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Email with Citadel on Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)

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This guide has been deprecated and is no longer being maintained.

Citadel is a groupware suite that provides system administrators with an easy method to set up and manage email, calendars, mailing lists and other collaboration tools. It also features an automated installation process and versatile deployment options that allow the application to be scaled across multiple servers.

Before installing Citadel, it is assumed that you have followed our getting started guide. If you are new to Linux server administration, you may be interested in our introduction to Linux concepts guide, beginner’s guide and administration basics guide.

This guide also assumes that you wish to run Citadel by itself on this server on port 80 or 443 for browser-based access. Please note: If you intend to install Citadel alongside another web server package such as Apache or nginx, select the “internal” option when asked about web server integration. Be sure to specify unique ports for Citadel such as 8080 for HTTP or 4343 for HTTPS.

Prerequisites

Before beginning the Citadel installation process, it is important that you satisfy a few prerequisites. Unless otherwise indicated, all steps should be performed as root.

Configure Package Sources

You’ll need to make sure the universe repositories are enabled in your /etc/apt/sources.list file. If necessary, uncomment or add them as follows:

/etc/apt/sources.list 
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## universe repositories
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic universe
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic universe
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates universe
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates universe

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu karmic-security universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu karmic-security universe

Run the following commands to make sure your system is up to date:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade --show-upgraded

Set the Timezone

You will need to set the timezone of your server. Issue the following command:

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

If you’re unsure of which timezone to use, you may wish to set this to your timezone or the timezone that the bulk of your users will be in. Additionally, you may want to use Universal Coordinated Time (also known as Greenwich Mean Time).

Set the Hostname

You’ll also need to set the hostname for your system. This can be any name you like, but it should be something that you will remember. In this example, the machine will be named “username”.

echo "username" > /etc/hostname
hostname -F /etc/hostname

Now you will need to configure your Linode so that it associates its hostname with its public IP address. Edit the /etc/hosts file so that the first section resembles the following example. Replace 12.34.56.78 and username.example.com with your Linode’s public IP and FQDN (name.domain.com).

/etc/hosts 
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127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
12.34.56.78 username.example.com username

You’re now ready to begin installing Citadel!

Installing Citadel

Begin by installing the citadel-suite, spamassassin and amavisd-new packages:

apt-get install citadel-suite spamassassin amavisd-new

The installation process will prompt you to answer a couple of questions. Choose “0.0.0.0” for listen address, “No” for “Enable external authentication mode”, and specify your admin username and password. Choose “Internal” for web server integration and enter “80” when asked the “Webcit HTTP port” question. Finally, choose your desired language. If you need to reconfigure any of these options later, you can use the following command:

dpkg-reconfigure citadel-server

Enabling Spamassassin Filtering

Edit the /etc/mailname file to reflect your system’s domain name:

/etc/mailname 
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username.example.com

You’ll need to edit the SpamAssassin configuration file to enable spamd:

/etc/default/spamassassin 
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# Change to one to enable spamd
ENABLED=1

Start the spamassassin service as follows:

/etc/init.d/spamassassin start

Please note that you’ll finish enabling SpamAssassin support within Citadel later in the “Notes” section.

Running Citadel

Customize the logon banner for your Citadel server by editing the relevant file:

/usr/share/citadel-server/messages/hello 
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Citadel Groupware Server Login

Use the following startup script to initialize Citadel.

/etc/init.d/citadel restart

Visit the web interface in your Web browser. Using our preceding example, the Web address to visit would look like:

https://username.example.com

The SSL certificate for your Citadel web interface will be self-signed; accept it to continue. If you don’t get a login page in your web browser, you may need to start “webcit” with the following command:

webcit -d

Notes for Running Citadel

At this point, your email system should be fully functional and can be configured through the Webcit interface. When you log in for the first time as “Administrator”, you will not need a password. However, it is recommended that you set a password as soon as possible under the “Advanced” tab.

To finish enabling SpamAssassin support, select “Administration” in the control panel. Next, click “Domain names and Internet mail configuration”. Enter “127.0.0.1” in the box for the SpamAssassin host.

Lost Password Recovery

If you lose the password to your administrator account, re-run the setup as follows:

dpkg-reconfigure citadel-server

Specify a different name for the admin user and restart Citadel as follows:

/etc/init.d/citadel restart

You should be able to log in as the new admin user with no password. You may then reset the password for your original administrator account. After this is done, log back in as the original administrator and delete the temporary admin account.

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

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This guide is published under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license.