VExim Web UI

[MrSleeps]

I've finally gotten around to releasing a web ui for VExim2.

It's a very cut down version of the UI we use to maintain our Exim servers (which have thousands of users), basically I have taken out our business logic that you won't need and there's a basic version you can use or expand.

It's written in PHP, it's uses Laravel v13 and Filament v5 (both of which are well supported and updated regularly).

It (currently) has most of the functionality from the original version (aside from pipes, it has 0 support for pipes and never will). Email and website users have been separated out. So site/domain admins are no longer tied to having local domains on the system, any email account can be used.

Supports 2FA (which can be enforced for all system and domain admins) and also has passkey login support.

It supports generating DKIM tokens (uses the PR I made).

It supports SpamAssassin but it ties in nicely with the more modern and frankly better RSpamd which can access the API to get user preferences and check whitelists/blacklists.

Whitelisting and blacklisting can be done either by domain or by user.

It supports autodiscovery (which is how things like Thunderbird (and sometimes Outlook) automatically find the config settings for your email account when adding a new one. Though Microsoft being Microsoft it doesn't always work with Outlook. That part requires an extra vhost setup (have included an example, I think).

It also has (basic) command line functions.

I've tried to comment the code as much as possible but that gets boring ;)

It's easy to install (even have a bash install script which does all the boring stuff like composer, db migrations) and runs on any server that has PHP 8.4 (might work with earlier versions but I have only tested with 8.4 and above - also 8.3 became support updates only in 2025). The DB migrations are also reversable thanks to Laravel. I've included example configs for as much as I can)

The bits you probably won't like:

• It does change the stock VExim2 install (it modifies some of the tables, you can see an incredibly ugly list of changes to the main VExim2 tables here)
• It does away with the "siteadmin" login
• It shares the same database as VExim (cross db relationships in Laravel are a nightmare)
• It uses some of the pull requests I have recently made to work (DKIM being one of them).

Next planned steps are:

• Support MM3 (though, I am loathed to install that bloated software to test)
• Improve the API
• Release API only version (build your own client) which will link into....
• Implement the control of remote servers (there is an API only version coming which allows the same level of control as the web ui, control multiple Exims from 1 ui), we have been doing this for years but it takes time to unpick the code we use
• Notifications
• Automatic backups

Probably a few things I missed, but that's the jist of it and apologies for any mistakes, GitHub on your phone is awful.

[avleen]

The UI is honestly fantastic. Great work and congrats on the release!
How would you like to proceed here?

Your repo mentions that this is a cut down version of the existing UI for your needs. Is anything else missing other than pipes?
I'm glad the siteadmin login is gone, we should have users with admin permissions assignable.

We'd either need to add more features to your repo, or develop the ideas you've proven in the existing vexim code.

[avleen]

I'm leaning towards building those features into the vexim repo. The main advantage I see are that you can keep your UI customised to what you need without having to support all vexim users everywhere. Would love to hear your thoughts!

[MrSleeps]

Ahh thanks! Not too shabby for a weeks work (though filament did most of the heavy lifting for me). The readme needs a lot of work tho.. (as does getting to pass PHPSTANs tests). The one thing I am really not happy with and cannot work out how to fix it is having the the web-ui database in the same database as VExims.. It makes it cluttered but I cannot get it to work nicely with cross database joins (one of Laravels big weaknesses).

The cut down bit is because I literally ripped a lot of the code from the the ui and API we have at work, had to take out the company business logic code and processes from that (would probably have been quicker to start from scratch). The only thing that is missing from the original VExim ui is pipes support (I think). Once I have figured out a way to secure pipes and not have them as such a gaping security hole, I might readd them. But yeah, it does groups, aliases, forwarding, fails, blocklists, whitelists, catchalls.. Not sure if I have missed anything. I'm planning to head back through the old issues/PRs to see what people have asked for and see how they will fit.

I'm happy to proceed however, as I said somewhere I use it on my personal mail server so it's not going away anytime soon. Might be an idea to keep it in a separate repo tho (either mine or merge it into the vexim one)? Obviously, my db schema has diverged from the stock VExim one so that will need to be worked out and refactor some of my code/VExims config/schema if needs be.

I'm planning to make as much as possible modular. So the version that is currently up is the base version and gets extended from there, I have just finished a plugin for PDNS so things like DKIM get auto added to the DNS and am planning to expand the plugins for things like RSpamd, SpamAssassin (just found out you can store it's stuff in a sql database), mailing lists etc.

I'm off work tomorrow so will have more free time to document the changes I made properly and hopefully write the docs for it.

[runout-at]

You'd say that you did some changes for your new web-ui. Same here with veximpy.

Do you think there is a way to agree to a common database which fits for several gui implementations?

DB changes for veximpy

I know. It still lacks some information what each field is used for. I did add a role management, default values for new accounts per domain and some features where I have exim routers too.

Btw. veximpy uses the user_id=1 for the siteadmin. IMHO the siteadmin should have a mailbox and therefor be in the users table.

[MrSleeps]

I included a link in my first message to the tables I had changed in the vexim db, it's here

As for the other db changes, they're all in the migrations folder.. All the tables for the UI are prefixed with vw_.

Do you think there is a way to agree to a common database which fits for several gui implementations?

Not easily, as long as any migrations are reversable (mine are) then the user can choose as to what they change? Uninstall my web ui and I'm pretty sure it takes it back to the original vexim stock install (not actually tested that though).

Btw. veximpy uses the user_id=1 for the siteadmin. IMHO the siteadmin should have a mailbox and therefor be in the users table.

I ditched the siteadmin login, it's now separate web only accounts for the UI (apart from the users can login with their email address if they don't have any admin role). What's the reasoning behind enforcing the siteadmin to have an email account in the vexim system?

My UI has a roles based system:

• system_admin, which is overall control of everything
• domain_admin who can only control their assigned domains
• domain_user who can only access their account (though I seem to have broken that in my moving to modules instead of 1 big monolithic app).

I can't see the reasoning behind the system/domain admin having to have a physical account hosted on the server? They have to have some kind of email to be in the system? But then there's nothing stopping you from having that enforced in your ui and me doing it a different way in mine?

If anything, having a single easily googled login "siteadmin" (its in the docs) makes it a target for brute force attempts, without some rate limiting they can just trundle through passwords because the login is known?