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