In this post, you will learn how to install RoundCube Webmail on Ubuntu / Debian
Roundcube is free open-source web-based email client written in PHP. We can access webmail client in our browser, meaning that instead of using Desktop based Web Clients we can access our mailbox in Browser. It has suppoprt for LAMP/LEMP Stack, We can import mails from mailboxes like Google,Yahoo etc. It has features like Message Filter, MIME Support, Spell Checking, Folder management etc.
Requirements :
- Fresh Ubuntu 18.04/20.04 or greater or Debian 9/10 VPS Server
- Minimum of 1GB of RAM
- FQDN (Not necessary but if using a domain)
- VPS with Root Access
Step 1 : Updating your VPS
Before starting our tutorial, First we will update our VPS
apt-get update -y
apt-get upgrade -y
Step 2 : Installing PHP
PHP7 is supported for RoundCube, To install PHP7 Packages on Debian or Ubuntu servers first we would have to run some commands. By default we cannot install PHP7.x packges on Debian, for that we have to enable PPA by using the following commands.
— Do the following for Debian Servers to install PHP 7.X Packages
apt install apt-transport-https lsb-release ca-certificates
wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/php.gpg https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg
echo “deb https://packages.sury.org/php/ $(lsb_release -sc) main” > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/php.list
apt update
— Do the following for Ubuntu Servers to install PHP 7.X Packages
apt -y install software-properties-common
add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
apt-get update
Next, Run the following commands to install the required PHP Modules
apt install php7.2 libapache2-mod-php7.2 php7.2-common php7.2-curl php7.2-mbstring php7.2-xmlrpc php7.2-mysql php7.2-gd php7.2-xml php7.2-intl php7.2-ldap php7.2-imagick php7.2-json php7.2-cli
Step 3 : Installing Apache2 Server
Roundcube supports majority of the web servers like nginx etc. In our case we will be using apache2 as our web server
apt-get install apache2
Step 4 : Installing MariaDB Server
We will need a database to store our RoundCube Data which includes user login infos etc. For this we will be using MariaDB Server. Run the following commands to install the server
apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client
Step 4(b): Configuring MariaDB
After installing MariaDB, We have to configure it by running the following command
mysql_secure_installation
After running this you will be prompted some options, Do as the following image attached below or do it as the text
Set root password? [Y/n] Y
Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] Y
Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] n
Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] Y
Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] Y
To test whether MySQL or MariaDB Server is running run the following command
mysql -u root -p
After that you will see a output like this which will confirm that infact the server is running
Step 5 : Configure Database for RoundCube
We have now installed most of the packages that are required for the RoundCube Web mail Client. We have successfully setup our MariaDB Database Server. Now we can continue to configure a database by the following commands
mysql -u root -p
–– Run the following commands in the MariaDB CLI
CREATE DATABASE roundcube;
CREATE USER ’roundcubeuser’@localhost IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON roundcube.* TO ’roundcubeuser’@localhost;
exit;
Step 6 : Download & install RoundCube webmail
If you have followed the tutorial till now, You have successfully setup a LAMP Stack which is required for RoundCube, Now we can move on to downloading files and configuring the Web Mail Client
cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/roundcube/roundcubemail/releases/download/1.5.2/roundcubemail-1.5.2-complete.tar.gz
Extract the content using tar and move it to the Apache2 Web Folder
tar -xvzf roundcubemail-1.5.2-complete.tar.gz
mv roundcubemail-1.5.2 /var/www/html/roundcube
— Next step is too import the Content of the Roundcube Database to our newly database created
cd /var/www/html/roundcube
mysql -u roundcubeuser -p roundcube < SQL/mysql.initial.sql
It would give a following output, You will prompted to enter your password
Change Permissions for the files of RoundCube:
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/roundcube/
find /var/www/html/roundcube/ -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
find /var/www/html/roundcube/ -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;
Step 7 : Configuring Apache2 VirtualHost
RoundCube Mail will work on bare IP Address but if you want to connect your FQDN to your server you must configure a VirtualHost for Apache2 and RoundCube. Run the following commands to connect your Domain to RoundCube
nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/roundcube.conf
Paste the following content into the file :
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/roundcube
ServerName mail.domainname.com
<Directory /var/www/html/roundcube/>
Options FollowSymlinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
— Replace the ServerName with your own FQDN and the ServerAdmin with your own Email Address and save the file.
It should look like the following:
Enable the RoundCube VirtualHost by running the following command :
a2ensite roundcube.conf
systemctl reload apache2.service
Step 8 : Run the Web Installer
You have sucessfully configured everything required for the web client, Run the installer at link
http://yourdomainname.com/installer
1. First page you will see with all the checks, If you have done everything from above just click on next
2. On the second page, Edit the Database Settings as following
Then press next and press continue:
You have successfully installed RoundCube on your VPS. You can now delete the installer folder by using the following command
rm -rf /var/www/html/roundcube/installer
Conclusion:
RoundCube WebMail Client has been installed on your VPS. This tutorial is a straightforward method of setting up a LAMP Stack for RoundCube. Next tutorial will be for configuring IMAP, SMTP etc for RoundCube.
So, you know How to install RoundCube Webmail on Ubuntu / Debian
