How To Install RainLoop Webmail on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install RainLoop Webmail on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, RainLoop is a modern email client created in PHP. It is quite lightweight and does not consume too many resources. It supports IMAP and SMTP and provides a user-friendly interface with a variety of features.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the RainLoop open-source, simple, modern, and fast Webmail client on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install RainLoop Webmail on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing the LAMP stack.

A Ubuntu 20.04 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here.

Step 3. Installing AbanteCart on Ubuntu 20.04.

First, create a directory for RainLoop in your webroot directory:

sudo mkdir /var/www/rainloop
cd /var/www/rainloop

By default, RainLoop is not available on Ubuntu 20.04 base repository. Now we run the commands below to download the latest version of the RainLoop Webmail script installer from the official source:

sudo wget -qO- https://repository.rainloop.net/installer.php | sudo php

We will need to change some folders permissions:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/rainloop
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/rainloop

Step 4. Configure Apache VirtualHost for RainLoop.

Now we create a new virtual host directive in Apache. For example, create a new Apache configuration file named ‘rainLoop.conf’ on your virtual server:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/rainloop.conf

Add the following file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin admin@your-domain.com
    ServerName your-domain.com
    ServerAlias www.your-domain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/rainloop/

    <Directory />
        Options +Indexes +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI
        AllowOverride All
        Order deny,allow
        Allow from all
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    <Directory /var/www/rainloop/data>
        Require all denied
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/rainloop_error_log
    TransferLog /var/log/apache2/rainloop_access_log
</VirtualHost>

Save and close the file, then restart the Apache webserver so that the changes take place:

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2ensite rainloop.conf
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 5. Set up HTTPS.

We should enable a secure HTTPS connection on PrestaShop. We can obtain a free TLS certificate from Let’s Encrypt. Install the Let’s Encrypt client (Certbot) from Ubuntu 20.04 repository:

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache

Next, run the following command to obtain a free TLS certificate using the Apache plugin:

certbot --apache -d your-domain.com

You will be asked to provide your email and accept the term of service:

Enabled Apache rewrite module
Redirecting vhost in /etc/apache2/sites-available/rainloop.conf to ssl vhost in /etc/apache2/sites-available/rainloop-le-ssl.conf

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Congratulations! You have successfully enabled https://your-domain.com

You should test your configuration at:
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=your-domain.com
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IMPORTANT NOTES:
 - Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at:
   /etc/letsencrypt/live/your-domain.com/fullchain.pem
   Your key file has been saved at:
   /etc/letsencrypt/live/your-domain.com/privkey.pem
   Your cert will expire on 2022-06-11. To obtain a new or tweaked
   version of this certificate in the future, simply run certbot again
   with the "certonly" option. To non-interactively renew *all* of
   your certificates, run "certbot renew"
 - If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by:

   Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt:   https://letsencrypt.org/donate
   Donating to EFF:                    https://eff.org/donate-le

If the test is successful, reload Apache for the change to take effect:

sudo apache2ctl -t
sudo systemctl reload apache2

Step 6. Configure Firewall.

By default, the UFW firewall is enabled on Ubuntu. Depending on your Apache virtual host configuration file, open ports 80 and 443 to allow HTTP and HTTPS traffic:

sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
sudo ufw reload

Step 7. Accessing RainLoop Webmail Web Interface.

Once successfully installed, open your web browser and access the RainLoop web interface using the URL https://your-domain.com. The default admin login credentials are:

Username: admin
Password: 12345

You should see the following page:

Congratulations! You have successfully installed RainLoop. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the RainLoop Webmail on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official RainLoop website.