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Installing Mailtrain on an Ubuntu Instance

Reviewed on 08 June 2023 • Published on 20 December 2021

compute
mail
newsletter
Mailtrain
Ubuntu

Mailtrain is a self-hosted open-source newsletter application built in Node.js and using MariaDB as datastore.

Security & Identity (IAM):

You may need certain IAM permissions to carry out some actions described on this page. This means:

you are the Owner of the Scaleway Organization in which the actions will be carried out, or
you are an IAM user of the Organization, with a policy granting you the necessary permission sets

Requirements:

You have an account and are logged into the Scaleway console
You have configured your SSH key
You have created an Instance running Ubuntu Bionic or later
You have sudo privileges or access to the root user
You have unlocked the SMTP ports

Preparing the server

Connect to your server via SSH.
Install sudo on the server:
```
apt install sudo
```
Create a regular user account with sudo access and switch into it. Replace my_new_user with your username.
```
adduser my_new_user --gecos "My New User"
usermod -aG sudo my_new_user
su - my_new_user
```
Update the already installed software on the system to the latest version:
```
sudo apt update && apt upgrade -y
```

Install the required tools:

sudo apt install -y build-essential unzip

Install Node.js and NPM:

sudo curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_14.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt install -y nodejs

Installing Postfix

To send Mail from your server, an SMTP server is required.

Install Postfix via apt:
```
sudo apt install -y postfix
```
When asked choose Internet Site in the list of options:
Enter the mail name for your Instance and confirm. The mail name should be a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) resolving to your Instance’s IP address:

Installing MariaDB

Download the MariaDB repositories to make sure you have the latest version of the database engine available:
```
sudo curl -sS https://downloads.mariadb.com/MariaDB/mariadb_repo_setup | sudo bash
```
Install MariaDB, an open source MySQL fork:
```
sudo apt install -y mariadb-server
```
Initialize the MariaDB server:
```
sudo  mysql_secure_installation
```
Connect to the database server as root user with the password you have set previously:
```
mysql -u root -p
```
Create an empty database for Mailtrain:
```
CREATE DATABASE mailtrain;
```
Create a database user for Mailtrain and grant all privileges of the database to the user. Then create another user with read-only access to the database:
```
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mailtrain.* TO mailtrain_user@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'user_password';
GRANT SELECT ON mailtrain.* TO mt_readonly@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'readonly_password';
```
Note:
Replace the demo user and password in the commands above with your preferred username and password.
Flush the new privileges and leave the database prompt:
```
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;
```

Installing Nginx

Install nginx via apt:
```
sudo apt install -y nginx
```

Create three configuration files for Nginx:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/mailtrain.example.com.conf
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/sbox-mailtrain.example.com.conf
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/newsletter.example.com.conf

and put the following content into it:

mailtrain.example.com.conf

  server {
      listen [::]:80;
      listen 80;
      server_name mailtrain.example.com;
      charset utf-8;
      client_max_body_size 50M;
      location / {
          proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
          proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
          proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
          proxy_http_version 1.1;
          proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
          proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
          proxy_next_upstream error timeout http_502 http_503 http_504;
      }
  }

sbox-mailtrain.example.com.conf

server {
        listen 80;
        server_name sbox-mailtrain.example.com;
        access_log /var/log/nginx/sbox-mailtrain.access;
        error_log /var/log/nginx/sbox-mailtrain.error;
      location / {
          proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3003;
          proxy_set_header Host $host;
          proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
          proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      }
}

newsletter.example.com.conf*

server {
        listen 80;
        server_name newsletter.example.com;
        access_log /var/log/nginx/newsletter.access;
        error_log /var/log/nginx/newsletter.error;
      location / {
          proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3004;
          proxy_set_header Host $host;
          proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
          proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      }
}

Activate the configuration by linking the files in the sites-enabled directory:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/mailtrain.example.com.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/sbox-mailtrain.example.com.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/newsletter.example.com.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Reload the nginx configuration to enable the new virtual host:
```
sudo systemctl reload nginx.service
```

Important:

Remember to replace mailtrain.example.com with the domain name you want to use for your Mailtrain installation. Optionally, you can encrypt the HTTP traffic by using a free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt.

