From Kwickserver

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Installation and Configuration 2.1 Installation 2.2 Configuration 2.2.1 IP address settings 2.2.2 Time and timezone 2.2.3 DNS servers 2.2.4 SNMP access 2.2.5 Virtservers 2.2.6 Administration Interface 2.2.7 Security Settings 2.2.8 System 2.2.9 Updates 3 Administration 3.1 Clients 3.1.1 Create Clients 3.1.2 Delete Clients 3.1.3 Mail Domains 3.2 Mailboxes 3.2.1 Create mailboxes 3.2.2 Edit Mailbox 3.2.3 Delete Mailbox 3.3 Advanced: Mailadmins 3.4 Users 3.4.1 Managing Users

Introduction

Kwickserver Mail and Communication Server is a server that comes on a bootable CD and installs on any Intel compatible PC hardware automatically. It provides an enterprise level electronic mail server and an instant messaging server.

Kwickserver Mail and Communication Server is both optimized for ease of use and providing professional mail server features. For accomplishing this Kwickserver offers the possibility to switch its user interface between an easy and an advanced mode.

Kwickserver Mail and Communication Server gives you the opportunity to install and run a mail and IM server for several other people (or companies, customers, departements etc., called „client“) and give them the possibility to create and mangage their own mail and IM accounts. Within limits defined by you! For example you can set up a mail server for company and give the departements of this company the ability to manage their mail accounts themselves. But the general control over the server remains at you.

Kwickserver Mail and Communication Server comes with a modern webmail application which uses newest technologies like drag and drop of messages between folders etc. It has an advanced spam and virus filter, which can be enabled or disabled individually per mailbox.

It provides access to the mails with the protocols POP3, IMAP4 and the secure versions POPs and IMAPs. Forwards and away messages can be defined per mailbox. Quotas can be defined per client or per mailbox. Maximum number of mailboxes and mail aliases can be defined per client.

In advanced mode you can also create several users for the web administration per client and divide the clients mailbox administration in a second level of seperation. With that feature it is possible to give a web administration user only access to a subset of the mailboxes of a client.

The instant messaging service provides a XMPP compatible server (Jabber server). Messaging accounts can be created and managed like mail accounts. The server can also be configured for federating with other XMPP compatible servers like Google Talk, GMX or every Jabber server on the Internet. So users can exchange instant messages with users of those networks.

And the best of all... it is free! Kwickserver Mail and Communication Server is licenced under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Kwickserver Mail and Communication Server has been supported by the Internet Privatstiftung Austria.

Installation and Configuration

Installation

When you install Kwickserver Mail and Communication Server be aware that the entire first harddisk of your computer will be deleted and overwritten! Be sure that you do not have any data you still need on the harddisk!

Put the install CD in your CD device and reboot the computer. After a notice that you will delete your harddisk, which you can confirm with the Enter key the installation runs fully automatically. If the computer is connected to a network with a DHCP server, no interaction is necessary while installing. If not, you will need to type in the necessary IP informations like IP address, network mask etc.

After installation you can access the web administration via http://yourip/admin . The username is administrator and the password is admin. You should change this password as soon as possible.

Configuration

If your new server got his IP address from DHCP you should now set its final IP settings manually, because it is not a good idea to run a mail server with a dynamically assigned IP address. To do so, click on settings in the System menu on the left side. Here you can define several basic system settings.

IP address settings

First, the IP address with the netmask and the gateway. If you don't know what to set there, ask your network administrator.

Time and timezone

Then you can define the actual date and time and the timezone. All of this settings are very important, because e-mail will be sent out with wrong date and time settings, if these values are set wrong here.

DNS servers

The next settings are the DNS servers. If you don't know these settings, ask your Internet Service Provider, which settings to put here. It is essential for your mail server to have the addresses of working DNS servers here!

SNMP access

The next setting, SNMP access, is optional. You can allow another computer to access your server via SNMP with putting its IP address in this field. Usually, this field is left empty.

Virtservers

Next, you have three fields for the names of your virtual web servers. There are 3 applications you can access via web browser: The general administration of the server „Admin virtserver“, the webmail application „Webmail virtserver“ and the Client Area „Client Area virtserver“.

