A quick tutorial on how to configure the AutoMX WSGI script with a MySQL database like the ones PostfixAdmin and ViMbAdmin use.

I recently moved my stuff, including this site, to a new server (thanks to php-friends). I also had to set up a new full-blown mailserver with virtual mailboxes there (following this tutorial).

To allow my users to connect to their email accounts by only inputting their email address and password, I installed AutoMX (https://automx.org) from the official debian package. The tutorial uses ViMbAdmin, which, like PostfixAdmin, uses a MySQL database to represent users.
When the email client, e.g. Thunderbird, requests account data from the domain in the domain-part in the address (whatever is behind the @) trough either the open Autoconfig protocol or, in the case of Outlook, the Autodiscover protocol, this request is proxied to the AutoMX Python wsgi script, which gets the account data from the database and then outputs the XML-formatted info to the client.
So far in theory. Now on to the configuration.

Edit /etc/automx.conf:

  1. Change the main automx section to represent your host:
  [automx]
  provider = mail.domain.com	   
  domains = *

Where mail.domain.com is replaced by your actual mailserver's hostname. domains is set to * because we want to serve all domains from the database.

  1. Now we want to configure MySQL in the global backend section.
    For ViMbAdmin :
  [global]
  backend = sql
  action = settings

  host = mysql://vimbadmin:password@localhost/vimbadmin
  query = SELECT mailbox.name AS display_name, domain.domain, mailbox.username AS email FROM mailbox, domain WHERE mailbox.Domain_id = domain.id AND username=\'%s\' 

  result_attrs = display_name, email, domain

Or for Postfixadmin:

  [global]
  backend = sql
  action = settings

  host = mysql://postfix:password@localhost/postfix
  query = SELECT name AS display_name, domain, username AS email FROM mailbox WHE$
  result_attrs = display_name, email, domain

  account_name = ${display_name}

Of course, replace password with your actual database user password.

The other options are now pretty straight-forward since you can use any of the result_attrsas a variable in the configuration like ${display_name}. Here is an example for the rest of the global section:

  account_name = ${display_name}
  smtp = yes 
  smtp_server = mail.${domain}
  smtp_port = 587 
  smtp_encryption = starttls
  smtp_auth = plaintext
  smtp_auth_identity = ${email}
  smtp_refresh_ttl = 6 
  smtp_default = yes 

  smtp_author = ${display_name}

  imap = yes 
  imap_server = $mail.{domain}
  imap_port = 143 
  imap_encryption = starttls
  imap_auth = plaintext
  imap_auth_identity = ${email}
  imap_refresh_ttl = 6 

  pop = no

There are no specific sections for domains needed, so you can happily comment out the section with [example.com].

  1. AutoMX itself should work now, but we still need to configure the webserver to proxy the request. AutoMX comes with example configuration files for both Apache and NGINX (located in /usr/share/doc/automx/examples ).
    I have adjusted the Apache example like this (/etc/apache2/sites-available/automx.conf):
  <VirtualHost *:80>
	  ServerName autoconfig.example.com
	  ServerAlias autoconfig.*
	  DocumentRoot /badurl
		<IfModule mod_wsgi.c>
				WSGIScriptAliasMatch \\
						(?i)^/.+/(autodiscover|config-v1.1).xml \\
			/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/automx_wsgi.py
				<Directory \"/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages\">
			Require all granted
				</Directory>
		</IfModule>
  </VirtualHost>
  
  <VirtualHost *:443>
	  ServerName autodiscover.example.com
	  ServerAlias autodiscover.*
	  DocumentRoot /badurl
	  SSLEngine On
	  SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem	
	  SSLCertificateKeyFile  /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem
		<IfModule mod_wsgi.c>
				WSGIScriptAliasMatch \\
						(?i)^/.+/(autodiscover|config-v1.1).xml \\
			/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/automx_wsgi.py
				WSGIScriptAlias \\
						/mobileconfig \\
			/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/automx_wsgi.py
				<Directory \"/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages\">
			Require all granted
				</Directory>
		</IfModule>
  </VirtualHost>

Of course replace all instances of example.comwith your actual domain and correctly set the paths for the SSL certs.

  1. The last step is to enable the automx.conf with a2ensite automx and reload Apache with service apache2 reload or systemctl reload apache2.

Now you are all done and can test your configuration with automx-test someuser@example.com. If everything works out fine, well done! If you still have any questions (including setting up AutoMX on FreeBSD), don’t hesitate to leave me a comment!
Happy configuring!