_send_xforward_command=yes
       -o smtp_enforce_tsl=no
127.0.0.1:10026 inet    n       -       n       -       16      smtpd
       -o content_filter=
       -o receive_override_options=no_unknown_recipient_checks,no_header_body_checks
       -o smtpd_helo_restrictions=
       -o smtpd_client_restrictions=
       -o smtpd_sender_restrictions=
       -o smtpd_recipient_restrictions=permit_mynetworks,reject
       -o mynetworks_style=host
       -o smtpd_authorized_xforward_host=127.0.0.1/8

Valias

#etc/postfix/valias
postmaster@example.net user1@example.net
hostmaster@example.net user2@example.net
hostmaster@bobo.net    user1@example.net
postmaster@bobo.net    user2@bobo.net

Vmap

#/etc/postfix/vmap
user1@example.net      example.net/user1
user2@example.net      example.net/user2
@example.net           example.net/catchall #everyone else doesn't match rule above

Transport

#/etc/postfix/transport
example.net      virtual:
bobo.net         virtual:
foo.net          smtp:1.2.3.4 #send foo.net through this smtp server
*                :   #everything else go through relayhost rule

Once these files are created, you will need to make them into .db files:

postmap valias
postmap transport
postmap vmap

Dovecot

Dovecot on Alpine Linux will only do imap and imaps services for now.

Most of dovecot is configured already for imap. You may have to gen the key, as shown above. Just change the cnf file a little to say something about mail.domainname:

ssl_cert_file = /etc/ssl/dovecot/server.pem
ssl_key_file = /etc/ssl/dovecot/keyfile.pem
mail_location = maildir:/var/spool/vhosts/&d/%n
valid_chroot_dirs = /var/spool/vhosts
passdb passwd-file {
args = /etc/dovecot/passwd
}
userdb passwd-file {
args = /etc/dovecot/users
}
#section for postfix sasl auth
socket listen {
client {
path = /var/spool/postfix/private/auth
user = postfix
group = postfix 
mode = 0660
 }
}

To generate the passwords, you can use the dovecotpw command:

dovecotpw -s MD5-CRYPT 

The hash below can be used for the password test123. The /etc/dovecot/passwd file should look like this:

user1@example.net:$1$tz5sbjAD$Wq9.NkSyNo/oElzFgI68.0
user2@example.net:$1$tz5sbjAD$Wq9.NkSyNo/oElzFgI68.0

The /etc/dovecot/userdb file should look like this:

user1@example.net::1004:1004::/var/spool/vhosts/example.net/:/bin/false::
user2@example.net::1004:1004::/var/spool/vhosts/example.net/:/bin/false::
user@domain::uid : gid of found in virtual_uid_maps::location of maildir:shell::

Clamsmtpd

Configure according to instructions Protecting your email server with Alpine

Gross

Configure according to instructions Protecting your email server with Alpine

Final Steps

Start the services and make sure to rc-update them

rc-service postfix start
rc-update add postfix default

See also

• Grommunio Mail Server - Open-source groupware solution
• Aerc - Terminal email client (MUA)