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Managing users, aliases and domains

Maybe you already know what you have to do to create mail domains and mail users. After all I tried to explain the database schema in the section that dealt with preparing the database. But if that wasn’t clear enough let me explain what you need to do to manage your mail accounts.

The following sections explain the changes and SQL queries you can use for common management tasks:

Insert a new row into the virtual_domains table and set the name to the name of the new domain. (Do not forget to set up SPF and DKIM.)

INSERT INTO virtual_domains (name) VALUES ("example.org");

Delete the row from the virtual_domains table that has the right name. All aliases and users will automatically be deleted, too. However the mailboxes will stay on disk at /var/vmail/… and you need to delete them manually.

DELETE FROM virtual_domains where name='example.org';

Find out the id of the right domain from the virtual_domains table. The insert a new row into the virtual_users table. Set the domain_id to the value you just looked up in the virtual_domains table. Set the email field to the complete email address of the new user. Create a new password in a shell using the dovecot pw command and insert the result into the password field.

INSERT INTO virtual_users
(domain_id, email, password)
VALUES
((SELECT id FROM virtual_domains WHERE name='example.org'), 'john@example.org','{CRYPT}$2y$05$.We…');

Find the row in the virtual_users table by looking for the right email field. Create a new password in a shell using the dovecot pw command and insert the result into the password field.

UPDATE virtual_users SET password='{CRYPT}$2y$05$.We…' WHERE email='email@address';

Find the row in the virtual_users table by looking for the right email field and delete it. The mailbox will stay on disk at /var/vmail/… and you need to delete it manually

DELETE FROM virtual_users WHERE email='john@example.org';

You can forward emails from one (source) email to other addresses (destinations) – even outside of your mail server. Find out the id of the right domain (the part after the @ of the source email address) from the virtual_domains table. Create a new row in the virtual_aliases table for each destination (if you have multiple destination addresses). Set the source field to the complete source email address. And set the destination field to the respective complete destination email address.

INSERT INTO virtual_aliases
(domain_id, source, destination)
VALUES
(
(SELECT id FROM virtual_domains WHERE name='example.org'),
'melissa@example.org',
'juila@example.net'
);

Find all rows in the virtual_aliases table by looking for the right source email address. Remove all rows that you lead to destination addresses you don’t want to forward email to.

DELETE FROM virtual_aliases WHERE source='melissa@example.org';

If you don’t like using SQL queries to manage your mail server you may like to install a web-based management software. Several developers contributed web interfaces for earlier versions of this guide and they will probably still work because the database schema has not changed. Your experience with these projects, or links to further projects, is very welcome in the comments.

Homepage: http://ima.jungclaussen.com/
Demo: http://ima.jungclaussen.com/demo/

ISPmail Admin screenshot

Christian G. has created a text-based program to help you manage your mail accounts. You may like it if you just want a little help adding accounts and setting passwords but not provide a full blown web interface.

You can find his Python script at Github.

You can also use a basic tool like Adminer to manage the tables if you don’t want to type out SQL. To set it up:

Run this on your server
apt install -y adminer
a2enconf adminer
systemctl reload apache2

Now Adminer is available as https://mailserver.example.org/adminer and allows you to login:

Adminer login screen

After login this is how the interface looks like:

Adminer main screen