Admin Virtserver

You can access the administration application of your mail server via http://yourip/admin (e. g. http://192.168.1.128/admin). It is more convenient, to define a fully qualified domain name for this in your DNS server and access the administration via this name. For example you (or your provider) could define the name mailadmin.mydomain.com for that. Then you have to put this name in the field „Admin virtserver“ and save this setting.

From now on, you can access the administration via http://mailadmin.mydomain.com (or however the name you defined is). Of course, the administration is still accessible via http://yourip/admin . You can define several names here, one name in a seperate line.

Webmail Virtserver

You have a build in webmail application in your mail server. It is accessible via http://yourip (e. g. http://192.168.1.128), or http://yourip/webmail . Same as with the admin virtserver, you can define names for the access of the webmail application in this field.

Client Area Virtserver

Clients can administer their own mail boxes. The concept of „clients“ will be discussed in a later section. The client administration is accessible via http://yourip/clientadmin . You can define domain names for this the same way as for the admin and webmail virtserver.

Administration Interface

There are two options for the administration interface of your mail server. The simple interface and the advanced interface. As the name implies, the simple interface is much easier to use than the advanced interface. On the other side, there are some settings you cannot use with the simple interface. The difference between simple and advanced interface will be covered in a chapter below. For now, you can select here which interface type you want to use.

We recommend using the simple interface. You can switch to using the advanced interface later without any problems. Switching from the advanced to the simple interface in fact could eventually cause problems.

Security Settings

Allow SSH login for vendor

This setting is mainly for debugging reasons. If you check this setting, the programmers of Kwickserver Mail can login with a ssh certificate into the machine. In production use, you should leave this box unchecked.

Prevent administrator login on console

Usually you have the possibility to change the IP address, the administrator password, the access to the admin web interface and the web server certificate (for https) of your server on the console. You can prevent this login by checking this option.

Be careful! If you change the IP address of your server on the web interface to an address you cannot reach from your network or your simply forget the IP address of your server, it could happen, that you cannot access your server any more! Same happens when you forget the password or you exclude yourself from access to the admin web interface!

Only allow access to admin webinterface from these addresses

Here you can restrict the access to the admin web interface to IP adresses or ranges. If it happens that you exclude yourself from access to the web interface, you have to reset this setting from the console. Login as administrator without password for that and select the proper option in the upcoming menu.

Allow SMTP relay from the following addresses

Here you can define IP adresses or ranges that are allowed to send email over your mail server. Be sure that you only define the adresses of your own computers to avoid providing an open relay to foreign computers!

Upload Webserver Certificate

The admin web interface, the clientadmin interface and optionally the webmail run on a https server with encrypted communication. This server needs a certificate to authenticate itself to the web browsers. There is a default certificate installed when you first start your Kwickserver. Users will get a warning from their web browsers, that the certificate is not proper for the hostname of your server.

This can be avioded by installing your own certificate. You have to get a signed certificate that is accepted by your users browsers. This certificate has to include the server key. It can be uploaded via this form. If it happens that the certificate is not working the web server will shut down. You then have to reset the old certificate via console, similar to resetting the password or the webinterface access as described above.

System

In this section you have the opportunity to reboot or shut down your server.

Updates

Kwickserver Mail and Communication Server has its own update system. So you can download updates from the programmers of kwickserver on your server and then decide to install them or not.

You find the update system in the menu „System“ - „Update“. With the button „load updates“ you receive the actual list of available updates. These update appear in the list. With the „download“ button you can load the update files on your harddisk. Then you can decide which updates to install. Click on „install“ to install the update on the server. Some updates have the option to be uninstalled. In that case, after installation there is a button „uninstall“.

Administration

Clients

Most of the data Kwickserver Mail & Communication Server manages is organized in so called „clients“. One client – the „default client“ is already existing, when you install your server. If you just manage some mailboxes and/or instant messaging accounts, you do not need to create additional clients.

If you manage a larger mail server it could be a good idea to split everything up in different clients. If you manage a company mail server, a client could for example represent a department of the company. So all account belonging to members of the sales department could be assigned to the client „salesdepartment“.

The advantage is not only, that you have a better overview at your accounts. You can also enable some or all of the departments to manage the accounts by themselves. For that reason you can create users for the web interface, which are assigned to a particular client. Those users only can manage the accounts for their own client, of course.

