How to Install Open Source Zimbra Mail Server (ZCS 8.8.10) on CentOS 7

by Pradeep Kumar · Published October 7, 2018 · Updated October 8, 2018

Mail Server is one of the important and critical Server for any organization as most of business communication done via emails only. In Open source world there are couple of free email server but Zimbra is one of the leading mail servers. Zimbra Mail Server a.k.a ZCS (Zimbra Collaboration Suite) comes in two versions, Open Source and enterprise version.

Prerequisites of Zimbra Mail Server (ZCS)

• Minimal CentOS 7
• 8 GB RAM
• At least 5 GB Free Space on /opt
• FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name), in my case it is “mail.linuxtechi.com”
• A & MX record for your Server

In this article we will demonstrate how to install Open Source ZCS 8.8.10 on a CentOS 7.

Step:1) Login to CentOS 7 and apply updates.

Login to your CentOS 7 Server and apply the latest updates using following yum command and then reboot,

~]# yum update -y ; reboot

After the reboot, set the hostname of your server, in my case I am setting it as “mail.linuxtechi.com”

~]# hostnamectl set-hostname "mail.linuxtechi.com"
~]# exec bash

Add the following lines in  /etc/hosts file,

192.168.0.108 mail.linuxtechi.com mail

After configuring the hostname, verify the A and MX is configure for your domain using dig command,

[root@mail ~]# dig -t A mail.linuxtechi.com
[root@mail ~]# dig -t MX linuxtechi.com

Step:2) Install Zimbra dependencies using yum

Run the below command to install Zimbra / ZCS dependencies

[root@mail ~]# yum install unzip net-tools sysstat openssh-clients perl-core libaio nmap-ncat libstdc++.so.6 wget -y

Step:3) Download latest version of Zimbra (ZCS 8.8.10) using wget command

Create a folder with the name “zimbra”

[root@mail ~]# mkdir zimbra && cd zimbra

Use below wget command to download the latest version of ZCS 8.8.10 from the terminal,

[root@mail zimbra]# wget https://files.zimbra.com/downloads/8.8.10_GA/zcs-8.8.10_GA_3039.RHEL7_64.20180928094617.tgz --no-check-certificate

Step:4 Install Zimbra / ZCS 8.8.10

Extract the downloaded tgz file of  ZCS 8.8.10 using the beneath tar command

[root@mail zimbra]# tar zxpvf zcs-8.8.10_GA_3039.RHEL7_64.20180928094617.tgz

Go to extracted folder and run the install script,

[root@mail zimbra]# cd zcs-8.8.10_GA_3039.RHEL7_64.20180928094617
[root@mail zcs-8.8.10_GA_3039.RHEL7_64.20180928094617]# ./install.sh

Once we run above install script then we will get text-based installation wizard, to Accept the license, press Y

Now Configure the Zimbra package repository and select the all Zimbra Components to install.

Press Y to modify the System,

After pressing Y, it will download the Zimbra related packages and it can take time depending upon on your internet speed.

Once all the Zimbra packages are installed in the backend then we will get the below window,

Now Press 7 and then 4 to set admin user password,

Now press “r” to go to previous menu and then press “a” to apply the changes.

Once all the changes are applied and Zimbra related services are started then we will get the output something like below,

Open the ports in the firewall in case os firewall is running on your server

[root@mail ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port={25,80,110,143,443,465,587,993,995,5222,5223,9071,7071}/tcp
success
[root@mail ~]# firewall-cmd --reload
success
[root@mail ~]#

Step:5) Access Zimbra Admin Portal & Web Mail Client

To access the Zimbra Admin Portal, type below URL in Web Browser

https://mail.linuxtechi.com:7071/

To access Zimbra Mail Web Client, type the following URL in the browser

https://mail.linuxtechi.com

Note: For both the URLs we can use user name as “admin” and password that we set during the installation

Step:6) Troubleshooting Zimbra Services and Logs

There can be some scenarios where some zimbra services might be stopped, to find zimbra services status from command line, run the following command,

[root@mail ~]# su - zimbra
Last login: Sun Oct  7 14:59:48 IST 2018 on pts/0
[zimbra@mail ~]$ zmcontrol status
Host mail.linuxtechi.com
        amavis                  Running
        antispam                Running
        antivirus               Running
        dnscache                Running
        imapd                   Running
        ldap                    Running
        logger                  Running
        mailbox                 Running
        memcached               Running
        mta                     Running
        opendkim                Running
        proxy                   Running
        service webapp          Running
        snmp                    Running
        spell                   Running
        stats                   Running
        zimbra webapp           Running
        zimbraAdmin webapp      Running
        zimlet webapp           Running
        zmconfigd               Running
[zimbra@mail ~]$

To restart the Zimbra Services use the following command,

[zimbra@mail ~]$ zmcontrol restart
Host mail.linuxtechi.com
        Stopping zmconfigd...Done.
        Stopping imapd...Done.
        Stopping zimlet webapp...Done.
        Stopping zimbraAdmin webapp...Done.
        Stopping zimbra webapp...Done.
        Stopping service webapp...Done.
        Stopping stats...Done.
        Stopping mta...Done.
        Stopping spell...Done.
        Stopping snmp...Done.
        Stopping cbpolicyd...Done.
        Stopping archiving...Done.
        Stopping opendkim...Done.
        Stopping amavis...Done.
        Stopping antivirus...Done.
        Stopping antispam...Done.
        Stopping proxy...Done.
        Stopping memcached...Done.
        Stopping mailbox...Done.
        Stopping logger...Done.
        Stopping dnscache...Done.
        Stopping ldap...Done.
Host mail.linuxtechi.com
        Starting ldap...Done.
        Starting zmconfigd...Done.
        Starting dnscache...Done.
        Starting logger...Done.
        Starting mailbox...Done.
        Starting memcached...Done.
        Starting proxy...Done.
        Starting amavis...Done.
        Starting antispam...Done.
        Starting antivirus...Done.
        Starting opendkim...Done.
        Starting snmp...Done.
        Starting spell...Done.
        Starting mta...Done.
        Starting stats...Done.
        Starting service webapp...Done.
        Starting zimbra webapp...Done.
        Starting zimbraAdmin webapp...Done.
        Starting zimlet webapp...Done.
        Starting imapd...Done.
[zimbra@mail ~]$

All the log files for Zimbra server are kept under the folder “/opt/zimbra/log”

Note: In my case postfix was already installed and running on my centos 7 server because of that Zimbra MTA service was getting stopped and failed. To resolve this issue, I have to stopped and disable the postfix service and then restart Zimbra service using the “zmcontrol” command.

When you are done with Zimbra testing and want to uninstall it from the system, then run the “install.sh” script followed by “-u”

[root@mail ~]# cd /root/zimbra/zcs-8.8.10_GA_3039.RHEL7_64.20180928094617
[root@mail zcs-8.8.10_GA_3039.RHEL7_64.20180928094617]# ./install.sh -u

That’s conclude this article. If you find it informative please do share this among your Linux technical friends and share the feedback and comments in the comment section below.