Installing on Debian / Ubuntu Linux

Introduction

AfterLogic WebMail Lite can be automatically installed and configured on Ubuntu Linux, Debian Linux or any compatible Linux distribution.

It was tested on: Ubuntu 20.04 - 23.10, Debian 11 and 12. It should also work on Linux Mint as well as other compatible flavors of Linux, as long as those provide the following dependencies: Apache 2, PHP 7.4 or newer, MySQL 5.7.8 or newer / MariaDB 10.2.7 or newer, with mysqlnd driver.

In case if any components are not detected on the system, they will be automatically deployed from OS repository as dependencies.

NB: This package uses Apache webserver. Check this page if you wish to use Nginx instead.

By default, the package assumes PHP is used as Apache module. But if the system is already configured for PHP-FPM, this case is automatically supported as well.

Configuring repository access

To have the product installed, add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://apt.afterlogic.com/stable /

All the commands mentioned below must be run with superuser privileges. If you’re logged in as regular user, use su command on Debian or sudo su on Ubuntu to get full privileges. In case of Ubuntu, you can add sudo in front of a single command to get superuser privileges temporarily.

Install public key of our repository using the following commands:

curl -s http://apt.afterlogic.com/afterlogic.asc | sudo gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring gnupg-ring:/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/afterlogic.gpg --import
chmod 644 /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/afterlogic.gpg

apt install gpg
curl -s http://apt.afterlogic.com/afterlogic.asc | gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring gnupg-ring:/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/afterlogic.gpg --import
chmod 644 /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/afterlogic.gpg

Alternately, you can use a single legacy command (deprecated in newer Debian/Ubuntu releases):

wget -qO - http://apt.afterlogic.com/afterlogic.asc | apt-key add -

Update APT cache with:

apt update

Installing the package

To install the product package, run the following command:

apt install afterlogic-lite

Once WebMail is installed, it can be accessed at http://yourdomain.com/afterlogic/ address, or http://localhost/afterlogic/ for local access.

To configure the installation, you can log into /adminpanel/ as superadmin user, default password is empty.

The product itself resides under /usr/share/afterlogic directory. Webserver configuration file is found at /etc/afterlogic/apache.conf with symlinks /etc/apache2/conf-available/afterlogic.conf and /etc/apache2/conf-enabled/afterlogic.conf created for it.

Virtual host setup for SSL

Default Apache configuration for the package doesn't set a separate hostname, it only points to a subdirectory of the default host. So if you have somedomain.com pointing to the server, you would need to enable SSL for that domain and its hostname, not for WebMail Lite itself.

Another option is to create a separate entry under /etc/apache2/sites-available directory, copy /etc/afterlogic/apache.conf file to /etc/apache2/sites-available/webmail.conf, remove Alias line from it and surround the rest as follows:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName webmail.somedomain.com
        DocumentRoot /usr/share/afterlogic
        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/webmail.somedomain.error.log
        LogLevel warn
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/webmail.somedomain.access.log combined
...
</VirtualHost>

Disable the default afterlogic.conf setup and enable the above configuration:

a2disconf afterlogic
a2ensite webmail.somedomain
service apache2 restart

Make sure WebMail Lite can be accessed at http://webmail.somedomain.com and then proceed with setting up SSL for the installation, e.g. via Certbot:

certbot -d webmail.somedomain.com

Upgrading the product installation

The product is upgraded in the standard way using APT repository. If you wish to check whether there are updates for any of the packages you have installed, run the following:

apt update
apt upgrade

Or do that specifically for WebMail Lite package:

apt update
apt install afterlogic-lite

If new version is available, it will be installed, preserving the product configuration.

NB: In version 9.7.7 database structure was significantly changed with regard to contacts. If you're upgrading from a version prior to 9.7.7, be sure to run the following script to migrate the contacts:

php /usr/share/afterlogic/dev/migrate-contacts-to-dav-cards.php

Troubleshooting

If you encounter an issue when creating tables or accessing MySQL database, there is a solution: The server requested authentication method unknown to the client

NB: Starting from 8.3.7, mod_rewrite is enabled automatically for new installs but when upgrading the package you may still need to perform the below configuration manually.

In v8.3.5, CSRF protection was substantially revised and may require web server reconfiguration. We're now shipping .htaccess file to ensure authentication headers are sent through, but if you're getting Error 500, that may mean you have mod_rewrite disabled. To correct that, run the following as super user:

a2enmod rewrite
service apache2 restart

And if you receive "Cookies need to be updated. To continue, please click here or reload this page." message, make sure .htaccess file is actually read by the web server. Read more on this at CSRF protection documentation page.

Uninstalling WebMail

To uninstall WebMail Lite completely, run:

apt purge afterlogic-lite

Feedback

If you encounter any issues, feel free to post reports at the Aurora Issue tracker.