Other Administrative Tasks

EMAIL. BillMax relies on the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) program installed to send email in asynchronous and reliable way. The BillMax installation scripts installs Postfix for this purpose. To send email from BillMax, Postfix must first be configured. To send email reliably, a number of spam counter measures have to be implemented. These include DNS changes, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. This setup is most often achieved by relaying email through an already suitably configured mail server that the company maintains. It is also possible with much more configuration to send email directly from the BillMax host. Lastly, BillMax does offer an email service via AWS SES. Contact BillMax sales for a quote. For guidance on setting up email please contact BillMax support or the many online web resources on this topic.

PRINTING. For printing, BillMax relies on the CUPS printing system. The BillMax installation script installs CUPS but it is not configured. CUPS can be administered via command line tools or a web based console. Once a printer is configured, the printer can be specified within BillMax thereby allowing printing of various documents within BillMax (statements, invoices, receipts). For guidance on setting up printing please contact BillMax support or the many online web resources on this topic.

DNS. You may choose to give your BillMax a host name. A host name is a requirement if you install certificates (see WEB CERTIFICATES).

WEB CERTIFICATES. BillMax installs a self signed certificate. This allows https access to the BillMax web interface. Self signed certificates are not trusted by browsers so this use will result in warnings similar to “Your connection is not private”. To fully secure the BillMax interface, you should purchase and install a legitimate certificate from a commercial certificate authority or perhaps use the Lets Encrypt certificate authority. If you decide to host the customer portal on the same host as BillMax, installing a legitimate certificate for it is mandatory.

OTHER. Additional tasks that may be necessary:

Implement a backup strategy that does off site backups (at a minimum) of /usr/local/billmax, /opt/billmax, /var/www/mysql. Care must be taken when backing up the database. Either the database must be stopped or a utility program like mariabackup must be used. See Backups, Redundancy and Archiving
Change the system timezone or time on the server.
Change the system local host name.
Configure system services (Customer portal, REST API, fetchmail, FreeRadius, etc). Documentation on these systems is available elsewhere in the documentation.