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 1. CONFIGURE YOUR WEBSERVER TO WORK WITH PHP4
  13 ---------------------------------------------
  14
  15   If your webserver does not already have PHP4 you must configure it
  16   to work with PHP4. SquirrelMail uses the standard suffix .php for
  17   all PHP4 files. This is a quick and dirty guide to installing PHP4
  18   to run as CGI under Apache. How you end up doing this is up to you
  19   (your mileage may vary).
  20
  21   You will need at least PHP v4.0.6. If you need to upgrade please go
  22   ahead and install it now.
  23
  24 a. Obtaining and compiling PHP4
  25
  26   SquirrelMail has not been extensively tested for use with PHP 4.3.x.
  27   See the ReleaseNotes file.
  28
  29   Point your favorite web browser at http://www.php.net/downloads.php/ and
  30   download the source. Untar (tar xvfz filename-you-downloaded.tgz)
  31   the source, cd into the directory and run configure. To make PHP4
  32   work with SquirrelMail a commandline like this should do:
  33
  34    ./configure --enable-track-vars --enable-force-cgi-redirect --with-gettext
  35
  36   If you have a database like MySQL you might want to add something
  37   like --with-mysql to get database functionality.
  38
  39   If you're going to use LDAP in the addressbook, you must compile PHP4
  40   with --with-ldap (see the PHP4 docs for more information).
  41
  42   Run make to build the binary file. This will generate a binary file
  43   called "php". Move this file into a CGI-directory.
  44
  45   You might also want to read the INSTALL file in the PHP-distribution
  46   :-)
  47
  48 b. Changing php.ini
  49
  50   PHP defaults to look for php.ini (PHP's configuration file) in
  51   /usr/local/lib.  However, for security reasons, it is suggested
  52   that the location of this file is changed to someplace else.  This
  53   can be done at configure time with the configuration directive
  54   --with-config-file-path=PATH.
  55
  56   Edit the php.ini file and make sure session.use_cookies is 1.  Also
  57   be sure to change the session.save_path to someplace that can only
  58   be read and written to by the webserver.  session.save_path is the
  59   location that PHP's session data will be written to.
  60
  61   SECURITY WARNING - If a user has access to write PHP scripts on your
  62   system and knows the location where PHP stores session data, he
  63   could get a listing of the sessions being used and then read a given
  64   session's data with his own PHP script.  Caution should be used when
  65   setting up permissions and locations of php.ini and the session data.
  66
  67   FILE UPLOADS - Note that sending attachments will not work if your
  68   "file_uploads" setting is "Off". Squirrelmail requires that setting
  69   enabled in order to be able to attach files.
  70
  71 c. Setting up .php files to use PHP4
  72
  73   You need to create a .htaccess file in you SquirrelMail directory
  74   that looks something like this:
  75
  76     AddType application/php4script .php
  77     Action application/php4script /cgi-bin/php
  78
  79   You could also add these lines to your Apache configuration file.
  80
  81 d. Running into trouble
  82
  83   Setting up Apache with PHP4 can be a non-trivial task. Read the PHP4
  84   and Apache documentation carefully if you run into trouble. If you
  85   have an experienced system administrator around ask her/him to help
  86   you.
  87
  88 2. SETTING UP IMAP
  89 ------------------
  90
  91   This is not covered here :-/
  92
  93 3. OBTAINING AND INSTALLING SQUIRRELMAIL
  94 ----------------------------------------
  95
  96   SquirrelMail is constantly being improved. Therefore you should always
  97   get the newest version around. Look at http://www.squirrelmail.org/
  98   to see what it is. If you want to be bleeding edge you might want to
  99   consider using the latest CVS version (with the latest and most
 100   fashionable of bugs).
 101
 102 a. Download SquirrelMail
 103
 104   Get SquirrelMail from the address above if you do not have it or are
 105   uncertain if you have the newest version. Untar (again tar xvfz
 106   filename.tgz) SquirrelMail in a directory that is readable for your
 107   webserver.
 108
 109 b. Setting up directories
 110
 111   SquirrelMail uses two directories to store user configuration and
 112   attachments that are about to be sent. You might want to have these
 113   directories outside of your web tree.
 114
 115   The data directory is used for storing user preferences, like
 116   signature, name and theme. When unpacking the sources this directory
 117   is created as data/ in your SquirrelMail directory. This directory
 118   must be writable by the webserver. If your webserver is running as
 119   the user "nobody" you can fix this by running:
 120
 121     $ chown -R nobody data
 122     $ chgrp -R nobody data
 123
 124   Keep in mind that with different installations, the web server could
 125   typically run as userid/groupid of nobody/nobody, nobody/nogroup,
 126   apache/apache or www-data/www-data.  The best way to find out is to read
 127   the web server's configuration file.
 128
 129   There also needs to be a directory where attachments are stored
 130   before they are sent. Since personal mail is stored in this
 131   directory you might want to be a bit careful about how you set it
 132   up. It should be owned by another user than the webserver is running
 133   as (root might be a good choice) and the webserver should have write
 134   and execute permissions on the directory, but should not have read
 135   permissions. You could do this by running these commands (still
 136   granted that the webserver is running as nobody/nobody)
 137
 138     $ cd /var/some/place
 139     $ mkdir SomeDirectory
 140     $ chgrp -R nobody SomeDirectory
 141     $ chmod 730 SomeDirectory
 142
 143   If you trust all the users on you system not to read mail they are
 144   not supposed to read change the last line to chmod 777 SomeDirectory
 145   or simply use /tmp as you attachments directory.
 146
 147   If a user is aborting a mail but has uploaded some attachments to it
 148   the files will be lying around in this directory forever if you do not
 149   remove them.  To fix this, it is recommended to create a cron job that
 150   deletes everything in the attachment directory.  Something similar
 151   to the following will be good enough:
 152
 153     $ cd /var/attach/directory
 154     $ rm -f *
 155
 156   However, this will delete attachments that are currently in use by people
 157   sending email when the cron job runs.  You can either (1) make sure that
 158   the cron job runs at an obscure hour and hope that nobody gets upset, or
 159   (2) you can run a modified version of the commands above.  Check out the
 160   man pages for other commands such as 'find' or 'tmpreaper'.
 161
 162   One sample script you could set up that would erase all attachments, but
 163   wouldn't erase preferences, address books, or the like (just in case your
 164   attachment directory is the same as your data directory) might look like
 165   this:
 166
 167     $ rm `find /var/attach/directory -atime +2 | grep -v "\." | grep -v _`
 168
 169   Remember to be careful with whatever method you do use, and to test out
 170   the command before it potentially wipes out everyone's preferences.
 171
 172 c. Setting up SquirrelMail
 173
 174   There are two ways to configure Squirrelmail.  In the config/ directory,
 175   there is a perl script called conf.pl that will aid you in the
 176   configuration process.  This is the recommended way of handling
 177   the config.
 178
 179   You can also copy the config/config_default.php file to config/config.php
 180   and edit that manually.
 181
 182 4. RUNNING SQUIRRELMAIL
 183 -----------------------
 184
 185   Point your browser at the URL at which SquirrelMail is installed.  A
 186   possible example of this is:
 187      http://www.yourdomain.com/squirrelmail
 188
 189   It should be pretty straight forward to use. Some more documentation
 190   might show up one day or another.
 191
 192
 193 5. RUSSIAN CHARSETS
 194 -------------------
 195
 196   For information on how to make SquirrelMail work with Russian
 197   Apache, see the README.russian_apache in the doc/ subdirectory.