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 a. Obtaining and compiling PHP4
  24
  25   Point your favorite webserver at http://www.php.net/version4/ and
  26   download the source. Untar (tar xvfz filename-you-downloaded.tgz)
  27   the source, cd into the directory and run configure. To make PHP4
  28   work with SquirrelMail a commandline like this should do:
  29
  30    ./configure --enable-track-vars --enable-force-cgi-redirect --with-gettext
  31
  32   If you have a database like MySQL you might want to add something
  33   like --with-mysql to get database functionality.
  34
  35   If you're going to use LDAP in the addressbook, you must compile PHP4
  36   with --with-ldap (see the PHP4 docs for more information).
  37
  38   Run make to build the binary file. This will generate a binary file
  39   called "php". Move this file into a CGI-directory.
  40
  41   You might also want to read the INSTALL file in the PHP-distribution
  42   :-)
  43
  44 b. Changing php.ini
  45
  46   PHP defaults to look for php.ini (PHP's configuration file) in
  47   /usr/local/lib.  However, for security reasons, it is suggested
  48   that the location of this file is changed to someplace else.  This
  49   can be done at configure time with the configuration directive
  50   --with-config-file-path=PATH.
  51
  52   Edit the php.ini file and make sure session.use_cookies is 1.  Also
  53   be sure to change the session.save_path to someplace that can only
  54   be read and written to by the webserver.  session.save_path is the
  55   location that PHP's session data will be written to.
  56
  57   SECURITY WARNING - If a user has access to write PHP scripts on your
  58   system and knows the location where PHP stores session data, he
  59   could get a listing of the sessions being used and then read a given
  60   session's data with his own PHP script.  Caution should be used when
  61   setting up permissions and locations of php.ini and the session data.
  62
  63 c. Setting up .php files to use PHP4
  64
  65   You need to create a .htaccess file in you SquirrelMail directory
  66   that looks something like this:
  67
  68     AddType application/php4script .php
  69     Action application/php4script /cgi-bin/php
  70
  71   You could also add these lines to your Apache configuration file.
  72
  73 d. Running into trouble
  74
  75   Setting up Apache with PHP4 can be a non-trivial task. Read the PHP4
  76   and Apache documentation carefully if you run into trouble. If you
  77   have an experienced system administrator around ask her/him to help
  78   you.
  79
  80 2. SETTING UP IMAP
  81 ------------------
  82
  83   This is not covered here :-/
  84
  85 3. OBTAINING AND INSTALLING SQUIRRELMAIL
  86 ----------------------------------------
  87
  88   SquirrelMail is still under development. Therefore you should always
  89   get the newest version around. Look at
  90   http://www.squirrelmail.org/index.php3?page=5 to see what it
  91   is. If you want to be bleeding edge you might want to consider using
  92   the latest CVS version (with the latest and most fashionable of
  93   bugs).
  94
  95 a. Download SquirrelMail
  96
  97   Get SquirrelMail from the address above if you do not have it or are
  98   uncertain if you have the newest version. Untar (again tar xvfz
  99   filename.tgz) SquirrelMail in a directory that is readable for your
 100   webserver.
 101
 102 b. Setting up directories
 103
 104   SquirrelMail uses two directories to store user configuration and
 105   attachments that are about to be sent. You might want to have these
 106   directories outside of your web tree.
 107
 108   The data directory is used for storing user preferences, like
 109   signature, name and theme. When unpacking the sources this directory
 110   is created as data/ in you SquirrelMail directory. This directory
 111   must be writable by the webserver. If your webserver is running as
 112   the user nobody you can fix this by running:
 113
 114     $ chown -R nobody data
 115     $ chgrp -R nobody data
 116
 117   There also needs to be a directory where attachments are stored
 118   before they are sent. Since personal mail is stored in this
 119   directory you might want to be a bit careful about how you set it
 120   up. It should be owned by another user than the webserver is running
 121   as (root might be a good choice) and the webserver should have write
 122   and execute permissions on the directory, but should not have read
 123   permissions. You could do this by running these commands (still
 124   granted that the webserver is running as nobody/nobody)
 125
 126     $ cd /var/some/place
 127     $ mkdir SomeDirectory
 128     $ chgrp -R nobody SomeDirectory
 129     $ chmod 730 SomeDirectory
 130
 131   If you trust all the users on you system not to read mail they are
 132   not supposed to read change the last line to chmod 777 SomeDirectory
 133   or simply use /tmp as you attachments directory.
 134
 135   If a user is aborting a mail but has uploaded som attachments to it
 136   the files will be lying around in this directory forever if you do not
 137   remove them.  To fix this, it is recommended to create a cron job that
 138   deletes everything in the attachment directory.  Something similar
 139   to the folling will be good enough:
 140
 141     $ cd /var/attach/directory
 142     $ rm -f *
 143
 144 c. Setting up SquirrelMail
 145
 146   There are two ways to configure Squirrelmail.  In the config/ directory,
 147   there is a perl script called conf.pl that will aid you in the
 148   configuration process.  This is the recommended way of handling
 149   the config.
 150
 151   You can also copy the config/config_default.php file to config/config.php
 152   and edit that manually.
 153
 154 4. RUNNING SQUIRRELMAIL
 155 -----------------------
 156
 157   Point your browser at the URL at which SquirrelMail is installed.  A
 158   possible example of this is:
 159      http://www.yourdomain.com/squirrelmail
 160
 161   It should be pretty stright forward to use. Some more documentation
 162   might show up one day or another.
 163
 164
 165 5. RUSSIAN CHARSETS
 166 -------------------
 167
 168   For information on how to make SquirrelMail work with Russian
 169   Apache, see the README.russian_apache in the doc/ subdirectory.