How to Install RainLoop Webmail on CentOS 7

RainLoop is a simple, modern and fast web-based email client. RainLoop source code is hosted on GitHub. This guide will show you how to install RainLoop on a fresh CentOS 7 Vultr instance.

Requirements

• Nginx
• PHP version 5.4 and above, as well as the following extensions:
• cURL
• iconv
• json
• libxml
• dom
• openssl
• DateTime
• PCRE
• SPL
• Optional PHP extension: PDO (MySQL/PostgreSQL/SQLite) (for contacts)

Check the CentOS version.

cat /etc/centos-release
# CentOS Linux release 7.4.1708 (Core)

Create a new non-root user account with sudo access and switch to it.

useradd -c "John Doe" johndoe && passwd johndoe
usermod -aG wheel johndoe
su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set up the timezone.

timedatectl list-timezones
sudo timedatectl set-timezone 'Region/City'

Ensure that your system is up to date.

sudo yum update -y

Install necessary packages for finishing this tutorial.

sudo yum install -y curl git wget vim unzip bash-completion 

Disable SELinux.

sudo setenforce 0

Enable the EPEL repository.

sudo rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

Install PHP, necessary PHP extensions, MariaDB and Nginx

Setup the Webtatic YUM repo.

sudo rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm

Download and install PHP 7.0 and the required PHP extensions.

sudo yum install -y php72w php72w-cli php72w-fpm php72w-curl php72w-json php72w-mbstring php72w-mysql php72w-pgsql php72w-sqlite3 php72w-common php72w-xml

Check the version.

php -v

Start and enable php-fpm.

sudo systemctl start php-fpm.service
sudo systemctl enable php-fpm.service

Install MariaDB.

sudo vim /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo

# Copy/paste this to the /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo file

[mariadb]
name = MariaDB
baseurl = https://yum.mariadb.org/10.2/centos7-amd64
gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB
gpgcheck=1

sudo yum install -y MariaDB-server MariaDB-client

Check the version.

mysql --version

Run the mysql_secure_installation script to improve the security of your MariaDB installation.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Log in to MariaDB as the root user.

mysql -u root -p
# Enter password:

Create a new MariaDB database and user, and remember the credentials.

CREATE DATABASE dbname;
CREATE USER 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL ON `dbname`.* TO 'username'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Install Nginx.

sudo yum install -y nginx

Check the version.

sudo nginx -v

Start and enable Nginx.

sudo systemctl start nginx.service
sudo systemctl enable nginx.service

Configure Nginx for RainLoop. Run sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/rainloop.conf and add the following configuration.

server {

    listen 80;

    server_name example.com;
    root /var/www/rainloop;

    index index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(.*)$;
        fastcgi_keep_conn on;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }

    location ^~ /data {
         deny all;
    }

}

Test the configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Install RainLoop

Create a document root.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/rainloop

Change ownership of the /var/www/rainloop directory to johndoe.

sudo chown -R johndoe:johndoe /var/www/rainloop

Download the latest release of RainLoop and unzip it.

cd /var/www/rainloop
wget http://www.rainloop.net/repository/webmail/rainloop-latest.zip
unzip rainloop-latest.zip -d /var/www/rainloop
rm rainloop-latest.zip

Change ownership of the /var/www/rainloop directory to nginx.

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/rainloop

Run sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and set the user and group to nginx. Initially, it will be set to apache.

sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf
# user = nginx
# group = nginx

Restart the php-fpm service.

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm.service

Open http://example.com/?admin in your favorite browser and login to configure RainLoop webmail. The default login name is admin and the password is 12345.