Comprehensive Guide to Install Roundcube on CentOS 7

Nov 18, 2024

Roundcube is a popular open-source webmail solution that enables users to manage their email through a user-friendly interface. If you are looking to provide exceptional IT services and computer repair solutions, mastering the installation of Roundcube on CentOS 7 can significantly enhance your offerings. With this guide, we will walk you through each step of the process, ensuring you can manage a robust email solution for your clients or your own business.

Why Choose Roundcube?

Before jumping into the installation process, let’s explore the reasons why Roundcube is an ideal choice for your webmail application:

  • User-Friendly Interface: Roundcube offers a modern and intuitive interface that is easy for anyone to use.
  • Extensible and Customizable: With numerous plugins and themes available, you can extend its functionality or customize it to your own branding.
  • Active Community Support: Being an open-source project, Roundcube benefits from an active community, providing ongoing updates and support.
  • Full-Featured: Roundcube includes rich-text editing, folder manipulation, search capabilities, and more.

Prerequisites for Installing Roundcube on CentOS 7

Before you start the Roundcube installation on CentOS 7, make sure you have the following prerequisites:

  • A CentOS 7 server: Ensure your server is running and accessible.
  • Root access: You will need administrative privileges to install software packages.
  • Apache web server: Make sure Apache is installed and running.
  • MySQL/MariaDB: A database management system to store email data.
  • PHP: Roundcube is written in PHP, so you need to have it installed alongside specific PHP extensions.

Step 1: Install Required Software

To begin, we need to install all the necessary components. Open your terminal and execute the following commands:

sudo yum update -y sudo yum install epel-release -y sudo yum install httpd mariadb-server php php-mysqlnd php-mbstring php-json php-xml php-pear php-gd php-imap -y

After installation, start Apache and MariaDB services:

sudo systemctl start httpd sudo systemctl enable httpd sudo systemctl start mariadb sudo systemctl enable mariadb

Step 2: Configure the Database

With your database installed, the next step is to configure it for Roundcube. Secure your MariaDB installation with the following command:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Follow the prompts to set a root password and secure your database. Next, log into your MariaDB server:

mysql -u root -p

Once logged in, create the database and user for Roundcube:

CREATE DATABASE roundcube; CREATE USER 'roundcubeuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'yourpassword'; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON roundcube.* TO 'roundcubeuser'@'localhost'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; EXIT;

Step 3: Download Roundcube

Now we need to obtain the latest version of Roundcube. You can download it using wget:

cd /var/www/html wget https://github.com/roundcube/roundcubemail/archive/refs/tags/1.6.0.tar.gz tar -xvzf 1.6.0.tar.gz mv roundcubemail-1.6.0 roundcube chown -R apache:apache roundcube

Step 4: Configure Roundcube

Next, we need to configure Roundcube. Copy the sample configuration file:

cd roundcube cp config/config.inc.php.sample config/config.inc.php

Now open the configuration file using your favorite text editor:

nano config/config.inc.php

Here, you will need to make several adjustments:

  • Set the database connection parameters:
  • $config['db_dsnw'] = 'mysql://roundcubeuser:yourpassword@localhost/roundcube';
  • Change the default host to your mail server address:
  • $config['default_host'] = 'localhost';
  • Adjust other settings as necessary.

Step 5: Set Up the Web Server

To make Roundcube accessible, we need to configure Apache to serve the Roundcube webmail application:

nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/roundcube.conf

Add the following configuration snippet:

Alias /roundcube "/var/www/html/roundcube/"install roundcube centos 7