Configuration
Online parameters
Modoboa provides online panels to modify internal parameters. There are two available levels:
Application level: global parameters, define how the application behaves. Available at Modoboa > Parameters
User level: per user customization. Available at User > Settings > Preferences
Regardless level, parameters are displayed using tabs, each tab corresponding to one application.
General parameters
The admin application exposes several parameters, they are presented below:
Name |
Tab |
Description |
Default value |
---|---|---|---|
Authentication type |
General |
The backend used for authentication |
Local |
Default password scheme |
General |
Scheme used to crypt mailbox passwords |
sha512crypt |
Rounds |
General |
Number of rounds (only used by sha256crypt and sha512crypt). Must be between 1000 and 999999999, inclusive. |
70000 |
Secret key |
General |
A key used to encrypt users’ password in sessions |
random value |
Sender address |
General |
Email address used to send notifications. |
|
Enable communication |
General |
Enable communication with Modoboa public API |
yes |
Check new versions |
General |
Automatically checks if a newer version is available |
yes |
Send statistics |
General |
Send statistics to Modoboa public API (counters and used extensions) |
yes |
Top notifications check interval |
General |
Interval between two top notification checks (in seconds) |
30 |
Maximum log record age |
General |
The maximum age in days of a log record |
365 |
Items per page |
General |
Number of displayed items per page |
30 |
Default top redirection |
General |
The default redirection used when no application is specified |
userprefs |
Enable MX checks |
Admin |
Check that every domain has a valid MX record |
yes |
Valid MXs |
Admin |
A list of IP or network address every MX should match. A warning will be sent if a record does not respect this it. |
|
Enable DNSBL checks |
Admin |
Check every domain against major DNSBL providers |
yes |
DKIM keys storage directory |
Admin |
|
|
Default DKIM key length |
Admin |
The default size (in bits) for new keys |
2048 |
Handle mailboxes on filesystem |
Admin |
Rename or remove mailboxes on the filesystem when they get renamed or removed within Modoboa |
no |
Mailboxes owner |
Admin |
The UNIX account who owns mailboxes on the filesystem |
vmail |
Default domain quota |
Admin |
Default quota (in MB) applied to freshly created domains with no value specified. A value of 0 means no quota. |
0 |
Automatic account removal |
Admin |
When a mailbox is removed, also remove the associated account |
no |
Automatic domain/mailbox creation |
Admin |
Create a domain and a mailbox when an account is automatically created |
yes |
Warning
If Dovecot is not running on the same host than Modoboa, you will have
to define which password schemes are supported. To do so, open the
settings.py
file and add a DOVECOT_SUPPORTED_SCHEMES
variable with the output of the command: doveadm pw -l
.
Note
If you are not familiar with virtual domain hosting, you should take a look at postfix’s documentation. This How to also contains useful information.
Note
A random secret key will be generated each time the Parameters page is refreshed and until you save parameters at least once.
Note
Specific LDAP parameters are also available, see LDAP authentication.
Media files
Modoboa uses a specific directory to upload files (ie. when the
webmail is in use) or to create ones (ex: graphical statistics). This
directory is named media
and is located inside modoboa’s
installation directory (called modoboa_site
in this
documentation).
To work properly, the system user which runs modoboa (www-data
,
apache
, whatever) must have write access to this directory.
Customization
Custom logo
You have the possibility to use a custom logo instead of the default one on the login page.
To do so, open the settings.py
file and add a
MODOBOA_CUSTOM_LOGO
variable. This variable must contain the
relative URL of your logo under MEDIA_URL
. For example:
MODOBOA_CUSTOM_LOGO = os.path.join(MEDIA_URL, "custom_logo.png")
Then copy your logo file into the directory indicated by
MEDIA_ROOT
.
Custom new admin sub-url
You can edit the new admin sub-url (by default it is /new-admin).
To do so, open the settings.py
file and add (or uncomment)
NEW_ADMIN_URL
variable. This variable must contain a relative url
without initial and last ‘/’. For example:
NEW_ADMIN_URL = 'test_admin'
You will need to change you web server accordingly and rebuild the frontend.
Host configuration
Note
This section is only relevant when Modoboa handles mailboxes
renaming and removal from the filesystem, which requires that
Dovecot is installed and running on this host. If it is installed
at a non-standard directory, paths to its binaries can be set in the
settings.py
file with the DOVECOT_LOOKUP_PATH
and
DOVEADM_LOOKUP_PATH
variables.
