doc/INSTALL

   1 Installing SquirrelMail
   2 =======================
   3
   4 NOTE!  More thorough and possibly up-to-date information about how
   5 to install, use and maintain SquirrelMail is available in our online
   6 documentation here:
   7
   8 http://squirrelmail.org/docs/admin/admin.html
   9
  10
  11 Table of Contents:
  12   0.  (QUICK!)   Quick install guide
  13   1.  (PHP)      Configure your webserver to work with PHP
  14   2.  (IMAP)     Setting up IMAP (not covered)
  15   3.  (INSTALL)  Obtaining and installing SquirrelMail
  16   4.  (RUN)      Running SquirrelMail
  17   5.  (CHARSETS) Russian Charsets
  18   6.  (LOCALES)  Translations of SquirrelMail
  19   7.  (PLUGINS)  Installation of included plugins
  20
  21
  22 0. QUICK INSTALL GUIDE
  23 ----------------------
  24
  25 Each of these steps is covered in detail below.
  26
  27 - Install webserver and PHP (at least 4.1.0).
  28 - Install IMAP server (see docs of that server).
  29 - Unpack the SquirrelMail package in a web-accessible location.
  30 - Select a data-dir and attachment dir, outside the webtree (e.g. in /var).
  31   The data-dir (for user prefs) should be owned by the user the webserver
  32   runs as (e.g. www-data). The attachment dir (for uploading files as
  33   attachments) should be file mode 0730 and in the same group as the
  34   webserver.
  35 - Run config/conf.pl from the command line. Use the D option to load
  36   predefined options for specific IMAP servers, and edit at least the
  37   Server Settings and General Options (datadir).
  38 - Browse to http://example.com/yourwebmaillocation/src/configtest.php
  39   to test your configuration for common errors.
  40 - Browse to http://example.com/yourwebmaillocation/ to log in.
  41
  42
  43 1. CONFIGURE YOUR WEBSERVER TO WORK WITH PHP
  44 --------------------------------------------
  45
  46   If your webserver does not already have PHP you must configure it
  47   to work with PHP. You need at least PHP v4.1.0. SquirrelMail uses
  48   the standard suffix .php for all PHP files.
  49
  50   You can find PHP at http://php.net. See the documentation that
  51   comes with PHP for instructions how to set it up.
  52
  53   The PHP IMAP extension is NOT necessary at all (but won't harm)!
  54   Below is a list of optional PHP extensions:
  55
  56   --with-ldap
  57     Required for LDAP addressbooks
  58
  59   --with-pear
  60     If you do not have PHP PDO (which should come preinstalled with
  61     PHP version 5.1 and above) and you plan to store user preferences
  62     or address books in a database, you will need PHP compiled with
  63     the above option.  ALSO, you need to build the database driver
  64     relevant to your database:
  65   --with-mysql for MySQL
  66   --with-pgsql for PostgreSQL
  67     Again, this is only required for versions of PHP that do not
  68     have PDO.
  69
  70   --with-openssl
  71     Required for encrypted IMAP or SMTP connections (TLS)
  72
  73   --with-mcrypt
  74     Can be used by SquirrelSpell plugin for encryption of personal
  75     dictionaries
  76
  77   --with-iconv or --with-recode
  78     Can be used by Eastern charset decoding functions
  79
  80   --enable-mbstring
  81     Required for Japanese translation. Optional for translations that
  82     use non-ISO-8859-1 charset
  83
  84   It is highly advised to NOT turn on register_globals, as this can lead
  85   to security holes. If you must use register_globals for some applications,
  86   turn it on locally for only those directories, or turn it off for the
  87   SquirrelMail folder.
  88   If you want your users to attach files to their mails, make sure
  89   File Uploads in php.ini is set to On.
  90
  91
  92 2. SETTING UP IMAP
  93 ------------------
  94
  95   This depends a lot on the server your choose. See the documentation
  96   that comes with your server.
  97
  98   If you're concerned about people accessing it directly, you can
  99   limit access to only the IP of the webserver.
 100
 101
 102 3. OBTAINING AND INSTALLING SQUIRRELMAIL
 103 ----------------------------------------
 104
 105   SquirrelMail is constantly being improved. Therefore you should always
 106   get the newest version around. Look at http://squirrelmail.org
 107   to see what it is. If you want to be bleeding edge you might want to
 108   consider using the latest SVN version (with the latest and most
 109   fashionable bugs).
 110
 111 a. Download SquirrelMail
 112
 113   Get SquirrelMail from the address above if you do not have it or are
 114   uncertain if you have the newest version. Untar (again tar xvfz
 115   filename.tgz) SquirrelMail in a directory that is readable for your
 116   webserver.
 117
 118 b. Setting up directories
 119
 120   SquirrelMail uses two directories to store user configuration and
 121   attachments that are about to be sent. You might want to have these
 122   directories outside of your web tree.
 123
 124   The data directory is used for storing user preferences, like
 125   signature, name and theme. You need to create this directory yourself.