Installing Mailtrain

Enter the www directory:
```
cd /var/www/
```

Download and unzip Mailtrain:

wget https://github.com/Mailtrain-org/mailtrain/archive/refs/tags/v2.20210609.0.zip
unzip v2.20210609.0.zip
rm v2.20210609.0.zip
mv mailtrain-2.20210609.0 mailtrain

Change the ownership of the directory to your Mailtrain user:
```
chown -R my_new_user:my_new_user /var/www/mailtrain
```
Enter the Mailtrain directory:
```
cd mailtrain
```
Import the database scheme into the Mailtrain database using the following command. Remember to replace mailtrain_user with your database user.
```
mysql -u mailtrain_user -p mailtrain < ./server/setup/sql/mailtrain.sql
```
Create a production.yaml file by opening it in a text editor. This file allows you to overwrite the default configuration values in the file ./server/config/default.yaml.
```
nano ./server/config/production.yaml
```

Copy the following configuration into the file and edit it towards your requirements. Then save the file and exit the text editor:

  user: my_new_user
  group: my_new_user
  roUser: nobody
  roGroup: nobody
  www:
    host: 127.0.0.1
    proxy: true
    secret: "Enter secret and random text here"
    trustedUrlBase: http://mailtrain.example.com
    sandboxUrlBase: http://sbox-mailtrain.example.com
    publicUrlBase: http://newsletter.example.com
  mysql:
    user: mailtrain_user
    password: user_password
    database: mailtrain
  redis:
    enabled: true
  log:
    level: info
  builtinZoneMTA:
    enabled: false
  queue:
    processes: 5

Note:

The Mailtrain configuration requires you to specify the following URL endpoints.

mailtrain.example.com: The configuration interface for logged-in users.
sbox-mailtrain.example.com: This is used to host template editors. This URL is not shown to any user.
newsletter.example.com: The public URL as seen by visitors.

Create a configuration file for the report worker by opening it in a text editor like nano.
```
sudo nano ./server/services/workers/reports/config/production.yaml
```

Copy the following configuration in the editor, save the file and exit.

log:
  level: warn
mysql:
  user: mailtrain_user
  password: user_password
  database: mailtrain

Install the required Node packages by running the following command:

for idx in client shared server mvis/client mvis/server mvis/test-embed mvis/ivis-core/client mvis/ivis-core/server mvis/ivis-core/shared mvis/ivis-core/embedding; do
(cd $idx && npm install)
done

Tip:

Do not use sudo when running the command above.

Building Mailtrain

Change into the client directory from the mailtrain main directory:
```
cd client
```
Run the following command to build the application:
```
npm run build
```

Set the permissions of the config directory:

sudo chmod o-rwx /var/www/mailtrain/server/config/

Create a systemd service file for Mailtrain by opening it in a text editor like nano:
```
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/mailtrain.service
```

Copy the following configuration into the file, save it and exit the text editor:

[Unit]
Description=Mailtrain server
After=syslog.target network.target mariadb.service redis-server.service
[Service]
Environment="NODE_ENV=production"
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/mailtrain/server
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node index.js
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable and start the Mailtrain service:

sudo systemctl enable --now mailtrain.service

Accessing the Mailtrain web interface

Open your web browser and type the domain name of your Mailtrain Instance.
Click Login in the top bar to connect to Mailtrain.
Login with the username admin and password test. _Do not forget to change the password after your first login._2. Click Login in the top bar to connect to Mailtrain.
Login with the username admin and password test. Do not forget to change the password after your first login.

You have now specified other parameters like your company name, service URL etc. before starting your first e-marketing campaign. For more information on how to plan your campaigns, refer to the official documentation.

Tip:

Encrypt connections to your Mailtrain, by enabling HTTPS and by using a Let’s Encrypt TLS certificate.