To manipulate mailboxes on the filesystem, you must allow the user who runs Modoboa to execute commands as the user who owns mailboxes.
To do so, edit the /etc/sudoers
file and add the following inside:
<user_that_runs_modoboa> ALL=(<mailboxes owner>) NOPASSWD: ALL
Replace values between <>
by the ones you use.
Time zone and language
Modoboa is available in many languages.
To specify the default language to use, edit the settings.py
file
and modify the LANGUAGE_CODE
variable:
LANGUAGE_CODE = 'fr' # or 'en' for english, etc.
Note
Each user has the possibility to define the language he prefers.
In the same configuration file, specify the timezone to use by
modifying the TIME_ZONE
variable. For example:
TIME_ZONE = 'Europe/Paris'
Sessions management
Modoboa uses Django’s session framework to store per-user information.
Few parameters need to be set in the settings.py
configuration
file to make Modoboa behave as expected:
SESSION_EXPIRE_AT_BROWSER_CLOSE = False # Default value
This parameter is optional but you must ensure it is set to False
(the default value).
The default configuration file provided by the modoboa-admin.py
command is properly configured.
Logging authentication
To trace login attempts to the web interface, Modoboa uses python SysLogHandler so you can see them in your syslog authentication log file (/var/log/auth.log in most cases).
Depending on your configuration, you may have to edit the settings.py
file
and add ‘address’: ‘/dev/log’ to the logging section:
'syslog-auth': {
'class': 'logging.handlers.SysLogHandler',
'facility': SysLogHandler.LOG_AUTH,
'address': '/dev/log',
'formatter': 'syslog'
},
External authentication
LDAP
Modoboa supports external LDAP authentication using the following extra components:
If you want to use this feature, you must first install those components:
$ pip install python-ldap django-auth-ldap
Then, all you have to do is to modify the settings.py
file. Add a
new authentication backend to the AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS variable,
like this:
AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
'modoboa.lib.authbackends.LDAPBackend',
# 'modoboa.lib.authbackends.LDAPSecondaryBackend', # Useful for a fallback mechanism
'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend',
)
Finally, go to Modoboa > Parameters > General and set Authentication type to LDAP.
From there, new parameters will appear to let you configure the way Modoboa should connect to your LDAP server. They are described just below:
Name |
Description |
Default value |
---|---|---|
Server address |
The IP address of the DNS name of the LDAP server |
localhost |
Server port |
The TCP port number used by the LDAP server |
389 |
Use a secure connection |
Use an SSL/TLS connection to access the LDAP server |
no |
Authentication method |
Choose the authentication method to use |
Direct bind |
User DN template (direct bind mode) |
The template used to
construct a user’s
DN. It should
contain one
placeholder
(ie. |
|
Bind BN |
The distinguished name to use when binding to the LDAP server. Leave empty for an anonymous bind |
|
Bind password |
The password to use when binding to the LDAP server (with ‘Bind DN’) |
|
Search base |
The distinguished name of the search base |
|
Search filter |
An optional filter string (e.g. ‘(objectClass=person)’). In order to be valid, it must be enclosed in parentheses. |
(mail=%(user)s) |
Password attribute |
The attribute used to store user passwords |
userPassword |
Active Directory |
Tell if the LDAP server is an Active Directory one |
no |
Administrator groups |
Members of those LDAP Posix groups will be created ad domain administrators. Use ‘;’ characters to separate groups. |
|
Group type |
The type of group used by your LDAP directory. |
PosixGroup |
Groups search base |
The distinguished name of the search base used to find groups |
|
Domain/mailbox creation |
Automatically create a domain and a mailbox when a new user is created just after the first successful authentication. You will generally want to disable this feature when the relay domains extension is in use |
yes |
If you need additional parameters, you will find a detailed documentation here.
Once the authentication is properly configured, the users defined in your LDAP directory will be able to connect to Modoboa, the associated domain and mailboxes will be automatically created if needed.
The first time a user connects to Modoboa, a local account is created if the LDAP username is a valid email address. By default, this account belongs to the SimpleUsers group and it has a mailbox.
To automatically create domain administrators, you can use the Administrator groups setting. If a LDAP user belongs to one the listed groups, its local account will belong to the DomainAdmins group. In this case, the username is not necessarily an email address.
Users will also be able to update their LDAP password directly from Modoboa.
Note
Modoboa doesn’t provide any synchronization mechanism once a user is registered into the database. Any modification done from the directory to a user account will not be reported to Modoboa (an email address change for example). Currently, the only solution is to manually delete the Modoboa record, it will be recreated on the next user login.
