Install WebMail Lite PHP based Webmail Client on Debian 9.1

In this guide, we’ll show you how to install the latest version of WebMail Lite PHP in Debian 9.1 and show you how to configure the application to fetch e-mails from a popular mail service Yahoo! Mail. We’ll use Yahoo! Mail services only for demonstration purposes, but feel free to use your own domain for mail handling with WebMail Lite, because the procedure to add the domain settings is mostly the same as for configuring Yahoo! Mail services. We’ll use the WebMail Lite client as an interface to IMAP and SMTP services provided by a Yahoo! account and all e-mails will be handled locally on our own private web server.

WebMail Lite is a free Open-source mail user agent or web client written in PHP and deployed on Linux under Apache/Nginx, PHP and MySQL/MariaDB components that make the LEMP/LAMP stack. WebMail Lite can be used to access mail via IMAP/S and/or SMTP/S protocols in order to sync mail files and/or send mail messages.

Requirements

• Debian 9 minimal installation on a bare-metal machine or on a virtual private server.
• A static IP address configured for one of your system network interfaces cards.
• sudo root privileges for a local or remote account or direct access to root account.
• A domain name, private or public, depending on your deployment, with the proper DNS records configured.
• A mail service properly configured at your premises with remote access to its IMAP and SMTP services.

Initial Configuration

Before starting to install and configure WebMail Lite from source on your own server, first assure the system meets all the software requirements for compiling and installing the application.  In the first step, update your system repositories and software packages by issuing the below command.

apt update

apt upgrade

In the next step, execute the following command in order to install some utilities that will be used to further manage your system from the command line.

apt install wget bash-completion unzip

Next, set up the name for your system by executing the following command. Replace your hostname variable accordingly.

hostnamectl set-hostname mail

Verify machine hostname and hosts file by issuing the below commands.

hostnamectl

cat /etc/hostname

hostname –s

hostname –f

Finally, reboot Debian server in order to apply kernel updates and the hostname changes properly.

systemctl reboot

WebMail Lite is a webmail client written mostly in PHP server-side programming language. In order to execute WebMail Lite PHP file scripts, a web server, such as Apache HTTP server, and a PHP processing gateway must be installed and operational in the system.  In order to install Apache web server and the PHP interpreter alongside with all required PHP modules needed by the application to run properly, issue the following command in your server console.

apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-php7.0 php7.0 php7.0-xml php7.0-mcrypt php7.0-opcache php7.0-mbstring php7.0-curl

After Apache and PHP have been installed, test if the web server is up and running and listening for network connections on port 80 by issuing the following command with root privileges.

netstat –tlpn

In case netstat network utility is not installed by default on your Debian system, execute the below command to install it.

apt install net-tools

By inspecting the netstat command output you can see that Apache web server is listening for incoming network connections on port 80. For the same task, you can also use the ss command, which is automatically installed by default in Debian 9.

ss- tlpn

In case you have a firewall enabled in your system, such as UFW firewall application, you should add a new rule to allow HTTP traffic to pass through firewall by issuing the following command.

ufw allow WWW

or

ufw allow 80/tcp

If you’re using iptables raw rules to manage Firewall rules in your Debian server, add the following rule to allow port 80 inbound traffic on the firewall so that visitors can browse the online application.

apt-get install -y iptables-persistent

iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --destination-port 80 -j ACCEPT

systemctl iptables-persistent save

systemctl iptables-persistent reload

Next, enable the following Apache modules which will be used to secure some parts of WebMail Lite application, by issuing the below command.

a2enmod rewrite

systemctl restart apache2

Finally, test if Apache web server default web page can be displayed in your clients browsers by visiting your Debian machine IP address or your domain name or server FQDN via HTTP protocol. If you don’t know your machine IP address, execute ifconfig or ip a commands to reveal the IP address of your server. The default Apache page for Debian will be displayed in your browser.

http://your_domain.tld

In order to install and access WebMail Lite application via HTTPS protocol that will secure the traffic for your clients, issue the following command to enable Apache web server SSL module and SSL site configuration file.

a2enmod ssl

a2ensite default-ssl.conf

Next, open Apache default SSL site configuration file with a text editor and enable URL rewrite rules by adding the following lines of code after DocumentRoot directive, as shown in the below sample:

nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default-ssl.conf

SSL site configuration file excerpt:

<Directory /var/www/html>
  Options +FollowSymlinks
  AllowOverride All
  Require all granted
</Directory>

Also, make the following change to VirtualHost line to look like shown in the below excerpt:

        <VirtualHost *:443>

Close the SSL Apache file and open /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf file for editing and add the same URL rewrite rules as for SSL configuration file. Insert the lines of code after DocumentRoot statement as shown in the below example.

<Directory /var/www/html>
  Options +FollowSymlinks
  AllowOverride All
  Require all granted
</Directory>

Finally, restart Apache daemon to apply all rules configured so far and visit your domain via HTTP protocol. Because you’re using the automatically Self-Signed certificates pairs issued by Apache at installation, an error warning should be displayed in the browser, as shown in the below screenshot.

systemctl restart apache2

https://yourdomain.tld

Accept the warning in order to continue and be redirected to Apache default webpage via HTTPS.

