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	Path to a directory where DKIM generated keys will be stored
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. `%(user)s`)
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