How to Install Piler on FreeBSD

Piler is an open-source email archiving and retrieval software with integrated full-text search engine. It can be used to archive emails from various email servers and clients. In this tutorial, we will learn how to install Piler on FreeBSD.

Prerequisites

Before we begin with the installation process, make sure that you have the following prerequisites:

• A FreeBSD operating system installed on your system
• A user account with sudo privileges
• 2GB of RAM and 2GHz CPU or higher
• At least 20GB of disk space

Step 1: Update the System

Before installing any package, it's necessary to update the system packages. To do so, run the following command:

sudo pkg update && sudo pkg upgrade

Step 2: Install Required Packages

Piler requires some external dependencies to be installed on your system. You can install them using the following command:

sudo pkg install mysql57-client pcre2 libicu graphviz p5-DBD-mysql p5-DBI p5-XML-Parser nginx php74 php74-fpm php74-mysqli php74-dom php74-mbstring

Step 3: Download Piler from the Official Website

Next, we need to download the Piler archive file from their official website. You can download the latest version by visiting the following URL:

https://bitbucket.org/jsuto/piler/downloads/piler-x.y.z.tar.gz

Replace x.y.z with the latest version number.

wget https://bitbucket.org/jsuto/piler/downloads/piler-x.y.z.tar.gz
tar -xvzf piler-x.y.z.tar.gz
sudo mv piler-x.y.z /usr/local/piler

Step 4: Create a MySQL Database for Piler

Now we need to create a MySQL database for the Piler. To do so, run the following commands:

sudo mysql -uroot

CREATE DATABASE piler;
CREATE USER 'piler'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON piler.* TO 'piler'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
QUIT;

Replace your-password with the actual password.

Step 5: Configure Piler

Next, we need to configure the Piler. To do so, copy the config/piler.conf.sample to config/piler.conf file and configure it for your system.

cd /usr/local/piler
cp config/piler.conf.sample config/piler.conf
sudo vi config/piler.conf

Configure the following parameters:

MySQL:
    Hostname: localhost
    Port: 3306
    Database: piler
    User: piler
    Password: your-password

Index:
    Path: /usr/local/piler/var/search

Step 6: Create User and Group for Piler

Now we need to create a system user and group for the Piler.

sudo pw useradd piler -s /sbin/nologin -d /usr/local/piler
sudo pw groupadd piler -g 901
sudo chown -R piler:piler /usr/local/piler

Step 7: Configure Nginx

We need to configure Nginx to run the Piler web interface. Create a new Nginx virtual host configuration file with the following content:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name piler.example.com;

    root /usr/local/piler/www;

    # access log and error log
    access_log /usr/local/piler/var/log/access.log;
    error_log /usr/local/piler/var/log/error.log;

    location / {
        index index.php;
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri /index.php =404;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_read_timeout 1200;
    }
}

Save the file and restart Nginx:

sudo sysrc nginx_enable=yes
sudo service nginx start

Step 8: Start Piler

Finally, start the Piler service using the following command:

sudo -u piler /usr/local/piler/bin/piler -c /usr/local/piler/config/piler.conf -l /usr/local/piler/var/log/piler.log start

You may also want to add this command to the system startup by adding the following line to the /etc/rc.conf file:

piler_enable="YES"
piler_user="piler"
piler_flags="-c /usr/local/piler/config/piler.conf -l /usr/local/piler/var/log/piler.log"

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Piler on your FreeBSD server. Now you can start archiving and retrieving your emails with Piler.

If you want to self-host in an easy, hands free way, need an external IP address, or simply want your data in your own hands, give IPv6.rs a try!

Alternatively, for the best virtual desktop, try Shells!