Setting up a mail server is covered in a previous post…

Before starting I have created a copy of my VM to mitigate breaking everything and I recommend you do too, if you’re reading this.

I have a unique installation – phpmyadmin is running on another server and I would like to enable access to the mysql server running on the mail server.

On the mail server I commented out:
bind-address           = 127.0.0.1
from the file /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld.cnf

Then, also on the mail server entered the commands:
$ mysql -u root -h localhost -p
CREATE USER ‘myusername’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘mypassword’;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO ‘myusername’@’localhost’ WITH GRANT OPTION;
CREATE USER ‘myusername’@’%’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘mypassword’;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO ‘myusername’@’%’ WITH GRANT OPTION;
exit

This created a new user with ‘myusernam’ and ‘mypassword’ that has remote access to the entire mysql installation.

Back on the server, I edited the phpmyadmin config file /etc/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php and appended the following to the file (after backing up of course!):

$i++;
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘verbose’] = ‘Mail’;
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘host’] = ‘mail.myhostname.net’;
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘port’] = ”;
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘socket’] = ”;
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘connect_type’] = ‘tcp’;
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘extension’] = ‘mysqli’;
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘auth_type’] = ‘cookie’;
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘AllowNoPassword’] = false;

Then restarted the apache service on the server where phpmyadmin is running and voila! I can log into the remote mysql installation.
From there it was a simple matter of creating a new user for ownlcloud. To do that I have been following the instructions I’ve found here and install instructions for Ubuntu 16.04 here.

To secure my installation and stop passwords from being sent in the clear, I forced ssl connections in owncloud. Googled and found instructions here.
In short, edit the file /var/www/owncloud/.htaccess
In the section <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> add two lines below ReWriteEngine on:
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}

Restart apache and it should force you to use the https rather than http access.

Configuration is not covered here. However you should be able to log in and continue.