💽Installing Velocity MTA

Installation can occur on any Ubuntu Linux server with an AMD64-compatible or ARM64 CPU.

Installation must be run as root. sudo is unsupported.

Velocity MTA can run on an unlimited number of remote servers.

Velocity MTA can run on unlimited remote servers that all point back to one emaildelivery.com ESP platform installation.

Velocity MTA can run on the same server as the ESP platform.

However, Velocity MTA needs to run on a different ip address than the ESP platform. Find more information on the explanation behind this limitation here.

Download and unpack the installation archive:

Intel/AMD:

curl -LO https://github.com/emaildelivery/edcom-ce/releases/latest/download/velocity-install-amd64.tgz
tar -xzvf velocity-install-amd64.tgz
cd velocity-install

ARM/AArch64:

curl -LO https://github.com/emaildelivery/edcom-ce/releases/latest/download/velocity-install-arm64.tgz
tar -xzvf velocity-install-arm64.tgz
cd velocity-install

For Velocity MTA to start, all three configuration files must exist.

If any of these files are missing, Velocity MTA will crash with ugly error messages:

• conf/ipaddresses

• conf/receiving_domains

• conf/mta.conf

Create the mta.conf file:

cp conf/mta.defaults.conf conf/mta.conf 

There are only three settings in mta.conf:

• Platform URL

• Management IP

• MTA Password

Platform URL

This is the URL to your ESP platform installation, entered exactly as it is in your web browser. https://esp.yourdomain.com if you've enabled SSL or http://esp.yourdomain.com if you haven't reached that step yet in your ESP configuration.

Management IP

This is the IP you used to connect to this server with SSH. The "Primary" or "Main" IP.

The Management IP is NOT the IP of your ESP platform; it's the IP of the server you're on right now, where you're configuring the MTA.

The Management IP can also be used as a sending IP.

The Management IP is not "reserved", it can be used for sending email with the MTA. However, when running on the same server as the ESP platform, the Velocity MTA Management IP cannot be the ESP platform's IP address, as explained elsewhere in our documentation.

MTA Password

This password must match the password you enter in the ESP platform Velocity MTA Server configuration.

Create the ipaddresses file:

Add a list of sending IP addresses in conf/ipaddresses

These are the IP addresses you'll use to send email from on the MTA.

The format for the conf/ipaddresses file is dead simple, one IP address per line.

Your Management IP can be your only sending IP in conf/ipaddresses, or you can request multiple IP addresses from your server provider.

Make sure extra IPs are configured on your server, not just provisioned to your server.

When your server hosting provider provisions you more IPs, they don't automatically "just work" on your server. Someone has to enable them in Linux once they've been assigned. ChatGPT can tell you exactly what to do here, or you can try opening a ticket with your hosting provider and see if they will do it for you, if all else fails there's fiverr. Don't ask us, we'll just ask ChatGPT and tell you what that dude said.

conf/receiving_domains

Receiving domains will accept feedback loop complaints, bounces, or email replies and store each message as a text file in the velocity-install/mail/new directory. This is known as Maildir format.

All domains not in the conf/receiving_domains file will have email delivery attempts refused, otherwise your disk will fill up with malware, spam, and exploit attempts.

Create the receiving_domains file:

Create a list of domains to accept incoming email for spam complaints, bounces, and other replies in conf/receiving_domains

The format for the conf/receiving_domains file is dead simple, one domain per line, including subdomain if applicable.

Docker Compose is a prerequisite

This optional next step will uninstall any older Docker versions.

This step is unnecessary if you're running Velocity MTA on the same server as the ESP, where Docker has already been installed.

A Docker install script for Ubuntu is included for convenience:

./install_docker_on_ubuntu.sh

Load the Velocity MTA Docker Images:

./load_images.sh

Finally, start Velocity MTA:

./restart.sh

Verify Velocity MTA started properly:

docker logs edcom-velocity

Check the log file:

cat logs/velocity.log 

Velocity MTA is running!

You'll need to add your new Velocity MTA server to your ESP Platform to start sending email.