--- title: Database setup lastUpdated: 2025-08-14 slug: ispmail-trixie/database sidebar: order: 155 --- import { Aside } from "@astrojs/starlight/components"; import { Tabs, TabItem } from "@astrojs/starlight/components"; Now it’s time to prepare the MariaDB database that stores the information that controls your mail server. In the process you will have to enter [SQL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL) queries – the language of relational database servers. You may enter them in a terminal window using the ‘mariadb’ command. But if you are less experienced with SQL you may prefer using a web interface. That’s what you installed _[Adminer](https://www.adminer.org/)_ for. TODO: link to Adminer setup in a later section ## Create the ‘mailserver’ database This step is simple. Connect to the database using the `mariadb` command in your shell: ```sh mariadb ``` You should see the MariaDB prompt that allows you to enter further SQL commands: ``` MariaDB [(none)]> ``` To create the new database, send this SQL command: ```sql CREATE DATABASE mailserver; ``` ## Create the database users In this section you will create the basic database `mailserver` and two users: | User | Permissions | Purpose | | :--------- | :---------- | :--------------------------------------------------------- | | mailserver | read | Used by Postfix/Dovecot | | mailadmin | read/write | Used by you
Used by Roundcube (for password changes) | Use the _pwgen_ tool to create two random passwords for these users: ```sh pwgen -s1 30 2 ``` Take a note of the passwords or store them somewhere safe. Create the database users: ```sql grant all privileges on mailserver.* to 'mailadmin'@'localhost' identified by 'FIRST-PASSWORD-HERE'; grant select on mailserver.* to 'mailserver'@'localhost' identified by 'SECOND-PASSWORD-HERE'; ``` ## Creating the database tables By now you have an empty database and two user accounts to access it. Now you need three tables: - virtual_domains - virtual_aliases - virtual_users Let's create the entire database schema in one go: {/* */} ```sql USE mailserver; CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `virtual_domains` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment, `name` varchar(50) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ); CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `virtual_aliases` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment, `domain_id` int(11) NOT NULL, `source` varchar(100) NOT NULL, `destination` varchar(100) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`), FOREIGN KEY (domain_id) REFERENCES virtual_domains(id) ON DELETE CASCADE ); CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `virtual_users` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment, `domain_id` int(11) NOT NULL, `email` varchar(100) NOT NULL, `password` varchar(150) NOT NULL, `quota` bigint(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, PRIMARY KEY (`id`), UNIQUE KEY `email` (`email`), FOREIGN KEY (domain_id) REFERENCES virtual_domains(id) ON DELETE CASCADE ); ``` {/* */} ### virtual_domains The first table keeps the list of domains that your mail server will be responsible for. Each row in this table represents a domain. - **id**: A unique number identifying each row. It is set automatically. - **name**: Domain name. ### virtual_users The second table contains information about your users. Each mail account requires one row in this table. - **id**: A unique number identifying each row. It is set automatically. - **domain_id**: A [reference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_key) to the domain in the `virtual_domains` table. So each domain can have many mailboxes. - **email**: The email address of the mailbox. - **password**: The hashed password of the mail account. It is prepended by the [password scheme](https://doc.dovecot.org/main/core/config/auth/schemes.html). By default it is `{BLF-CRYPT}` also known as _bcrypt_ which is considered very secure. Older ISPmail guides used `{SHA256-CRYPT}` or even older crypt schemes. Prepending the password field the hashing algorithm in curly brackets allows you to have different kinds of hashes. So you can easily migrate your old passwords without locking out users. Users with older schemes should get a new password if possible to increase security. - **quota**: The number of bytes that this mailbox can store. You can use this value to limit how much space a mailbox can take up. The default value is 0 which means that there is no limit. This is an optional feature that is discussed later. TODO: link ### virtual_aliases The third table contain optional forwardings from one email address to another – or several others. - **id**: A unique number identifying each row. It is set automatically. - **domain_id**: References the domain in the `virtual_domains` table. - **source**: The alias email address. - **destination**: The email address where this alias gets forwarded to. ## Example data to play with Too much theory so far? I can imagine. Let’s populate the database with an `example.org` domain, a `john@example.org` email account and a forwarding of `jack@example.org` to `john@example.org`. We will use that information in the next chapter to play with. To add that sample data just run these SQL queries: {/* */} ```sql REPLACE INTO virtual_domains (id, name) VALUES (10,'example.org'); REPLACE INTO virtual_users (id, domain_id, password, email) VALUES ( 1, 10, '{BLF-CRYPT}$2y$05$.WedBCNZiwxY1CG3aleIleu6lYjup2CIg0BP4M4YCZsO204Czz07W', 'john@example.org'); REPLACE INTO virtual_aliases (id, domain_id, source, destination) VALUES ( 1, 10, 'jack@example.org', 'john@example.org'); ``` {/* */} Do you wonder how I got the long cryptic password? I ran… ``` doveadm pw -s BLF-CRYPT ``` …to create a secure hash of the simple password “summersun”. Once you have installed Dovecot you can try that yourself but you will get a different output. The reason is that the passwords are [salted](). Every time you will get a different hash. That prevents reverse-engineering the original password. Remember to remove that sample data before you go live with your mail server. Thanks to the _delete cascade_ you just need to remove the virtual_domain. The alias and the mailbox will be deleted automatically. This would be the SQL query you should run before taking your mail server into production: ```sql DELETE FROM mailserver.virtual_domains WHERE name='example.org'; ```