In case the UFW firewall application blocks incoming network connections to HTTPS port, you should add a new rule to allow HTTPS traffic to pass through firewall by issuing the following command.

ufw allow 'WWW Full'

or

ufw allow 443/tcp

If iptables is the default firewall application installed to protect your Debian system at the network level. Add the following rule to allow port 443 inbound traffic in the firewall so that visitors can browse your domain name.

iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --destination-port 443 -j ACCEPT

systemctl iptables-persistent save

systemctl iptables-persistent reload

In the next step, we need to make some further changes to PHP default configuration file in order to assure that the following PHP variables are enabled and the PHP timezone setting is correctly configured and matches your system geographical location.  Open /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini file for editing and assure that the following lines are setup as follows. Also, initially, make a backup of PHP configuration file.

cp /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini{,.backup}

nano /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini

Search, edit and change the following variables in php.ini configuration file:

file_uploads = On
allow_url_fopen = On
memory_limit = 128 M
upload_max_file_size = 64M
date.timezone = Europe/London

Increase memory_limit variable as suitable to support large file attachments and replace the time.zone variable accordingly to your physical time by consulting the list of time zones provided by PHP docs at the following link http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php

If you want to increase the load speed of your website pages via OPCache plugin available for PHP7, append the following OPCache settings at the bottom of the PHP interpreter configuration file, as detailed below:

opcache.enable=1 
opcache.enable_cli=1 
opcache.interned_strings_buffer=8 
opcache.max_accelerated_files=10000 
opcache.memory_consumption=128 
opcache.save_comments=1
opcache.revalidate_freq=1

Close the php.ini configuration file and check if the verify the end of PHP configuration file to check if the variables had been correctly added by issuing the below command.

tail /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini

After you’ve made all changes explained above, restart apache daemon to apply the new changes by issuing the following command.

systemctl restart apache2

Finally, create a PHP info file by executing the following command and check if the PHP time zone has been correctly configured by visiting the PHP info script file from a browser at the following URL, as illustrated in the below image. Scroll down to date setting to check php time zone configuration.

echo '<?php phpinfo(); ?>'| tee /var/www/html/info.php

https://domain.tld/info.php

WebMail Lite webmail client stores different configurations, such as users, sessions, contacts, and others, in an RDBMS database.  In this guide, we’ll configure WebMail Lite to use MariaDB database as backend. Issue the below command to install MariaDB database and the PHP module needed to access mysql database.

apt install mariadb-server php7.0-mysql

After you’ve installed MariaDB, verify that the daemon is running and listening for connections on localhost, port 3306, by running netstat or ss command.

netstat –tlpn | grep mysql

Then, log in to MySQL console and secure MariaDB root account by issuing the following commands.

mysql -h localhost

use mysql;
update user set plugin='' where user='root';
flush privileges;
exit

In the next step, secure MariaDB by executing the script mysql_secure_installation. While running the script will ask a series of questions designed to secure MariaDB database, such as: to change MySQL root password, to remove anonymous users, to disable remote root logins and delete the test database. Execute the script by issuing the below command and assure you type yes to all questions asked in order to fully secure MySQL daemon. Use the below script output except as a guide.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

NOTE: RUNNING ALL PARTS OF THIS SCRIPT IS RECOMMENDED FOR ALL MariaDB

      SERVERS IN PRODUCTION USE!  PLEASE READ EACH STEP CAREFULLY!

In order to log into MariaDB to secure it, we'll need the current

password for the root user.  If you've just installed MariaDB, and

you haven't set the root password yet, the password will be blank,

so you should just press enter here.

Enter current password for root (enter for none):

OK, successfully used password, moving on...

Setting the root password ensures that nobody can log into the MariaDB

root user without the proper authorisation.

You already have a root password set, so you can safely answer 'n'.

Change the root password? [Y/n] y

New password:

Re-enter new password:

Password updated successfully!

Reloading privilege tables..

 ... Success!

By default, a MariaDB installation has an anonymous user, allowing anyone

to log into MariaDB without having to have a user account created for

them.  This is intended only for testing, and to make the installation

go a bit smoother.  You should remove them before moving into a

production environment.

Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y

 ... Success!

Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from 'localhost'.  This

ensures that someone cannot guess at the root password from the network.

Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y

 ... Success!

By default, MariaDB comes with a database named 'test' that anyone can

access.  This is also intended only for testing, and should be removed

before moving into a production environment.

Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y

 - Dropping test database...

 ... Success!

 - Removing privileges on test database...

 ... Success!

Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes made so far

will take effect immediately.

Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

 ... Success!

Cleaning up...

All done!  If you've completed all of the above steps, your MariaDB

installation should now be secure.

Thanks for using MariaDB!

In order to test MariaDB security, try login to the database from console with no root password. The access to the database should be denied if no password is provided for the root account. If the password is supplied, the login process should be granted to MySQL console, as shown in the below screenshot.

mysql -h localhost -u root

mysql -h localhost -u root –p

Next, log into the MariaDB database console, create a database to use it for WebMail Lite and a user with a password that will be used to manage this database, by issuing the following commands. Replace the WebMail Lite database name, user, and password accordingly.

mysql –u root -p

create database webmaillite;
grant all privileges on webmaillite.* to 'webmail_user