Installing Hexamail on Linux – Step-by-Step Guide

This is a guide to setting up your own email archiving server on a LINUX machine.

Let's break the guide into some easy steps:

You will need:

• - a computer with plenty of disk space (>2GB) for storing email queues, log files, statistics and email
• - a 64bit LINUX operating system (for example Centos 5 or 6, Ubuntu, RedHat etc) (we can supply 32bit builds on request)
• - a permanent/reliable connection to the Internet

You will need:

• OpenSSL 1.0.2. Check your version with
  openssl version
• Install Openssl with
  yum install openssl
• Update Openssl with
  yum update openssl
• Root access or access allowing use of ports below 1024 for default SMTP etc

Next you need to download the required software and copy it to your chosen computer.

• 1) Download Hexamail Vault and save the tar.gz file and license on the computer
• 2) Unpack the hexamailvault.tar.gz file using the command
tar xvfz hexamailvault.tar.gz
• 3) This creates a subfolder called hexamailvault/ in which Hexamail will run. You can move this folder wherever you wish at this point
• 4) Switch to the extracted folder
cd hexamailvault
• 5) View the INSTALL text file for up to date instructions on your version of the software
more INSTALL

Now you can begin configuring Hexamail Vault. After some initial steps you can use the webadmin to configure the rest of the settings

• 1) Copy the file hexamailvault.cfg.initial to hexamailvault.cfg
cp hexamailvault.cfg.initial hexamailvault.cfg
• 2) Edit the file hexamailvault.cfg
vi hexamailvault.cfg
• 3) Fill in all the required settings listed in the file
[Service] // REQUIRED: This is the list of allowed IP addresses that can connect to your server AllowedIPList=127.*.*.* [Administrator] // REQUIRED: This is the password required to use any administration interface Password= [WebAdmin] // REQUIRED: This is the list of allowed IP addresses that can connect to your server AllowedIPList=127.*.*.* // REQUIRED: This is the TCP network port used for webadmin. Port=880

Now you can run Hexamail for the first time

• 1) Switch to the root user. This is required to allow Hexamail to use the ports required for email (port numbers under 1024)
su
• 2) Run the script ./start.sh provided with the software to start the Hexamail service
./start.sh
• 3) Verify there are no problems with the startup by checking the Hexamail Vault log. It should eventually say Starting processing...
tail -f logs/Hexamail Vault.log
• 4) You are now ready to connect to the webadmin and configure the other settings. To do this open a browser to http://yourservername:880/
If it is on this server use this link webadmin

To get Hexamail to run on start up or as a daemon (systemd service) you need to do the following.
First edit the startup script start.sh to contain the folder Hexamail is installed in by changing the following line:

[Unit] Description=Start Hexamail Vault After=network.target [Service] Type=oneshot ExecStart=/path/to/hexamail/start.sh RemainAfterExit=true ExecStop=/path/to/hexamail/stop.sh [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target

You can now start and stop Hexamail using the command(s):


service hexamailvault start
service hexamailvault stop

You can configure using a remote Windows administration gui, using the Web Administration or by editing the configuration file directly.

The configuration settings are now the same as in the Windows Administration and you can use the same help file to read about the various options in the Administration sections here: Hexamail Vault Help

In the WebAdmin press the help button on the page you are using to see help relating to that specific page of settings.

Alternatively you can configure most of Hexamail using the configuration file directly using the instructions in the Configuration section here: Hexamail Vault Help

Hexamail products including Hexamail Guard, Hexamail Server and Hexamail Nexus all run on 64-bit Linux systems including CentOS, Ubuntu and RedHat. Installation is a straightforward tar.gz extraction with a simple startup script. The same Windows-based remote administration GUI can be used to manage your Linux installation remotely, so there is no need to edit configuration files manually.