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How to Install Postal Mail Server on AlmaLinux 8

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Postal is a complete and fully featured mail server for use by websites & web servers. Think Sendgrid, Mailgun, or Postmark but open source and ready for you to run on your servers. Postal is developed by Krystal to serve its mail processing requirements and we have since decided that it should be released as an open-source project for the community. In this article, we are going to learn how to install Postal Mail Server on AlmaLinux 8. So, let’s get started.

Checkout the Postal Mail Server Project Here.

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Pre-requisites :

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• A system with AlmaLinux 8 installed and running.

• root access to the system.

• Docker installed and running, for this, you can refer to one of our guides on installing the Docker on AlmaLinux 8.

• LAMP Stack installed and running, for this, you can refer to one of our guides on installing the LAMP Stack (Apache, MariaDB, and PHP).

Once you're all set, we'll proceed with Postal Mail Server installation and configuration.

Install Git, Curl & JSON data

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There are a few system utilities that you need to have installed before you'll be able to run some of the Postal commands.

yum install git curl jq

Download Postal Git Repository

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Let's download Postal Git Repository using the below commands

git clone https://postalserver.io/start/install /opt/postal/install

ln -s /opt/postal/install/bin/postal /usr/bin/postal

Setup Database Connection using Docker

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Postal requires a database engine to store all email and other essential configuration data. Let's setup using Docker.

docker run -d \
 --name postal-mariadb \
 -p 127.0.0.1:3306:3306 \
 --restart always \
 -e MARIADB_DATABASE=crowncloud \
 -e MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=crowncloud_password \
 mariadb

The above commands will setup the database with user crowncloud. We would suggest using a strong and long password.

Install RabbitMQ using Docker

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RabbitMQ is responsible for dispatching messages between different processes. Let's setup using Docker.

docker run -d \
 --name postal-rabbitmq \
 -p 127.0.0.1:5672:5672 \
 --restart always \
 -e RABBITMQ_DEFAULT_USER=crowncloud \
 -e RABBITMQ_DEFAULT_PASS=crowncloud_password \
 -e RABBITMQ_DEFAULT_VHOST=crowncloud \
 rabbitmq:3.8

Install Postal Mail Server

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Run the command below and replace dev1.domainhere.info with the actual hostname you want to access your Postal web interface at. Make sure you have set up this domain with your DNS provider before continuing.

postal bootstrap dev1.domainhere.info

nano /opt/postal/config/postal.yml

dns:
 mx_records:
 - postal.dev1.domainhere.info
smtp_server_hostname: postal.dev1.domainhere.info
track_domain: postal.dev1.domainhere.info
spf_include: spf.postal.dev1.domainhere.info
return_path: rp.postal.dev1.domainhere.info
route_domain: routes.postal.dev1.domainhere.info

Replace dev1.domainhere.info with your actual domain name or IP Address. After that, save and exit.

Install Docker Compose using below commands

curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.29.2/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

ln -s /usr/local/bin/docker-compose /usr/bin/docker-compose

Initializing the database using the below command

postal initialize

Create a user account for Postal using the below command

postal make-user

Let's start Postal Mail Server using the below command

postal start

Enable Firewall:

firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port 5000/tcp

firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http

firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=https

firewall-cmd --reload

Install Caddy Server using Docker

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To handle SSL termination and all web traffic, you'll need to configure a web proxy. You can use anything that takes your fancy here - Nginx, Apache, HAProxy, anything - but in this example, we're going to use Caddy.

Let's install Caddy Server using Docker

docker run -d \
 --name postal-caddy \
 --restart always \
 --network host \
 -v /opt/postal/config/Caddyfile:/etc/caddy/Caddyfile \
 -v /opt/postal/caddy-data:/data \
 caddy

Accessing and Managing Postal Mail Server

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Now open the domain name from your browser, this will redirect you to configuring the final parts of the Postal Mail Server installation.

https://dev1.domainhere.info:5000

Replace the dev1.domainhere.info with the actual IP or domain configured on the server.

Now you have Postal Mail Server on your server. Follow the below images for Postal layout:

Now you have successfully installed Postal Mail Server on AlmaLinux 8.