The following content is adapted from the Dada Mail Manual. The Dada Mail Manual is available through the purchase of Pro Dada.

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Advanced Installation

Advanced Installation of Dada Mail

We're going to move pretty quickly while talking about the advanced installation method of Dada Mail.

The main difference between the basic and advanced methods of installing Dada Mail is that the advanced method saves its configuration in an outside configuration file called, .dada_config and we're setting up multiple directories to save different types of file in.

Saving the configuration this way makes upgrading a lot easier and allows you to keep track of your global configuration changes.

In these directions, I'll be giving examples of shell commands you may issue to complete each step. They may need to be slightly modify to work with your particular environment. Noting too tricky, though.

Too Advanced?

If these instructions are too advanced for you, there is an alternative way to install Dada Mail, called the Semi-Automatic Advanced Installation method. It doesn't work on all hosting account setups, but it works on a surprisingly large pool of them. It's a bit of an experiment, but give it a try if the below is over your head.

Step #1 Upload Dada Mail onto Your Hosting Account

(If this step is going at too quick of a pace, try doing steps, #1, #2, #5 and #6 but skip steps #3 and #4 of the Basic Installation Method)

Download Dada Mail at:

https://dadamailproject.com/download

Either uncompress the distribution on your desktop and upload the, dada directory into your cgi-bin, or,

upload the .tar.gz distribution itself into your cgi-bin and uncompress on your hosting account (you'll need an ssh connection).

 gunzip dada-3_x_x.tar.gz; tar -xvf dada-3_x_x.tar; cd dada

Change the permissions of the, mail.cgi file to, 755:

 chmod 755 mail.cgi

Visit the, mail.cgi script in your web browser. You should see the following screen:


Dada Mail, complaining that it has not been configured.

Note the URL that you used to access the mail.cgi script. We'll be using that later.

Step #2 Create the .dada_files directory and directory hierarchy

In your home directory (preferably), create a directory called, .dada_files. In this directory, create the following directories:

You may use the following command:

 cd; mkdir .dada_files; cd .dada_files; mkdir .archives .backups \
 .configs  .lists .logs .templates .tmp

Step #3 Create the .dada_config file

A ready-to-use copy of the .dada_config file is located in the, dada/extras/examples/example_dada_config.txt file. Copy the file/contents from this file into the .dada_files/.configs directory we just set up, in a file named, .dada_config

 cd; cp public_html/cgi-bin/dada/extras/examples/example_dada_config.txt .dada_files/.configs/.dada_config

In the above command, public_html/cgi-bin/dada is the path to the dada directory, inside the cgi-bin - change to fit your environment.

Step #4 Edit the .dada_config file

To start off, the .dada_config file needs two variables changed and they are the first two variables on top of the file. They are:

$PROGRAM_ROOT_PASSWORD - The Dada Mail Root Password

You'll also want to set the main, Dada Mail Root Password for Dada Mail in the .dada_config file. It's saved in the variable, $PROGRAM_ROOT_PASSWORD. There's two ways to do this:

The first is to set the, $PROGRAM_ROOT_PASSWORD variable to the Dada Mail Root Password you'd like to use:

 # Start Root Password
 
 $PROGRAM_ROOT_PASSWORD    = 'sneaky';
 $ROOT_PASS_IS_ENCRYPTED   = 0;
 
 # End Root Password

Easy enough.

The second method is to set an encrypted version of our Dada Mail Root Password. This is what we seriously recommend.

To do so, visit your Dada Mail (in your web browser, go to the URL you're setting in the $PROGRAM_URL variable) with this query string: ?f=pass_gen. You're entire URL will look like this:

http://example.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi?f=pass_gen

if, http://example.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi is the URL to your Dada Mail.

Follow the instructions to encrypt your Dada Mail Root Password. You'll want to set the encrypted Dada Mail Root Password in the, $PROGRAM_ROOT_PASSWORD variable as well as setting the, $ROOT_PASS_IS_ENCRYPTED to, 1:

 # Start Root Password
 
 $PROGRAM_ROOT_PASSWORD    = '8PnbnHfLVeBra';
 $ROOT_PASS_IS_ENCRYPTED   = 1;
 
 # End Root Password

We are done setting up and configuring the .dada_config file -

but do feel free to add to this outside configuration file whenever you like - most any variable located in the Config.pm file can be added to this file. Any variable you do add, overrides the value you set in the Config.pm itself. Think of the Config.pm file as where the default configuration of Dada Mail lives and your outside configuration file (.dada_config) is where you'll want to set your customizations to make Dada Mail work with your own setup.

Step #5 Setting up the Config.pm file

The only thing the Config.pm file needs to know, is the directory the .dada_config file lives in. If you set the $DIR variable inside the .dada_config file to,

 /home/example/.dada_files

the directory it lives in will be:

 /home/example/.dada_files/.configs

Open up the Config.pm file that's located in the dada/DADA directory and set the variable named, $PROGRAM_CONFIG_FILE_DIR to the directory the outside config file lives in, like so:

 $PROGRAM_CONFIG_FILE_DIR = '/home/example/.dada_files/.configs';


Setting the, $PROGRAM_CONFIG_FILE_DIR variable in the Config.pm file

Save your changes.

Visit the, mail.cgi script in your web browser again. If everything worked correctly, you should see the following screen:


If you installed and configured Dada Mail correctly, you should see the screen above. Good Job!

Congrats!

 

 

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