Another scenario for using clients could be an organization that provides mailboxes or instant messaging accounts to non-profit organizations, a school that lets the teachers manage accounts for their classes or even a small provider that sells the services of Kwickserver Mail & Communication Server to his customers

Create Clients

If you want to use more than one client, you have to create additional ones to the existing default client. To do so, just click on “create customer” in the left main menu. You are asked for a name for that client and some additional data, which is optional. When you are working in the advanced mode of the web interface, you also have to provide a client number to the new client (which could be a customer number or so). You can use numbers and characters here. When working in the simple mode, the customer number is assigned automatically.

In the next step you can already create mail accounts for this client. If you have not defined any mail domains yet, you should not do that now. So do not fill in any data here in that case.

After that you can manage your new clients data. Click on “list clients” in the main menu or “search client” and search for the name of the client.

Delete Clients

Clients cannot be deleted. If you do not need a client any more, just ignore it and delete all accounts of it. Or just rename it to the name of the next client you would create.

Mail Domains

Before you can create any mailboxes, you must define mail domains. Mail domains are the part after the @ in every e-mail address. For example for george@myaddress.com the mail domain is “myaddress.com”. Before you can create mailboxes, you must tell your new mail server, which mail domains it is managing. Of course you must chose domain names you are really responsible for, otherwise you will not receive messages.

There are two possibilities for creating mail domains: Mail domains that are available for all your clients and domains which are only available to one particular client. The first are called “default mail domains”. You can define them with the menu “Default Domains” in the main menu. The latter can be defined in the client management. Select the client and go to the tab “Domains”. There you can create an new domain in the first section. From now on mail addresses with this domain can be created whithin this client.

Mailboxes

Create mailboxes

Once you have selected a client, you see a tab “Mailboxes”. If you select it, you can manage this clients mailboxes. On the right side you find a link “new mailbox”. If you click on it, you get a form asking you for details. If you do not have any entries in the select field for the mail domain (right of the @), then you have not defined any mail domains for your server yet. See above how to do that.

If you have filled in all the data, klick on the OK-Button to create the mailbox. This mailbox is then immediately ready for receiving e-mail messages.

Edit Mailbox

You can edit several features of any mailbox existing on your server. When in the “Mailboxes” tab of the client administration, you can click on the “edit”-Link right of the mailbox to change the settings of that mailbox, like quota or spam filter settings. You can add or remove mail aliases to/from the mailbox. Mail aliases are the “address” of the mailbox (e. g. max@mustermann.com). The maximum number of aliases for one mailbox can be configured in the general settings of the server or individually per client. For adding or deleting mail aliases use the links in the Mailboxes tab of the client.

Delete Mailbox

You can delete any mailbox with the “delete”-Link in the Mail tab of the client. Be aware, that all messages in this mailbox will be destroyed if you do so. There is no way for recovering e-mail messages from a deleted mailbox.

Advanced: Mailadmins

If you use the advanced web interface of Kwickserver Mail & Communication Server, you can administer so called “mail admins”. These are simply subdivisions of clients. You can assign users (those logging into the web administration) and domains of a client to a particular mailadmin. After that only users responsible for that mailadmin can create mailboxes with domains assigned to that mailadmin.

You also can divide available ressources (like quota or max. number of mailboxes) of a client with mailadmins. Example: Client Alice has 1 GB mail quota. She has two users administering the mailboxes, Bob and Caren. She can now define that Bob can use 300 MB of that quota and Caren the remaining 700 MB.

Users

When we talk about “users” we do not mean mailbox users or instant messaging users. We mean those users that log into the web administration of the Kwickserver Mail & Communication Server. Basically there are two types of users: Those, who are responsible for the server in general. Those users are called “global users” or “globalusers”. Globalusers are not assigned to a client.

The second type are those users, that are assigned to a particular client. Those users are simply called “users”. Users can only manage the data assigned to their client.

Globalusers can login into the admin interface (http://yourip/admin) and manage the entire server. Users can login into the client administration (http://yourip/clientadmin) and manage mail and IM accounts of one client.

Managing Users

In the simple interface you can edit the users for every client. With every new client one new user is created. You can change the login name and the password of that user. In the advanced interface you can also create new users and delete users. When you create a new user there will be a checkbox "main user". Main users are allowed to create and delete other users in the client admin webinterface.