Gray Duck Mail is a secure email server that can be used to host your own email system. In this tutorial, we will see how to install Gray Duck Mail on a Fedora server.
Before proceeding with the installation of Gray Duck Mail, it is recommended to update your Fedora system to its latest version.
Make sure you are logged in as root and execute the following command:
dnf update
Gray Duck Mail is written in Go language and requires some packages to be installed on the system.
Execute the following command to install these packages:
dnf install golang git rsyslog
Create a user that will run the Gray Duck Mail server. You can use any name for the user, but for the sake of this tutorial, we will use the name gdm.
Execute the following command to create the user:
adduser gdm
Clone the Gray Duck Mail repository from GitHub:
git clone https://github.com/grayducksmtp/gdm.git
The repository will be cloned in the current directory.
Change the directory to the cloned repository and execute the following command to build the binary:
cd gdm
go build
The binary will be built, which will take some time.
Copy the binary to the /usr/local/bin directory, where it can be accessed by all users:
cp gdm /usr/local/bin
Create a new Rsyslog configuration file for Gray Duck Mail:
nano /etc/rsyslog.d/gdm.conf
Add the following configuration to the file:
$template GrayDuckMailLogs,"/var/log/gdm.log"%msg%
$InputTCPServerRun 514
if $programname == 'gdm' then -?GrayDuckMailLogs
& stop
This configuration will forward the logs of Gray Duck Mail to /var/log/gdm.log file.
Create a new Systemd configuration file for Gray Duck Mail:
nano /etc/systemd/system/gdm.service
Add the following configuration to the file:
[Unit]
Description=Gray Duck Mail
After=network.target
Wants=network-online.target
[Service]
Type=simple
User=gdm
WorkingDirectory=/home/gdm/gdm
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/gdm -c /home/gdm/gdm/config.yml
Restart=on-failure
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
This configuration will start the Gray Duck Mail server during the boot and restart it if it fails.
If you have a firewall enabled on your Fedora server, you need to allow the following ports:
Execute the following command to allow these ports:
firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=smtp --add-service=submission --add-port=465/tcp
firewall-cmd --reload
Create a new configuration file for Gray Duck Mail:
nano /home/gdm/gdm/config.yml
Add the following configuration to the file:
server:
hostname: yourdomain.com
port: 25
smtp:
hostname: yourdomain.com
port: 25
certfile: /path/to/certfile
keyfile: /path/to/keyfile
banner: "220 Your domain ESMTP Gray Duck Mail"
auth:
backend: file
usersfile: /home/gdm/gdm/users.txt
passhash: sha512
storage:
backend: boltdb
dbfile: /home/gdm/gdm/gdm.db
logging:
level: info
logfile: /var/log/gdm.log
Replace yourdomain.com with your domain name and the paths for the SSL certificate files.
Create a new users.txt file:
nano /home/gdm/gdm/users.txt
Add the following line to the file to create a user with the username user1 and password password1:
user1:$6$Bcp...:user1
Replace the hash value ($6$Bcp...) with the hash of your password. You can generate the hash using the mkpasswd command:
mkpasswd --method=sha-512
Start the Gray Duck Mail server using the following command:
systemctl start gdm
You can check the status of the server using the following command:
systemctl status gdm
Congratulations! You have successfully installed and configured Gray Duck Mail on a Fedora server. You can now connect to the server using an email client and start sending and receiving emails.
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