 126   Recommended location is under /var, for example:
 127   /var/local/squirrelmail/data
 128   This directory must be writable by the webserver. If your webserver is
 129   running as the user "nobody" and group "nobody" you can fix this by
 130   running:
 131
 132     $ chown -R nobody:nobody /var/local/squirrelmail/data
 133
 134   Keep in mind that with different installations, the web server could
 135   typically run as userid/groupid of nobody/nobody, nobody/nogroup,
 136   apache/apache or www-data/www-data.  The best way to find out is to read
 137   the web server's configuration file.
 138
 139   There also needs to be a directory where attachments are stored
 140   before they are sent. Since personal mail is stored in this
 141   directory you might want to be a bit careful about how you set it
 142   up. It should be owned by another user than the webserver is running
 143   as (root might be a good choice) and the webserver should have directory
 144   write and execute permissions, but should not have read
 145   permissions. You could do this by running these commands (still
 146   granted that the webserver is running as nobody/nobody):
 147
 148     $ cd /var/local/squirrelmail/
 149     $ mkdir attach
 150     $ chgrp -R nobody attach
 151     $ chmod 730 attach
 152
 153   If you trust all the users at your system not to read mail they are
 154   not supposed to read, you can simply use /tmp as you attachments
 155   directory.
 156
 157   If a user is aborting a mail but has uploaded some attachments to it
 158   the files will be lying around in this directory forever if you do not
 159   remove them.  To fix this, it is recommended to create a cron job that
 160   deletes everything in the attachment directory.  Something similar
 161   to the following will be good enough:
 162
 163     $ cd /var/local/squirrelmail/attach && rm -f *
 164
 165   However, this will delete attachments that are currently in use by people
 166   sending email when the cron job runs.  You can either (1) make sure that
 167   the cron job runs at an obscure hour and hope that nobody gets upset, or
 168   (2) you can run a modified version of the commands above.  Check out the
 169   man pages for other commands such as 'find' or 'tmpreaper'.
 170
 171   One sample script you could set up that would erase all attachments, but
 172   wouldn't erase preferences, address books, or the like (just in case your
 173   attachment directory is the same as your data directory) might look like
 174   this:
 175
 176     $ find /var/local/squirrelmail/attach -type f -atime +2 -exec rm {} \;
 177
 178   Remember to be careful with whatever method you do use, and to test out
 179   the command before it potentially wipes out everyone's preferences.
 180
 181 c. Setting up SquirrelMail
 182
 183   There are three ways to configure SquirrelMail.  In the config/ directory,
 184   there is a perl script called conf.pl that will aid you in the
 185   configuration process.  This is the recommended way of handling
 186   the config.
 187
 188   There's also a plugin called 'administrator' for the webinterface but you'll
 189   have to be able to at least log in to SquirrelMail first.
 190
 191   You can also copy the config/config_default.php file to config/config.php
 192   and edit that manually.
 193
 194   After you've created a configuration, you can use your webbrowser to
 195   browse to http://your-squirrelmail-location/src/configtest.php.
 196   This will perform some basic checks on your configuration to make sure
 197   everything works like it should.
 198
 199
 200 4. RUNNING SQUIRRELMAIL
 201 -----------------------
 202
 203   Point your browser at the URL at which SquirrelMail is installed.  A
 204   possible example of this is:
 205      http://example.com/squirrelmail
 206
 207   It should be pretty straight forward to use. Some more documentation
 208   might show up one day or another.
 209
 210
 211 5. RUSSIAN CHARSETS
 212 -------------------
 213
 214   For information on how to make SquirrelMail work with Russian
 215   Apache, see the russian_apache.txt in the doc/ subdirectory.
 216
 217
 218 6. TRANSLATIONS
 219 ---------------
 220
 221   In order to use translated versions of SquirrelMail, you need
 222   to download and install locale packages that contain translations
 223   that you want to use with SquirrelMail.
 224
 225   Locale packages can be downloaded from SquirrelMail SourceForge
 226   project page.
 227
 228      http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=311&package_id=110388
 229
 230   Each translation contains an install script that copies the required files
 231   into their appropriate locations. If you can't run that script, you can
 232   extract the contents of a translation package into your SquirrelMail
 233   directory.
 234
 235   NOTE No.1: *-src.tar.gz, *-src.tar.bz2 and *-src.zip archives do not contain
 236   compiled translation files. You will need to run the "compilelocales" script
 237   in order to get all gettext binary translations.
 238
 239   NOTE No.2: You might need to restart your webserver before using translations.
 240   If you can't do that, install your translations _before_ you use SquirrelMail.
 241
 242
 243 7. PLUGINS
 244 ----------
 245
 246   The SquirrelMail package includes some standard plugins. These plugins can be
 247   enabled in the SquirrelMail configuration script.
 248
 249   Included plugins can use additional configuration files:
 250   * change_password
 251     configuration file is required. Without it plugin defaults to invalid
 252     backend. See plugins/change_password/README
 253   * filters, fortune, mail_fetch, newmail, translate
 254     configuration files are optional. See README files in plugin directories.
 255   * squirrelspell
 256     configuration is stored in plugins/squirrelspell/sqspell_config.php
 257     The default configuration might not work at your server.
 258   * administrator
 259     plugin must be setup correctly in order to detect administrative user.
 260     See plugins/administrator/INSTALL