Using RoundCube Webmail With ISPConfig 3 On Debian Wheezy

(Apache2)

This guide explains how to install the RoundCube webmail application on a Debian Wheezy server running ISPConfig and Apache2, and
how to enable the ISPConfig 3 plugins for RoundCube so that users can perform actions like changing their email passwords from
within RoundCube. Roundcube webmail is a browser-based multilingual IMAP client with an application-like user interface; it comes
with functions like MIME support, address book, folder manipulation, message searching and spell checking.
I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note
This tutorial assumes you are using Apache2 as the web server on your ISPConfig 3 server; this tutorial will not work for nginx. I'm
going to install RoundCube from the Debian Wheezy repositories - it is a reasonably recent version (0.7.2.9 vs 0.9.1 (current stable
version)).
RoundCube will be configured in such a way that it can be accessed from each vhost over the
alias /webmail (e.g. http://www.example.com/webmail).
If you are already using another webmail application like SquirrelMail, make sure you disable it completely or at least the
alias /webmail. If you have installed SquirrelMail as a Debian package, you can find the alias
in /etc/apache2/conf.d/squirrelmail.conf; either comment out the alias to just disable the /webmail alias or comment out
the whole file to disable SquirrelMail completely. Don't forget to restart Apache afterwards.

2 Creating A Remote User In ISPConfig

The ISPConfig 3 plugins for RoundCube work through ISPConfig's remote API. To use this API, we need a remote user. To create such
a user, go to System > User Management > Remote Users and click on the Add new user button:

Provide a username and password for the user...

... and enable the following functions:

Server functions

Client functions

Mail user functions

Mail alias functions

Mail spamfilter user functions

Mail spamfilter policy functions

Mail fetchmail functions

Mail spamfilter whitelist functions

Mail spamfilter blacklist functions

Mail user filter functions

Then click on Save.

3 Installing RoundCube
We can install RoundCube as follows:

apt-get install roundcube roundcube-plugins roundcube-plugins-extra

You will see the following questions:

Configure database for roundcube with dbconfig-common? <-- Yes
Database type to be used by roundcube: <-- mysql
Password of the database's administrative user: <-- yourrootsqlpassword (the password of the MySQL root
user)
MySQL application password for roundcube: <-- roundcubesqlpassword
Password confirmation: <-- roundcubesqlpassword
This will create a MySQL database called roundcube with the MySQL user roundcube and the password roundcubesqlpassword.
Next open /etc/apache2/conf.d/roundcube...

vi /etc/apache2/conf.d/roundcube

... and add the line Alias /webmail /var/lib/roundcube. In addition to that, add the PHP configuration to the <Directory
/var/lib/roundcube/> section (I've highlighted the changes):

# Those aliases do not work properly with several hosts on your apache server
# Uncomment them to use it or adapt them to your configuration
Alias /roundcube/program/js/tiny_mce/ /usr/share/tinymce/www/
Alias /roundcube /var/lib/roundcube
Alias /webmail /var/lib/roundcube

# Access to tinymce files

<Directory "/usr/share/tinymce/www/">
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

<Directory /var/lib/roundcube/>
Options +FollowSymLinks
DirectoryIndex index.php

<IfModule mod_php5.c>
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php

php_flag magic_quotes_gpc Off

php_flag track_vars On
php_flag register_globals Off
php_value include_path .:/usr/share/php
</IfModule>

# This is needed to parse /var/lib/roundcube/.htaccess. See its

# content before setting AllowOverride to None.
AllowOverride All
order allow,deny

allow from all

</Directory>

# Protecting basic directories:

<Directory /var/lib/roundcube/config>
Options -FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>

<Directory /var/lib/roundcube/temp>
Options -FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Deny from all
</Directory>

<Directory /var/lib/roundcube/logs>
Options -FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Deny from all
</Directory>
Restart Apache afterwards:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

4 Configuring RoundCube
Open /etc/roundcube/main.inc.php...

vi /etc/roundcube/main.inc.php

... and set $rcmail_config['default_host'] = 'localhost'; (or the hostname or IP address of your mail server if it is on a
remote machine):

[...]
$rcmail_config['default_host'] = 'localhost';
[...]
Otherwise RoundCube will ask for a hostname before each login which might overstrain your users - we want to make usage as easy
as possible.
Next install the ISPConfig 3 plugins for RoundCube:

cd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/w2c/ispconfig3_roundcube.git
cd /tmp/ispconfig3_roundcube/
mv ispconfig3_* /var/lib/roundcube/plugins
cd /var/lib/roundcube/plugins
mv ispconfig3_account/config/config.inc.php.dist ispconfig3_account/config/config.inc.php

Open ispconfig3_account/config/config.inc.php...

vi ispconfig3_account/config/config.inc.php

... and fill in the login details of your ISPConfig remote user and the URL of the remote API - my ISPConfig installation runs
on https://192.168.0.100:8080, so the URL of the remote API ishttps://192.168.0.100:8080/remote/:

<?php
$rcmail_config['identity_limit'] = false;
$rcmail_config['remote_soap_user'] = 'roundcube';
$rcmail_config['remote_soap_pass'] = 'Sw0wlytlRt3MY';
$rcmail_config['soap_url'] = 'https://192.168.0.100:8080/remote/';
?>
Finally open /etc/roundcube/main.inc.php again...

vi /etc/roundcube/main.inc.php

... and enable the jquerui plugin plus the ISPConfig 3 plugins...

[...]
// ---------------------------------// PLUGINS
// ----------------------------------

// List of active plugins (in plugins/ directory)

//$rcmail_config['plugins'] = array();
$rcmail_config['plugins'] = array("jqueryui", "ispconfig3_account", "ispconfig3_autorepl
y", "ispconfig3_pass", "ispconfig3_spam", "ispconfig3_fetchmail", "ispconfig3_filter");
[...]
... and change the skin from default to classic (otherwise the ISPConfig 3 plugins will not work):

[...]
// skin name: folder from skins/
$rcmail_config['skin'] = 'classic';
[...]
That's it; now you can access RoundCube under the alias /webmail (e.g.www.example.com/webmail). Log in with the email
address and password of an email account created through ISPConfig:

This is how RoundCube looks:

Under Settings > Account you can use the ISPconfig 3 plugins for RoundCube to modify your settings, for example...

... you can set a new password for your email account without using ISPConfig: