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Installing hermes

To install and configure a fully working hermes, you have to follow these steps:

Install hermes
Configure hermes
Change your current SMTP server to another port

After that, please proceed to configuring hermes for stats

Install hermes

If you are going to install from source, you first need to have sqlite3 installed with it's corresponding development package (usually sqlite3-devel or sqlite3-dev). If you want to install hermes with SSL support, you also need openssl with it's development headers (usually openssl-devel or openssl-dev).

From source

If you have downloaded a .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 file, the procedure is as follows:

# tar xvfj hermes-1.0.tar.bz2  # extract file
# cd hermes-1.0                # change to the directory
# ./configure                  # execute configure
# make                         # compile
# make install                 # install

From a source RPM

If you have downloaded a source rpm (.src.rpm) you have to compile it before installing. To do so, you need the rpmbuild program.

# rpmbuild --rebuild hermes-1.0.src.rpm

After compiling, you should have a binary rpm on /usr/src/rpm/RPMS/i386 (or /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386, depending on your distribution). With this file, proceed to install the rpm.

From a binary RPM

If you have downloaded a binary rpm (.rpm), installing should be pretty straightforward:

# rpm -ihv hermes-1.0.rpm

Configure hermes

This document will show you how to configure hermes in the most common way, but if you want to read the full help for the hermes options, go to the full reference of hermes options.

Config file

The first thing you need is a configuration file. There should be an example file on /usr/local/share/doc/hermes or /usr/share/doc/hermes called hermesrc.example. Copy this file to /etc/hermes/ (create the directory first if needed)

# mkdir /etc/hermes
# cp /usr/share/doc/hermes/hermesrc.example /etc/hermes/hermesrc

Then edit the file, and let's start changing it:

# vi /etc/hermes/hermesrc

Editing the config

In this section we will be creating a new file from scratch with only the minimum required to get hermes working.
First, let's specify the user and group to drop privileges to:

user = nobody
group = nobody

Now let's configure where the greylisting database is saved (defaults to /var/hermes/greylisting.db).

database_file = /var/hermes/greylisting.db

As of version 1.2, you can also configure an DNSBL domain to check for spam. To configure, simply set the rbl_domain option to a value (zen.spamhaus.org is the recommended):

rbl_domain = zen.spamhaus.org

The only thing left is to specify the host and port with our real SMTP server:

server_host = localhost
server_port = 2525

After that, save the file and quit, and make sure that the database_file directory exists and that it is owned by the user and group we specified earlier

# mkdir /var/hermes
# chown nobody:nobody /var/hermes

If you have compiled hermes with SSL support, you have to configure the certificate file and the private key

private_key_file = /etc/hermes/hermes.key
certificate_file = /etc/hermes/hermes.cert

Now we have to generate the key file and the certificate. To do this we will use the openssl tool "openssl"

# openssl genrsa 1024 > /etc/hermes/hermes.key
Generating RSA private key, 1024 bit long modulus
...................................................++++++
.......++++++
e is 65537 (0x10001)
# openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -sha1 -days 365 -key /etc/hermes/hermes.key > /etc/hermes/hermes.cert
(at this point, openssl will ask lots of questions about your contact information, organization, and the like. Once it's over, the certificate will be generated)

Our resulting file looks like this:

user = nobody
group = nobody
database_file = /var/hermes/greylisting.db
server_host = localhost
server_port = 2525
rbl_domain = zen.spamhaus.org
private_key_file = /etc/hermes/hermes.key
certificate_file = /etc/hermes/hermes.cert

Change your server's port

Changing the port of your SMTP server is a very different proccess depending on your SMTP software, although they basically involve editing a file to change the port number from 25 (default) to another port number. This document will show you how to change the port number from 25 to 2525, which is hermes' default. If your server's software is not listed here, try to search for "<software-name> change default port" (i.e. "sendmail change default port") in your favourite search engine.

Sendmail

To change sendmail port, edit your sendmail.mc file (usually on /etc/mail) and edit the line that says:

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp, Name=MTA')

and change the Port from smtp to 2525

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=2525, Name=MTA')

After that type make to rebuild sendmail.cf

# make

And restart sendmail.
Of course, you can always edit the sendmail.cf directly, but if you know how/what to change, then you don't need this help.

Postfix

If you are using postfix, edit /etc/postfix/master.cf and change the line that reads

smtp inet n - n - - smtpd

to read

2525 inet n - n - - smtpd

After that, restart postfix.

Qmail

The easiest way to configure qmail's listening port is to edit /etc/services and change the line that says

smtp 25/tcp mail

smtp 2525/tcp mail

and restart qmail.