Let’s Set Up iRedMail – a Full-Featured Mail Server on Ubuntu 18.04, secure it with Letsencrypt SSL certificates and configure Thunderbird

Over time, cases of internet related security breaches have been on the rise as hackers continue working round the clock to steal user data for malicious purposes. An SSL certificate is a digital certificate that is installed on website servers primarily for encrypting data sent between the user browser and the server so that only the intended recipient accesses it. This is crucial because, without encryption, information is sent as plain text data and can easily be intercepted by hackers.

For this reason, most e-commerce stores and online money payment platformsencrypt their websites. SSL certificate also allows for authentication and ensures that information is sent to the right server and not a hacker. Over a period of time the secured websites are important from emailing point of view. Gmail often shows non secured sites as either spamming or phishing sites.

In this article, we will look at how to secure Nginx with Let’s encrypt SSL on Ubuntu 18.04. Let’s Encrypt is a free and automated SSL provided by Let’s encrypt authority. By 2018, Let’s Encrypt had secured over 150 million websites.

Let’s gets started and see how we can secure Nginx with Let’s encrypt SSL on Ubuntu 18.04.

Prerequisites

To get started, ensure you have the following:

In this example , we are going to use the domain name support.postbox.services

Obtaining the Certificate

First, install Let’s Encrypt  client on Ubuntu 18.04

sudo apt install software-properties-common 

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot

sudo apt install certbot 

iRedMail has already configured TLS settings in the default Nginx virtual host, so here I recommend using the webroot plugin, instead of nginx plugin, to obtain certificate. Run the following command. Replace red text with your actual data. 

sudo certbot certonly –webroot –agree-tos –email [email protected]  -d support.postbox.services -w/var/www/html/

 If everything went well, you will see the following text indicating that you have successfully obtained a TLS certificate.

 Your certificate and chain have been saved at   /etc/letsencrypt/live/support.postbox.services/ directory.

Find and Modify file name extension  like this :

mv /etc/ssl/certs/iRedMail.crt{,.bak}       # Backup. Rename iRedMail.crt to iRedMail.crt.bak

mv /etc/ssl/private/iRedMail.key{,.bak}     # Backup. Rename iRedMail.key to iRedMail.key.bak

Run these commands :

ln -s /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.postbox.services/fullchain.pem /etc/ssl/certs/iRedMail.crt

ln -s /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.postbox.services/privkey.pem /etc/ssl/private/iRedMail.key

After obtaining a TLS certificate, let’s configure Nginx web server to use it. Edit the SSL template file.

sudo vim  /etc/nginx/templates/ssl.tmpl

Find the following 2 lines:

ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/iRedMail.crt
ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/iRedMail.key

Replace them with (please use your own domains):

ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/support.postbox.services/fullchain.pem;

ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/support.postbox.services/privkey.pem;

Save and close the file. Then test nginx configuration and reload.

sudo   nginx  -t

sudo systemctl reload nginx

sudo systemctl status nginx

Visit iRedMail admin panel again, your web browser won’t warn you any more because Nginx is now using a valid TLS certificate.

But more often than not we need to access our emails via an application on our Windows/Ubuntu desktop or on our android/iphone devices.

There are many free applications available in market and play stores. We are configuring Thunderbird for our purpose but the configuration steps would be same for most of the clients/apps.

To configure a new mail account with Thunderbird, please click menu: File -> New -> Mail Account.

Also you can direct click on the Email button .

Add your name, email address and password in this screen.

It will detect IMAP and SMTP server automatically. If it does not detect please hit “Manual config” button and enter the email server hostname (support.postbox.services in our case)

Once you enter the server name manually, hit Re-test and it would connect to the new iRedmail server.

Cheers!!. You are now ready to send/receive emails. You can add more domains and mailboxes to this iRedmail installation. 

If you need any help with iRedmail please reach out to Postbox Consultancy Services.