Roundcube

Prerequisite

This article is part of the emails series. It is assumed that you already covered Dovecot and Exim.

You will also need the following software:

• Nginx as a webserver
• PHP
• MariaDB as a Database server
• Let’s Encrypt to get an HTTPS certificate
• Fail2Ban. Optional but recommended for security.

Install

Roundcube

$ sudo apt install roundcube roundcube-mysql roundcube-plugins roundcube-plugins-extra apache2-

Warning: the apache2- at the end of the list is preventing the automatic installation of Apache. If you have already Apache installed, you need to remove that from the list as it would uninstall it otherwise.

The installer will ask you the following questions:

Configure database for roundcube with dbconfig-common?

yes

Database type to be used by roundcube

mysql

Password of the database's administrative user

Provide your MariaDB root password

MySQL application password for roundcube

Keep blank

PHP

Edit file /etc/php/7.0/mods-available/local-common.ini and add /var/lib/roundcube/:/usr/share/roundcube/:/etc/roundcube/:/var/log/roundcube/ to the open_basedir setting.

Reload PHP:

$ sudo systemctl reload php7.0-fpm.service

Web Server

1. Create the config file /etc/nginx/sites-available/mail.example.org

   server {
       include snippets/listen-http.conf;
       server_name mail.example.org;
   
       access_log /var/log/nginx/mail.example.org.access.log;
       error_log /var/log/nginx/mail.example.org.error.log;
   
       include snippets/https-permanent-redirect.conf;
   }
   
   server {
       include snippets/listen-https.conf;
       server_name mail.example.org;
   
       access_log /var/log/nginx/mail.example.org.access.log;
       error_log /var/log/nginx/mail.example.org.error.log;
   
       include snippets/acme-challenge.conf;
       #include snippets/ssl.conf;
       #ssl_certificate      /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.example.org/fullchain.pem;
       #ssl_certificate_key  /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.example.org/privkey.pem;
       #include snippets/hsts.conf;
   
       client_max_body_size 10G; # set max upload size
   
       root /var/lib/roundcube/;
   
       
       location ~ ^/(config|temp|logs)/ {
           deny all;
       }   
       
       location ~ /\. {
           deny all;
           access_log off;
           log_not_found off;
       }   
       
       index index.php;
   
       location ~ \.php$ {
           try_files $uri =404;
           include fastcgi.conf;
           fastcgi_index index.php;
           fastcgi_pass php;
       }   
   }
   

2. Activate the configuration with

   $ sudo nginx_modsite -e mail.example.org
   Would you like to reload the Nginx configuration now? (Y/n) Y
   

3. Edit file /usr/local/etc/certmanage/main.json and add the following to the list

   {
       "domains": ["mail.example.org"],
       "reload": [["/bin/systemctl", "reload", "nginx.service"]]
   }
   

4. Get your certificate

   $ sudo /usr/local/sbin/certmanage
   Renewing certificate for mail.example.org that will expire on 0001-01-01
   
   Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
   Starting new HTTPS connection (1): acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org
   Obtaining a new certificate
   Performing the following challenges:
   http-01 challenge for mail.example.org
   Using the webroot path /var/www/acme-challenge for all unmatched domains.
   Waiting for verification...
   Cleaning up challenges
   Generating key (2048 bits): /etc/letsencrypt/keys/1764_key-certbot.pem
   Creating CSR: /etc/letsencrypt/csr/1764_csr-certbot.pem
   
   IMPORTANT NOTES:
    - Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at
      /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.example.org/fullchain.pem. Your cert
      will expire on 2025-03-21. To obtain a new or tweaked version of
      this certificate in the future, simply run certbot again. To
      non-interactively renew *all* of your certificates, run "certbot
      renew"
    - If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by:
   
      Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt:   https://letsencrypt.org/donate
      Donating to EFF:                    https://eff.org/donate-le
   
   Restarting services:
   systemctl reload nginx.service
   

5. Uncomment the ssl related lines in /etc/nginx/sites-available/mail.example.org and run

   $ sudo systemctl reload nginx.service
   

Configuration

Mail server

Edit file /etc/roundcube/config.inc.php and modify line

$config['default_host'] = 'localhost';

Carddav

This plugin allows to get contacts from an external source that support the Carddav protocol.

Update notification

This plugin is not packaged in Debian. We will download it from the original website. As for any manually installed software, you need to keep up-to-date with new releases.

You can follow new releases of the plugin using feed https://github.com/blind-coder/rcmcarddav/releases.atom.

Install

Download latest release from https://github.com/blind-coder/rcmcarddav/releases. At the time of writing, it is 2.0.4.

$ cd /var/lib/roundcube/plugins
$ curl -Ls https://github.com/blind-coder/rcmcarddav/releases/download/v2.0.4/carddav-2.0.4.tar.bz2 | sudo tar xj
$ sudo chmod g-w,o= -R carddav
$ sudo chown root:www-data -R carddav

Now edit /etc/roundcube/config.inc.php

// Add carddav to the list of plugins
$config['plugins'] = array(
...
'carddav',
...
);

// Disable default address book as we have carddav
$config['address_book_type'] = '';

Finally, in roundcube, you can go to Settings ⇒ Preferences ⇒ CardDAV and add your server.

Context Menu

Use context menu for various actions.

Enable plugin in /etc/roundcube/config.inc.php

// Add contextmenu to the list of plugins
$config['plugins'] = array(
...
'contextmenu',
...
);

Subscriptions option

By default, Roundcube only shows folder that you subscribed to. This plugin allows to show all folders.

Enable plugin in /etc/roundcube/config.inc.php

// Add subscriptions_option to the list of plugins
$config['plugins'] = array(
...
'subscriptions_option',
...
);

// Do not use IMAP subscriptions. Show all folders
$config['use_subscriptions'] = false;

Zip Download

This plugin allows to download all attachments of an email as one zip archive.

Enable the plugin in /etc/roundcube/config.inc.php

// Add zipdownload to the list of plugins
$config['plugins'] = array(
...
'zipdownload',
...
);

Fail2Ban

Create file /etc/fail2ban/jail.d/roundcube-auth.conf

[roundcube-auth]
enabled = true
logpath = %(roundcube_errors_log)s

And activate the new jail

$ sudo fail2ban-client reload roundcube-auth
ERROR  NOK: ('roundcube-auth',)