Installation
Prerequisites
parsedmarc works with Python 3 only.
Testing multiple report analyzers
If you would like to test parsedmarc and another report processing
solution at the same time, you can have up to two mailto URIs in each of the rua and ruf
tags in your DMARC record, separated by commas.
Using a web proxy
If your system is behind a web proxy, you need to configure your system
to use that proxy. To do this, edit /etc/environment and add your
proxy details there, for example:
http_proxy=http://user:password@prox-server:3128
https_proxy=https://user:password@prox-server:3128
ftp_proxy=http://user:password@prox-server:3128
Or if no credentials are needed:
http_proxy=http://prox-server:3128
https_proxy=https://prox-server:3128
ftp_proxy=http://prox-server:3128
This will set the proxy up for use system-wide, including for parsedmarc.
Using Microsoft Exchange
If your mail server is Microsoft Exchange, ensure that it is patched to at least:
IP-to-country database
parsedmarc ships with a copy of the IPinfo Lite database (under
the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
License), which is automatically refreshed from GitHub at startup
(and on SIGHUP in watch mode) unless the offline flag is set. No
IP database setup is required for the default configuration.
If you would prefer to use MaxMind’s GeoLite2 Country database instead, see Using MaxMind GeoLite2 below.
Installing parsedmarc
On Debian or Ubuntu systems, run:
sudo apt-get install -y python3-pip python3-venv python3-dev libxml2-dev libxslt-dev
On CentOS, RHEL, oR Rocky Linux systems, run:
sudo dnf install -y python3 python3-pip python3-devel libxml2-devel libxslt-devel
Python 3 installers for Windows and macOS can be found at https://www.python.org/downloads/.
parsedmarc requires Python 3.10 or newer. If your distribution’s
default python3 is older, install a newer interpreter (e.g.
python3.12) and substitute it for python3 in the commands below.
Create a dedicated system user, with /opt/parsedmarc as its home
directory so the directory is created with the correct ownership in
the same step
sudo useradd --system --create-home --home-dir /opt/parsedmarc \
--shell /usr/sbin/nologin --skel /dev/null parsedmarc
Create a virtualenv and install parsedmarc into it as that user, so
any files created later are also owned by parsedmarc
sudo -u parsedmarc python3 -m venv /opt/parsedmarc/venv
sudo -u parsedmarc /opt/parsedmarc/venv/bin/pip install --upgrade pip
sudo -u parsedmarc /opt/parsedmarc/venv/bin/pip install --upgrade parsedmarc
To upgrade parsedmarc later, re-run the last command above and then
restart the service.
Optional dependencies
If you would like to be able to parse emails saved from Microsoft
Outlook (i.e. OLE .msg files), install msgconvert:
On Debian or Ubuntu systems, run:
sudo apt-get install libemail-outlook-message-perl
On CentOS, RHEL, or Rocky Linux, the Email::Outlook::Message Perl
module is not packaged in the base repositories or EPEL, so install
it from CPAN:
sudo dnf install -y perl perl-CPAN make gcc
sudo cpan -i Email::Outlook::Message
This installs the msgconvert script to /usr/local/bin/msgconvert.
Using MaxMind GeoLite2 (optional)
parsedmarc will pick up the MaxMind GeoLite2 Country database if
it is installed at one of the standard system paths (e.g.
/usr/share/GeoIP/GeoLite2-Country.mmdb,
/var/lib/GeoIP/GeoLite2-Country.mmdb, or the equivalent location on
Windows). Use this only if you specifically prefer MaxMind data over
the bundled IPinfo Lite database — most users do not need it.
Install geoipupdate for your platform:
# Debian 10+ (requires the contrib component in apt sources)
sudo apt-get install -y geoipupdate
# Ubuntu
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:maxmind/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y geoipupdate
# CentOS, RHEL, or Rocky Linux
sudo dnf install -y geoipupdate
Builds for Linux, macOS, and Windows are also available on the geoipupdate releases page on GitHub.
Since December 2019, MaxMind has required a free account to download
the GeoLite2 databases (to comply with various privacy regulations).
Register for a free GeoLite2 account, sign in, then create a new key on the License
Keys page (you can use parsedmarc as the description). Download the
pre-filled config file and save it to /etc/GeoIP.conf on Linux/macOS
or %SystemDrive%\ProgramData\MaxMind\GeoIPUpdate\GeoIP.conf on
Windows.
Then run
sudo geoipupdate
to download the databases for the first time. The GeoLite2 databases
are updated weekly (every Tuesday); add a cron job or scheduled task
to re-run geoipupdate weekly. More detail at the MaxMind
geoipupdate page.