Installing AnonAddy on OpenBSD

Introduction

AnonAddy is an open-source anonymous forwarding email system that allows you to create forwarding email addresses for different purposes. This can help you protect your privacy and prevent spam.

This tutorial explains how to install AnonAddy on OpenBSD, an operating system known for its security and simplicity.

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have the following:

• A server running OpenBSD (version 6.8 or later)
• A non-root user with sudo privileges
• Basic knowledge of the command line interface (CLI)

Step 1: Install Dependencies

First, you need to install the dependencies required to run AnonAddy. Open a terminal and run the following command:

sudo pkg_add node

Step 2: Download and Install AnonAddy

To download and install AnonAddy on OpenBSD, follow these steps:

1. Go to the AnonAddy download page at https://github.com/anonaddy/anonaddy/releases.

2. Download the latest release by clicking on the "Source code (zip)" link. Alternatively, you can download the release using the following command:

   curl -LJO https://github.com/anonaddy/anonaddy/archive/refs/tags/v1.8.1.tar.gz
   

3. Extract the downloaded archive:

   tar -xvzf anonaddy-1.8.1.tar.gz
   

4. Change to the extracted directory:

   cd anonaddy-1.8.1
   

5. Install NPM:

   sudo pkg_add npm
   

6. Install the required Node.js modules:

   npm install --only=prod
   

Step 3: Configure AnonAddy

AnonAddy uses environment variables to store its configuration settings. You can set these variables by creating a .env file in the AnonAddy directory.

To create a new .env file, run the following command:

cp .env.example .env

Then, edit the .env file with your preferred text editor and set the following variables:

• ANONADDY_SECRET - a secret string used to sign and verify cookies
• ANONADDY_DB_PATH - the path to the AnonAddy SQLite database (e.g., /var/db/anonaddy/anonaddy.sqlite3)
• ANONADDY_DOMAIN - the domain name where AnonAddy will be hosted (e.g., example.com)
• ANONADDY_BASE_URL - the base URL where AnonAddy will be hosted (e.g., https://anonaddy.example.com/)
• ANONADDY_SMTP_HOST - the hostname or IP address of the SMTP server that AnonAddy will use to send email messages
• ANONADDY_SMTP_PORT - the port number of the SMTP server (usually 587 for STARTTLS)
• ANONADDY_SMTP_USERNAME - the username for the SMTP server
• ANONADDY_SMTP_PASSWORD - the password for the SMTP server

Step 4: Start AnonAddy

To start AnonAddy, run the following command from the AnonAddy directory:

npm start

This will start AnonAddy and listen for connections on port 3000. You can visit AnonAddy by pointing your web browser to http://localhost:3000.

If you want to make AnonAddy accessible from the internet, you need to configure your firewall to allow incoming connections on port 3000.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned how to install AnonAddy on OpenBSD and configure it to forward email messages anonymously. AnonAddy can help you protect your privacy and avoid spam, and it's easy to use and customize.

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