Installing Vqregister is quite easy. The installation bares close resemblance to that of Qmailadmin or Vqadmin. That comes as no surprise since all 3 are made by the same people, Inter7. Anyway, let's get down to it.

cd /downloads/qmailrocks

tar zxvf vqregister-2.5.tar.gz

cd vqregister-2.5

With the Vqregister build directory, there are 3 files that we're going to focus on: vqregister.conf, vqregister.email and Makefile. We will want to know what these files do and then make any needed changes to them before we compile and install Vqregister

vqregister.conf - the main configuration file

The vqregister.conf file is going to contain most of the configuration settings for Vqregister. These settings will determine exactly how Vqregister operates. You will find a nice description of what each field does right inside this same file. Most of these are of a non-critical nature, but there are a few of them that you should set now. Keep in mind that all settings within the vqregister.conf file can be easily changed after the install has completed, so these settings are in no way written in stone.

AdminEmail admin@yourdomain.com

This denotes the address of your mail administrator. When a new mailbox gets created, the mail admin is notified.

AllowDomain somedomain.com

This field specifies which domains will be made available for visitors to create email addresses at. The syntax for this is one domain per line. If you want to have multiple domains, you would have multiple lines starting with "AllowDomain" and specifying one domain per line.

DB_Host localhost

This specifies the hostname of the MySQL database server in which a new database will be created. The new database will be used to store new user info. I left this at "localhost" although you can change this to reflect whatever host fits your needs.

DB_Name user_store

This denotes the name of the database which will be created. The default value is "user_store", but feel free to customize the name if you wish.

Note: When we run the installation in just a few minutes, this database will be automatically created if possible. In my experience, I've never gotten the installation to actually create the database so I always have has to go in and manually create it.

DB_User root

You guess it. This specifies the database username that will be used to connect to the database server. The default value is "root", but again feel free to customize it. Just make sure that the user you specify exists and has the needed privileges.

DB_Password some_password

The password for the user you specified above.

That's it for the vqregister.conf file. Remember that if you wish, you can customize the myriad of other settings in this file. It's up to you and remember that these settings can always be changed later.

vqregister.email - The welcome letter configuration file

The vqregister.email file is the least important of the 3 config files. All this file does is provide a standardized e-mail letter that will be sent to all new users once they have successfully created their new mailbox. Vqregister already has a default welcome letter made for you, so you don't really have to edit this file unless you want to create your own personalized welcome letter. The default message looks like this:

From: vQregister <$-CR@$-RD>
To: <$-CE>
Subject: $-CS

Hi, $-RN. The account you registered for, $-RU@$-RD,
has been created with the password $-RP. To receive webmail,
head over to http://www.$-RD/cgi-bin/sqwebmail.
To receive POP mail, set your mail client settings to
mail.$-RD, port 110, with a username of $-RU%$-RD.

Please do not respond to this message, as it has been
generated by an unattended mail box.

Send all email inquiries to the administrator at $-CA.

Makefile - Determines how Vqregister is built.

The "Makefile" is the last file that we will edit before we do the install. This file is where we are going to specify very important things such as the installation directory, the uid/gid that it will run as, the location of MySQL and a few other items.

The portion of the file that we are going to edit is going to be within the first 17 lines of the file. Here is what the first 17 lines of this file should look like for a typical setup:

#
# vol@inter7.com
#

VDIR = /home/vpopmail (the location of vpopmail)
CC = gcc
BIN = vqregister
DEFS = -I$(VDIR)/include -I/usr/include/mysql (the MySQL include location. This may vary from system to system)
LINKDEFS =
LIBS = -L$(VDIR)/lib -lvpopmail -lcrypt -L/usr/lib/mysql -lmysqlclient (the location of the MySQL libraries. Again, this may vary.)
OBJS = main.o cgi.o template.o global.o misc.o config.o register.o password.o \
vpopmail.o db.o field.o badhosts.o

INSTALL_DIR = /var/www/default/cgi-bin/vqregister (the directory where Vqregister will be installed. i.e. the cgi-bin of your default site.)
INSTALL_BIN = vqregister.cgi
INSTALL_UID = vpopmail
INSTALL_GID = vchkpw

Anything past this should not be edited.

Once you have made the above changes, where needed, it's time to do the install!

To install Vqregister, it's a simple one liner:

make all install clean

If you don't get any errors, that's it! Vqregister should now be installed! A successful installation should place a "vqregister" directory in your site's cgi-bin directory. In that "vqregister" directory you should fine the "vqregister.cgi" binary itself along with copies of the "vqregister.conf" and "vqregister.email" configuration files and an "html" directory containing the html web pages for the Vqregister tool. Since the configuration files are now in this install directory you can, as I said, go and edit these config files at your convenience to suite whatever needs you may have.

To test the installation, you can open a web browser and go to: http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/vqregister/vqregister.cgi

That URL should bring up the Vqregister interface. It's pretty easy to use, so go ahead and play around with it and add a few mailboxes. Mailboxes that are created can be removed and edited in the same manner that you would use to manage any other mailbox on your server. They can managed via Vqadmin, Qmailadmin or any other tool you may have to edit mailboxes. Pretty cool, huh?