INSTALL

   1 Sorry for the incomplete documentation at this time.  Here is a quick
   2 overview of how to install SquirrelMail.
   3
   4 1. CONFIGURE YOUR WEBSERVER TO WORK WITH PHP4
   5 ---------------------------------------------
   6
   7   If your webserver does not already have PHP4 you must configure it
   8   to work with PHP4. SquirrelMail uses the standard suffix .php for
   9   all PHP4 files. This is a quick and dirty guide to installing PHP4
  10   to run as CGI under Apache. How you end up doing this is up to you
  11   (your mileage may vary).
  12
  13 a. Obtaining and compiling PHP4
  14
  15   Point your favorite webserver at http://www.php.net/version4/ and
  16   download the source. Untar (tar xvfz filename-you-downloaded.tgz)
  17   the source, cd into the directory and run configure. To make PHP4
  18   work with SquirrelMail a commandline like this should do:
  19
  20    ./configure --enable-track-vars --enable-force-cgi-redirect --with-gettext
  21
  22   If you have a database like MySQL you might want to add something
  23   like --with-mysql to get database functionality.
  24
  25   Run make to build the binary file. This will generate a binary file
  26   called "php". Move this file into a CGI-directory.
  27
  28   You might also want to read the INSTALL file in the PHP-distribution
  29   :-)
  30
  31 b. Setting up .php files to use PHP4
  32
  33   You need to create a .htaccess file in you SquirrelMail directory
  34   that looks something like this:
  35
  36     AddType application/php4script .php
  37     Action application/php4script /cgi-bin/php
  38
  39   You could also add these lines to your Apache configuration file.
  40
  41 c. Running into trouble
  42
  43   Setting up Apache with PHP4 can be a non-trivial task. Read the PHP4
  44   and Apache documentation carefully if you run into trouble. If you
  45   have an experienced system administrator around ask her/him to help
  46   you.
  47
  48 2. SETTING UP IMAP
  49 ------------------
  50
  51   This is not covered here :-/
  52
  53 3. OBTAINING AND INSTALLING SQUIRRELMAIL
  54 ----------------------------------------
  55
  56   SquirrelMail is still under development. Therefore you should always
  57   get the newest version around. Look at
  58   http://squirrelmail.sourceforge.net/index.php3?page=5 to see what it
  59   is. If you want to be bleeding edge you might want to consider using
  60   the latest CVS version (with the latest and most fashionable of
  61   bugs).
  62
  63 a. Download SquirrelMail
  64
  65   Get SquirrelMail from the address above if you do not have it or are
  66   uncertain if you have the newest version. Untar (again tar xvfz
  67   filename.tgz) SquirrelMail in a directory that is readable for your
  68   webserver.
  69
  70 b. Setting up directories
  71
  72   SquirrelMail uses two directories to store user configuration and
  73   attachments that are about to be sent. You might want to have these
  74   directories outside of your web tree.
  75
  76   The data directory is used for storing user preferences, like
  77   signature, name and theme. When unpacking the sources this directory
  78   is created as data/ in you SquirrelMail directory. This directory
  79   must be writable by the webserver. If your webserver is running as
  80   the user nobody you can fix this by running:
  81
  82     chown -R nobody data
  83     chgrp -R nobody data
  84
  85   There also needs to be a directory where attachments are stored
  86   before they are sent. Since personal mail is stored in this
  87   directory you might want to be a bit careful about how you set it
  88   up. It should be owned by another user than the webserver is running
  89   as (root might be a good choice) and the webserver should have write
  90   and execute permissions on the directory, but should not have read
  91   permissions. You could do this by running these commands (still
  92   granted that the webserver is running as nobody/nobody)
  93
  94     cd /var/some/place
  95     mkdir SomeDirectory
  96     chgrp -R nobody SomeDirectory
  97     chmod 730 SomeDirectory
  98
  99   If you trust all the users on you system not to read mail they are
 100   not supposed to read change the last line to chmod 777 SomeDirectory
 101   or simply use /tmp as you attachments directory. If a user is
 102   aborting a mail but has uploaded som attachments to it the files
 103   will be lying around in this directory forever if you do not remove
 104   them.
 105
 106 c. Setting up SquirrelMail
 107
 108   All configuration directives you need to worry about in SquirrelMail
 109   is in the file config/config.php in you SquirrelMail directory. This
 110   file is pretty well commented.
 111
 112 4. RUNNING SQUIRRELMAIL
 113 -----------------------
 114
 115   Point your browser at the URL at which SquirrelMail is installed. It
 116   should be pretty stright forward to use. Some more documentation
 117   might show up onbe day or another.