INSTALL

   1 Installing SquirrelMail
   2 =======================
   3
   4 Table of Contents:
   5   1.  (PHP4)     Configure your webserver to work with PHP4
   6   2.  (IMAP)     Setting up IMAP (not covered)
   7   3.  (INSTALL)  Obtaining and installing SquirrelMail
   8   4.  (RUN)      Running SquirrelMail
   9   5.  (CHARSETS) Russian Charsets
  10
  11
  12
  13
  14 1. CONFIGURE YOUR WEBSERVER TO WORK WITH PHP4
  15 ---------------------------------------------
  16
  17   If your webserver does not already have PHP4 you must configure it
  18   to work with PHP4. SquirrelMail uses the standard suffix .php for
  19   all PHP4 files. This is a quick and dirty guide to installing PHP4
  20   to run as CGI under Apache. How you end up doing this is up to you
  21   (your mileage may vary).
  22
  23   NOTE: The new plugin architecture required the use of some functions
  24   which are not in all versions of PHP4. You will need at least
  25   PHP4 v4.0.4. If you need to upgrade please go ahead and install the
  26   latest release version of PHP4.
  27
  28 a. Obtaining and compiling PHP4
  29
  30   SquirrelMail has not been tested for use with PHP 4.3.x.  The
  31   development team does not recommend the use of this software with
  32   PHP 4.3.x until further testing can be done.
  33
  34   Point your favorite webserver at http://www.php.net/version4/ and
  35   download the source. Untar (tar xvfz filename-you-downloaded.tgz)
  36   the source, cd into the directory and run configure. To make PHP4
  37   work with SquirrelMail a commandline like this should do:
  38
  39    ./configure --enable-track-vars --enable-force-cgi-redirect --with-gettext
  40
  41   If you have a database like MySQL you might want to add something
  42   like --with-mysql to get database functionality.
  43
  44   If you're going to use LDAP in the addressbook, you must compile PHP4
  45   with --with-ldap (see the PHP4 docs for more information).
  46
  47   Run make to build the binary file. This will generate a binary file
  48   called "php". Move this file into a CGI-directory.
  49
  50   You might also want to read the INSTALL file in the PHP-distribution
  51   :-)
  52
  53 b. Changing php.ini
  54
  55   PHP defaults to look for php.ini (PHP's configuration file) in
  56   /usr/local/lib.  However, for security reasons, it is suggested
  57   that the location of this file is changed to someplace else.  This
  58   can be done at configure time with the configuration directive
  59   --with-config-file-path=PATH.
  60
  61   Edit the php.ini file and make sure session.use_cookies is 1.  Also
  62   be sure to change the session.save_path to someplace that can only
  63   be read and written to by the webserver.  session.save_path is the
  64   location that PHP's session data will be written to.
  65
  66   SECURITY WARNING - If a user has access to write PHP scripts on your
  67   system and knows the location where PHP stores session data, he
  68   could get a listing of the sessions being used and then read a given
  69   session's data with his own PHP script.  Caution should be used when
  70   setting up permissions and locations of php.ini and the session data.
  71
  72   FILE UPLOADS - Note that sending attachments will not work if your
  73   "file_uploads" setting is "Off". Squirrelmail requires that setting
  74   enabled in order to be able to attach files.
  75
  76 c. Setting up .php files to use PHP4
  77
  78   You need to create a .htaccess file in you SquirrelMail directory
  79   that looks something like this:
  80
  81     AddType application/php4script .php
  82     Action application/php4script /cgi-bin/php
  83
  84   You could also add these lines to your Apache configuration file.
  85
  86 d. Running into trouble
  87
  88   Setting up Apache with PHP4 can be a non-trivial task. Read the PHP4
  89   and Apache documentation carefully if you run into trouble. If you
  90   have an experienced system administrator around ask her/him to help
  91   you.
  92
  93 2. SETTING UP IMAP
  94 ------------------
  95
  96   This is not covered here :-/
  97
  98 3. OBTAINING AND INSTALLING SQUIRRELMAIL
  99 ----------------------------------------
 100
 101   SquirrelMail is still under development. Therefore you should always
 102   get the newest version around. Look at
 103   http://www.squirrelmail.org/index.php3?page=5 to see what it
 104   is. If you want to be bleeding edge you might want to consider using
 105   the latest CVS version (with the latest and most fashionable of
 106   bugs).
