+Installing SquirrelMail
+=======================
+
Table of Contents:
1. (PHP4) Configure your webserver to work with PHP4
2. (IMAP) Setting up IMAP (not covered)
to run as CGI under Apache. How you end up doing this is up to you
(your mileage may vary).
+ NOTE: The new plugin architecture required the use of some functions
+ which are not in all versions of PHP4. You will need at least
+ PHP4 beta2. If you need to upgrade please go ahead and install the
+ latest release version of PHP4.
+
a. Obtaining and compiling PHP4
Point your favorite webserver at http://www.php.net/version4/ and
The data directory is used for storing user preferences, like
signature, name and theme. When unpacking the sources this directory
- is created as data/ in you SquirrelMail directory. This directory
+ is created as data/ in your SquirrelMail directory. This directory
must be writable by the webserver. If your webserver is running as
- the user nobody you can fix this by running:
+ the user "nobody" you can fix this by running:
+
+ $ chown -R nobody data
+ $ chgrp -R nobody data
+
+ Keep in mind that with different installations, the web server could
+ typically run as userid/groupid of nobody/nobody, nobody/nogroup,
+ apache/apache or www-data/www-data. The best way to find out is to read
+ the web server's configuration file.
- chown -R nobody data
- chgrp -R nobody data
-
There also needs to be a directory where attachments are stored
before they are sent. Since personal mail is stored in this
directory you might want to be a bit careful about how you set it
permissions. You could do this by running these commands (still
granted that the webserver is running as nobody/nobody)
- cd /var/some/place
- mkdir SomeDirectory
- chgrp -R nobody SomeDirectory
- chmod 730 SomeDirectory
+ $ cd /var/some/place
+ $ mkdir SomeDirectory
+ $ chgrp -R nobody SomeDirectory
+ $ chmod 730 SomeDirectory
If you trust all the users on you system not to read mail they are
not supposed to read change the last line to chmod 777 SomeDirectory
- or simply use /tmp as you attachments directory. If a user is
- aborting a mail but has uploaded som attachments to it the files
- will be lying around in this directory forever if you do not remove
- them.
+ or simply use /tmp as you attachments directory.
+
+ If a user is aborting a mail but has uploaded some attachments to it
+ the files will be lying around in this directory forever if you do not
+ remove them. To fix this, it is recommended to create a cron job that
+ deletes everything in the attachment directory. Something similar
+ to the following will be good enough:
+
+ $ cd /var/attach/directory
+ $ rm -f *
+
+ However, this will delete attachments that are currently in use by people
+ sending email when the cron job runs. You can either (1) make sure that
+ the cron job runs at an obscure hour and hope that nobody gets upset, or
+ (2) you can run a modified version of the commands above. Check out the
+ man pages for other commands such as 'find' or 'tmpreaper'.
+
+ One sample script you could set up that would erase all attachments, but
+ wouldn't erase preferences, address books, or the like (just in case your
+ attachment directory is the same as your data directory) might look like
+ this:
+
+ $ rm `find /var/attach/directory -atime +2 | grep -v "\." | grep -v _`
+
+ Remember to be careful with whatever method you do use, and to test out
+ the command before it potentially wipes out everyone's preferences.
c. Setting up SquirrelMail
There are two ways to configure Squirrelmail. In the config/ directory,
there is a perl script called conf.pl that will aid you in the
- configuration process. This is the most recommended way of handling
+ configuration process. This is the recommended way of handling
the config.
- You can also copy the config/config_default.php file to config.php
+ You can also copy the config/config_default.php file to config/config.php
and edit that manually.
4. RUNNING SQUIRRELMAIL