SMTP
It is possible to use an existing SMTP server as an authentication
source. To enable this feature, edit the settings.py
file and
change the following setting:
AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
'modoboa.lib.authbackends.SMTPBackend',
'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend',
)
SMTP server location can be customized using the following settings:
AUTH_SMTP_SERVER_ADDRESS = 'localhost'
AUTH_SMTP_SERVER_PORT = 25
AUTH_SMTP_SECURED_MODE = None # 'ssl' or 'starttls' are accepted
LDAP synchronization
Modoboa can synchronize accounts with an LDAP directory (tested with
OpenLDAP) but this feature is not enabled by default. To activate it,
add modoboa.ldapsync
to MODOBOA_APPS
in the
settings.py
file:
MODOBOA_APPS = (
'modoboa',
'modoboa.core',
'modoboa.lib',
'modoboa.admin',
'modoboa.transport',
'modoboa.relaydomains',
'modoboa.limits',
'modoboa.parameters',
'modoboa.dnstools',
'modoboa.ldapsync',
)
and enable it from the admin panel.
Warning
Make sure to install additional requirements otherwise it won’t work.
The following parameters are available and must be filled:
Name |
Description |
Default value |
---|---|---|
Enable LDAP synchronization |
Control LDAP synchronization state |
no |
Bind DN |
The DN of a user with write permission to create/update accounts |
|
Bind password |
The associated password |
|
Account DN template |
The template used to build account DNs (must contain a %(user)s placeholder |
Database maintenance
Cleaning the logs table
Modoboa logs administrator specific actions into the database. A clean-up script is provided to automatically remove oldest records. The maximum log record age can be configured through the online panel.
To use it, you can setup a cron job to run every night:
0 0 * * * <modoboa_site>/manage.py cleanlogs
#
# Or like this if you use a virtual environment:
# 0 0 * * * <virtualenv path/bin/python> <modoboa_site>/manage.py cleanlogs
Cleaning the session table
Django does not provide automatic purging. Therefore, it’s your job to purge expired sessions on a regular basis.
Django provides a sample clean-up script: django-admin.py
clearsessions
. That script deletes any session in the session table
whose expire_date
is in the past.
For example, you could setup a cron job to run this script every night:
0 0 * * * <modoboa_site>/manage.py clearsessions
#
# Or like this if you use a virtual environment:
# 0 0 * * * <virtualenv path/bin/python> <modoboa_site>/manage.py clearsessions
Cleaning inactive accounts
Thanks to Last-login tracking, it is now possible to monitor inactive accounts. An account is considered inactive if no login has been recorded for the last 30 days (this value can be changed through the admin panel).
A management command is available to disable or delete inactive accounts. For example, you could setup a cron job to run it every night:
0 0 * * * <modoboa_site>/manage.py clean_inactive_accounts
#
# Or like this if you use a virtual environment:
# 0 0 * * * <virtualenv path/bin/python> <modoboa_site>/manage.py clean_inactive_accounts
The default behaviour is to disable accounts. You can delete them
using the --delete
option.
DMARC reports
A set of tools to use DMARC through Modoboa.
This feature is still in BETA stage, for now it only parses XML aggregated reports and generate visual reports on a per-domain basis.
Installation
Note
modoboa-installer can automatically set it up for you.
Make sure to install the following additional system package according to your distribution:
Debian / Ubuntu |
---|
libmagic1 |
CentOS |
---|
file-devel |
Integration with Postfix
A management command is provided to automatically parse DMARC aggregated reports (rua) and feed the database. The execution of this command can be automated with the definition of a postfix service and a custom transport table.
First, declare a new service in /etc/postfix/master.cf
:
dmarc-rua-parser unix - n n - - pipe
flags= user=vmail:vmail argv=<path to python> <path to modoboa instance>/manage.py import_aggregated_report --pipe
Define a new transport table inside /etc/postfix/main.cf
:
transport_maps =
hash:/etc/postfix/dmarc_transport
# other transport maps...
Create a file called /etc/postfix/dmarc_transport
with the following content:
<email address your declared in your DNS record> dmarc-rua-parser:
Note
You must not declare this email address as an identity (user account or alias), else DMARC reports will be directed to your mailbox and won’t be parsed.
Hash the file using the following command:
$ postmap /etc/postfix/dmarc_transport
Finally, reload postfix:
$ service postfix reload