 107
 108 a. Download SquirrelMail
 109
 110   Get SquirrelMail from the address above if you do not have it or are
 111   uncertain if you have the newest version. Untar (again tar xvfz
 112   filename.tgz) SquirrelMail in a directory that is readable for your
 113   webserver.
 114
 115 b. Setting up directories
 116
 117   SquirrelMail uses two directories to store user configuration and
 118   attachments that are about to be sent. You might want to have these
 119   directories outside of your web tree.
 120
 121   The data directory is used for storing user preferences, like
 122   signature, name and theme. When unpacking the sources this directory
 123   is created as data/ in your SquirrelMail directory. This directory
 124   must be writable by the webserver. If your webserver is running as
 125   the user "nobody" you can fix this by running:
 126
 127     $ chown -R nobody data
 128     $ chgrp -R nobody data
 129
 130   Keep in mind that with different installations, the web server could
 131   typically run as userid/groupid of nobody/nobody, nobody/nogroup,
 132   apache/apache or www-data/www-data.  The best way to find out is to read
 133   the web server's configuration file.
 134
 135   There also needs to be a directory where attachments are stored
 136   before they are sent. Since personal mail is stored in this
 137   directory you might want to be a bit careful about how you set it
 138   up. It should be owned by another user than the webserver is running
 139   as (root might be a good choice) and the webserver should have write
 140   and execute permissions on the directory, but should not have read
 141   permissions. You could do this by running these commands (still
 142   granted that the webserver is running as nobody/nobody)
 143
 144     $ cd /var/some/place
 145     $ mkdir SomeDirectory
 146     $ chgrp -R nobody SomeDirectory
 147     $ chmod 730 SomeDirectory
 148
 149   If you trust all the users on you system not to read mail they are
 150   not supposed to read change the last line to chmod 777 SomeDirectory
 151   or simply use /tmp as you attachments directory.
 152
 153   If a user is aborting a mail but has uploaded some attachments to it
 154   the files will be lying around in this directory forever if you do not
 155   remove them.  To fix this, it is recommended to create a cron job that
 156   deletes everything in the attachment directory.  Something similar
 157   to the following will be good enough:
 158
 159     $ cd /var/attach/directory
 160     $ rm -f *
 161
 162   However, this will delete attachments that are currently in use by people
 163   sending email when the cron job runs.  You can either (1) make sure that
 164   the cron job runs at an obscure hour and hope that nobody gets upset, or
 165   (2) you can run a modified version of the commands above.  Check out the
 166   man pages for other commands such as 'find' or 'tmpreaper'.
 167
 168   One sample script you could set up that would erase all attachments, but
 169   wouldn't erase preferences, address books, or the like (just in case your
 170   attachment directory is the same as your data directory) might look like
 171   this:
 172
 173     $ rm `find /var/attach/directory -atime +2 | grep -v "\." | grep -v _`
 174
 175   Remember to be careful with whatever method you do use, and to test out
 176   the command before it potentially wipes out everyone's preferences.
 177
 178 c. Setting up SquirrelMail
 179
 180   There are two ways to configure Squirrelmail.  In the config/ directory,
 181   there is a perl script called conf.pl that will aid you in the
 182   configuration process.  This is the recommended way of handling
 183   the config.
 184
 185   You can also copy the config/config_default.php file to config/config.php
 186   and edit that manually.
 187
 188 4. RUNNING SQUIRRELMAIL
 189 -----------------------
 190
 191   Point your browser at the URL at which SquirrelMail is installed.  A
 192   possible example of this is:
 193      http://www.yourdomain.com/squirrelmail
 194
 195   It should be pretty straight forward to use. Some more documentation
 196   might show up one day or another.
 197
 198
 199 5. RUSSIAN CHARSETS
 200 -------------------
 201
 202   For information on how to make SquirrelMail work with Russian
 203   Apache, see the README.russian_apache in the doc/ subdirectory.