Installing Mixmaster with Qmail and Vpopmail

Installing Mixmaster

First, download the latest version from the Mixmaster site. Next, mixmaster requires a user other than root to run. The below commands create the user mix and its associated home directory, /etc/mixmaster.

# mkdir -m 755 /etc/mixmaster
# adduser -M -d /etc/mixmaster -s /bin/bash mix
# chown mix.mix /etc/mixmaster

Mixmaster needs an email account to receive email from other remailers. In this example, the address is mix@domain.xyz. Remember to subsitute your domain name as appropriate.

# ~vpopmail/bin/vadduser mix@domain.xyz -r

The above command creates the user, mix@domain.xyz with a random eight character password (-r). Next, you need to create a .qmail file to call mixmaster each time, the account receives a message. The below section details the commands to create the appropriate file and its contents.

# echo "|/etc/mixmaster/Mix/mixmaster -RM" > ~vpopmail/domains/domain.xyz/mix/.qmail
# chmod 600 ~vpopmail/domains/domain.xyz/mix/.qmail
# chown vpopmail.vchkpw ~vpopmail/domains/domain.xyz/mix/.qmail

Next, you need to install mixmaster as the mix.

# cd /path/to/mixmaster
# tar zxvf mixmaster-3.0rc1.tar.gz
# chown -R mix.mix mixmaster-3.0rc1
# su - mix
mix> cd /path/to/mixmaster/mixmaster-3.0rc1
mix> ./Install

After installing mixmaster, you need to make the mixmaster binary, setuid and setgid. This is due to qmails (the qmail-send user) calling the mixmaster binary and needing access to the files in the mix user's home directory. The following command makes the appropriate changes.

# chmod go+x ~mix ~mix/Mix
# chmod 6755 ~mix/Mix/mixmaster

Now, you must start mixmaster and update its stats. The update of stats allows mixmaster to know which remailers are operational and accept what type of messages. The below commands will start mixmaster in daemon mode, update the stats and place the appropriate start command in /etc/rc.local.

# setuidgid mix /etc/mixmaster/Mix/mixmaster -D
# setuidgid mix /etc/mixmaster/Mix/mixmaster --update-stats
# echo "setuidgid mix /etc/mixmaster/Mix/mixmaster -D" >> /etc/rc.local

Announce Remailer to Remops Mailing List

After starting your remailer, you need to announce it on the Remailer Operators List. You need to supply the mailing list a copy of the key.txt file signed with your remailer's administrator's key. This should be the same key in the file, adminkey.txt. Traffic to your remailer should pick up as various pingers confirm the configuration and latency of your remailer.