If you haven't done so yet download automx from its website.

$ wget http://automx.org/download/latest.tar.gz

Unpack the tar archive and change into the newly created directory.

$ tar xzf latest.tar.gz
$ cd automx-VERSION

automx is a Python application. You must install a few extra modules to handle frontend and backend communication as well to deal with XML data.

Once you've satisfied the requirements, you can start to install automx.

automx is a wsgi script depending on some automx-specific libraries. It reads its configuration from a single configuration file. The program, the libraries and the configuration file need to be installed at different locations.

% mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/automx
% cp automx-VERSION/automx.wsgi /usr/local/lib/automx/

% cp automx-VERSION/automx-test /usr/local/bin/automx-test

3.3. Installing automx-specific libraries

Python provides a directory with site specific packages, called site-packages. Copy the automx directory including all its files to site-packages:

% cp automx-VERSION/automx /usr/local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/

	site-packages
	The location of that directory depends on the Python version and the distribution you use.

3.4. Installing the configuration file

Place the sample automx.conf file into /etc.

% cp automx-VERSION/src/conf/automx.conf /etc/

Follow automx.conf(5) Adopt this configuration file to your needs. You may find detailed information in the man page automx.conf(5).

	Tip
	Set debug=yes in the section automx while you setup, configure and test automx. It will help you detect problems more easily. This will log the request GET/POST and the response to the error.log file(s).

$ manpath 
/usr/local/man:/usr/local/share/man:/usr/share/man

% cp -a automx-VERSION/doc/man/ /usr/local/share/man

Mail clients seeking mail account autoconfiguration will either request an IP address for autoconfig.example.com (Mozilla schema) or autodiscover.example.com (Microsoft schema). Provide settings in your DNS that directs them to the server running the automx service:

autoconfig.example.com.       IN    A     192.168.2.1
autodiscover.example.com.     IN    A     192.168.2.1

Finally configure the web server. It will accept configuration requests from mail clients, pass the information to automx and in turn will respond with account profiles once automx has figured out the details.

First enable the wsgi module. Follow your OS documentation to find out how it needs to be done.

automx is able to provision mail clients following the Mozilla autoconfig schema as well as mail clients following the Microsoft autodiscover schema. Both schemas have different requirements regarding hostname, port and level of security when a request is sent to the configuration server:

Here is a simple example that configures an autoconfig and an autodiscover service - both use the same automx script:

<VirtualHost *:80>

  ServerName example.com
  ServerAlias autoconfig.example.com
  ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com

  <IfModule mod_wsgi.c>
    WSGIScriptAlias /mail/config-v1.1.xml /usr/local/lib/automx/automx.wsgi
    <Directory "/usr/local/lib/automx">
      Order allow,deny
      Allow from all
    </Directory>
  </IfModule>

</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>

  ServerName example.com:443
  ServerAlias autoconfig.example.com:443
  ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com

  <IfModule mod_wsgi.c>
    WSGIScriptAlias /Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml /usr/local/lib/automx/automx.wsgi
    WSGIScriptAlias /autodiscover/autodiscover.xml /usr/local/lib/automx/automx.wsgi
    <Directory "/usr/local/lib/automx">
      Order allow,deny
      Allow from all
    </Directory>
  </IfModule>

</VirtualHost>

	ISPs
	In an advanced environment with thousands of domains, you can redirect mail clients via DNS entries to your ISP automx provisioning server for Microsoft clients and a web server instance with a wild card ServerName autoconfig.* to serve the Mozilla schema. autoconfig.example.com. IN A 192.168.2.1 autodiscover.example.com. IN A 192.168.2.1

automx comes with a little utility that helps testing proper operation. The next section explains how to use it.

The automx-test utility sends configuration requests for Microsoft and Mozilla clients to the web server:

$ automx-test user@example.com 

You should see the web server header and get XML results from the server.

If things go wrong, the error.log is your friend. It will indicate configuration issues, if python modules are missing, if your database can not be queried or anything else that might go wrong.

	Note
	If you split error logs by port, e.g. port 80 and 443, you need to check both. Autoconfig requests will mostly show up in the port 80 error.log, whereas autodiscover will only show up in your 443 error.log.