Move MailCow somewhere other than web root?

Maverickz

By default MailCow installs so that it is accessible on “https://localhost”. This also means it is accessible from https://www.mydomain.com. I would like to NOT have it accessible from the outside world and also move it from the web root, so that I can host actual web pages at https://www.mydomain.com. I have no idea how to do this without breaking something. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

mlcwuser

Maverickz This also means it is accessible from https://www.mydomain.com.

No, why would that be the case? Mine is only accessible at mail.mydomain.tld…

Maverickz I would like to NOT have it accessible from the outside world and also move it from the web root, so that I can host actual web pages at https://www.mydomain.com. I

Are you planning to host those websites on the same server as Mailcow? If not this shouldn’t be an issue, just point the DNS records for yourdomain.com and www.yourdomian.com to the IP of your webhost and you should be fine…

Maverickz

No, why would that be the case? Mine is only accessible at mail.mydomain.tld…

Technically I just typed in mydomain.com (without the https://www. " and it pulled up the mailcow admin login page.

Are you planning to host those websites on the same server as Mailcow? If not this shouldn’t be an issue, just point the DNS records for yourdomain.com and www.yourdomian.com to the IP of your webhost and you should be fine…

I am hosting the web pages on the same server. This is a personal home server. Not a company/business server. So I’m not worried about dealing with slowdowns from massive traffic on both mail and web servers.

mlcwuser

Maverickz You could put them in separate VMs and then put a reverse proxy for web traffic (port 80 / 443) in front of them. That way you would only have to forward the ports used for mail communication directly to the Mailcow VM. If you really want to host the websites on the same host as Mailcow, which I don’t think is a good idea, you would have to mess with the nginx configuartion of mailcow. I’m prettysure it’s possible somehow, but not something I have done myself. I use Mailcow strictly as an appliance on a separate VPS and I don’t host anything else on it, so I can’t help with that… I’m alsoi not sure if such configuration changes could cause problems with Mailcow’s upgrade scripts. Not to mention that it might introduce security issues if it is not properly implemented.

Maverickz

I am not using VM’s, and not familiar enough with docker to really know if just using a web server docker with another instance of nginx or apache would be enough to keep them separated or if they would fight each other for port 80. I’m not sure why MC chose to put the admin tool on port 80 at the web root. All other mail server “solutions” I’ve looked at all use localhost:port or localhost/something for the admin tool.

Thanks for trying. Hopefully someone else has a way to move it.

Maverickz

Actually if it was possible to just change the port that the MC admin was listening on. I could probably install a standard installation of nginx or Apache and have that listen on the standard port 80. Yes? No? Maybe?

mlcwuser

I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m gonna say it anyways… ;-)

Mailcow is meant to be a mail server appliance and should be used as such. It is not intended to run other things like web sites on it. I strongly advise against your plans, especially if you are saying that you don’t really know how to the technologies work that it uses. Otherwise things will most likely break on you at some point, or even worse, you’re going to open the door for some serious security issues.

Maverickz

mlcwuser

I am doing all of this because the ThinkServer I have been using runs Windows Server 2012R2 which reaches EOL in Oct 2023. Windows Server 2022 requires a TPM2.0 which this older box doesn’t have. So I am looking to Linux. If I could go buy another server to do as you suggest, I would get one with a TPM2.0 and just use Windows Server 2022. So really I have no choice but to run both on the same box, OR do completely without one or the other. I have a hard time believing that Windows can easily run both a mail and web server and Linux can’t.

mlcwuser

Maverickz

You could install a hypervisor like Proxmox on this server. Then you could run separate VMs for Mailcow, your websites and for a reverse proxy.

Maverickz I have a hard time believing that Windows can easily run both a mail and web server and Linux can’t.

Sure it can be done on Linux in general. But Mailcow is designed as an appliance and if you start to mess with it’s fundamental configuration you’re in unsupported teretory. I’m not saying it can’t be done, and no offense, but if you’re not able to figure it out yourself, you will most likely also not be able to fix any issues that it may cause further down the road. So that and potential security issues, is why I would recommend to use the product as it is intended.

mlcwuser

Btw you can easily host more webapps or websites in subfolders of the main domain / URL of Mailcow without having to change the base configuration of nginx. But even that I would rather not recommend from a security point of view.

Maverickz

Btw you can easily host more webapps or websites in subfolders of the main domain / URL of Mailcow without having to change the base configuration of nginx.

Is it possible to prevent the admin page from loading from mydomain.com but still have sub pages like mydomain.com/whatever load? Knowing what I do about IIS I don’t think so, but doesn’t hurt to ask.

I have tried several other email “solutions” on Linux and haven’t been able to get anything to work yet. MC has been the closest I have been able to get thanks to the amazing interface. Of course all of them use Postfix and Dovecot underneath so maybe if I can figure it out here I can try something else. See my other thread here for details on the send/receive issues I am having. If I can’t get those resolved then moving MC to a different port will be a “mooot” point (pun intended)

mlcwuser

Maverickz Is it possible to prevent the admin page from loading from mydomain.com but still have sub pages like mydomain.com/whatever load? Knowing what I do about IIS I don’t think so, but doesn’t hurt to ask.

Never tried it, but that is something that bothers me too and this shouldn’t even be configured this way in the first pace. Not because I want to use my main domain for something else on the same server. The A record for my main domain is pointing to another IP anyway, but because that way invoking the IP address of the server also opens the main admin interface, which shouldn’t be the the landing page in the first place. Imho the admin interface should either be on a separate subdomain or in a subfolder like /admin. But that’s how the devs decided to configure it and they have their reasons to do it this way, I guess.

mlcwuser

I found this in the official documentation, which should get you going with your original plan… https://mailcow.github.io/mailcow-dockerized-docs/manual-guides/Nginx/u_e-nginx_custom/

I’m still not convinced it’s a good idea though. ;-)

Maverickz

mlcwuser

Thank you for your time. I will definitely try that tomorrow. It’s 3:15 am and I if I start down that path tonight, I will never go to bed. LOL I need to decompress a bit and get some sleep.