-Sorry for the incomplete documentation at this time. Here is a quick
-overview of how to install SquirrelMail.
+Installing SquirrelMail
+=======================
-1. Make Apache (or whatever web server) happy with PHP4.
+Table of Contents:
+ 1. (PHP4) Configure your webserver to work with PHP4
+ 2. (IMAP) Setting up IMAP (not covered)
+ 3. (INSTALL) Obtaining and installing SquirrelMail
+ 4. (RUN) Running SquirrelMail
+ 5. (CHARSETS) Russian Charsets
-2. Unarchive SquirrelMail in a subdirectory that is accessable by the
- web server. EX: /home/httpd/html/squirrelmail-0.1
-3. Edit the config file, config/config.php
-4. Point your browser to the location you specified in step 2.
- In this example, it's: http://YOURHOST/squirrelmail-0.1/index.html
+
+1. CONFIGURE YOUR WEBSERVER TO WORK WITH PHP4
+---------------------------------------------
+
+ If your webserver does not already have PHP4 you must configure it
+ to work with PHP4. SquirrelMail uses the standard suffix .php for
+ all PHP4 files. This is a quick and dirty guide to installing PHP4
+ to run as CGI under Apache. How you end up doing this is up to you
+ (your mileage may vary).
+
+ NOTE: The new plugin architecture required the use of some functions
+ which are not in all versions of PHP4. You will need at least
+ PHP4 beta2. If you need to upgrade please go ahead and install the
+ latest release version of PHP4.
+
+a. Obtaining and compiling PHP4
+
+ Point your favorite webserver at http://www.php.net/version4/ and
+ download the source. Untar (tar xvfz filename-you-downloaded.tgz)
+ the source, cd into the directory and run configure. To make PHP4
+ work with SquirrelMail a commandline like this should do:
+
+ ./configure --enable-track-vars --enable-force-cgi-redirect --with-gettext
+
+ If you have a database like MySQL you might want to add something
+ like --with-mysql to get database functionality.
+
+ If you're going to use LDAP in the addressbook, you must compile PHP4
+ with --with-ldap (see the PHP4 docs for more information).
+
+ Run make to build the binary file. This will generate a binary file
+ called "php". Move this file into a CGI-directory.
+
+ You might also want to read the INSTALL file in the PHP-distribution
+ :-)
+
+b. Changing php.ini
+
+ PHP defaults to look for php.ini (PHP's configuration file) in
+ /usr/local/lib. However, for security reasons, it is suggested
+ that the location of this file is changed to someplace else. This
+ can be done at configure time with the configuration directive
+ --with-config-file-path=PATH.
+
+ Edit the php.ini file and make sure session.use_cookies is 1. Also
+ be sure to change the session.save_path to someplace that can only
+ be read and written to by the webserver. session.save_path is the
+ location that PHP's session data will be written to.
+
+ SECURITY WARNING - If a user has access to write PHP scripts on your
+ system and knows the location where PHP stores session data, he
+ could get a listing of the sessions being used and then read a given
+ session's data with his own PHP script. Caution should be used when
+ setting up permissions and locations of php.ini and the session data.
+
+c. Setting up .php files to use PHP4
+
+ You need to create a .htaccess file in you SquirrelMail directory
+ that looks something like this:
+
+ AddType application/php4script .php
+ Action application/php4script /cgi-bin/php
+
+ You could also add these lines to your Apache configuration file.
+
+d. Running into trouble
+
+ Setting up Apache with PHP4 can be a non-trivial task. Read the PHP4
+ and Apache documentation carefully if you run into trouble. If you
+ have an experienced system administrator around ask her/him to help
+ you.
+
+2. SETTING UP IMAP
+------------------
+
+ This is not covered here :-/
+
+3. OBTAINING AND INSTALLING SQUIRRELMAIL
+----------------------------------------
+
+ SquirrelMail is still under development. Therefore you should always
+ get the newest version around. Look at
+ http://www.squirrelmail.org/index.php3?page=5 to see what it
+ is. If you want to be bleeding edge you might want to consider using
+ the latest CVS version (with the latest and most fashionable of
+ bugs).
+
+a. Download SquirrelMail
+
+ Get SquirrelMail from the address above if you do not have it or are
+ uncertain if you have the newest version. Untar (again tar xvfz
+ filename.tgz) SquirrelMail in a directory that is readable for your
+ webserver.
+
+b. Setting up directories
+
+ SquirrelMail uses two directories to store user configuration and
+ attachments that are about to be sent. You might want to have these
+ directories outside of your web tree.
+
+ The data directory is used for storing user preferences, like
+ signature, name and theme. When unpacking the sources this directory
+ is created as data/ in your SquirrelMail directory. This directory
+ must be writable by the webserver. If your webserver is running as
+ the user "nobody" you can fix this by running:
+
+ $ chown -R nobody data
+ $ chgrp -R nobody data
+
+ Keep in mind that with different installations, the web server could
+ typically run as userid/groupid of nobody/nobody, nobody/nogroup,
+ apache/apache or www-data/www-data. The best way to find out is to read
+ the web server's configuration file.
+
+ There also needs to be a directory where attachments are stored
+ before they are sent. Since personal mail is stored in this
+ directory you might want to be a bit careful about how you set it
+ up. It should be owned by another user than the webserver is running
+ as (root might be a good choice) and the webserver should have write
+ and execute permissions on the directory, but should not have read
+ permissions. You could do this by running these commands (still
+ granted that the webserver is running as nobody/nobody)
+
+ $ cd /var/some/place
+ $ mkdir SomeDirectory
+ $ chgrp -R nobody SomeDirectory
+ $ chmod 730 SomeDirectory
+
+ If you trust all the users on you system not to read mail they are
+ not supposed to read change the last line to chmod 777 SomeDirectory
+ or simply use /tmp as you attachments directory.
+
+ If a user is aborting a mail but has uploaded some attachments to it
+ the files will be lying around in this directory forever if you do not
+ remove them. To fix this, it is recommended to create a cron job that
+ deletes everything in the attachment directory. Something similar
+ to the following will be good enough:
+
+ $ cd /var/attach/directory
+ $ rm -f *
+
+ However, this will delete attachments that are currently in use by people
+ sending email when the cron job runs. You can either (1) make sure that
+ the cron job runs at an obscure hour and hope that nobody gets upset, or
+ (2) you can run a modified version of the commands above. Check out the
+ man pages for other commands such as 'find' or 'tmpreaper'.
+
+ One sample script you could set up that would erase all attachments, but
+ wouldn't erase preferences, address books, or the like (just in case your
+ attachment directory is the same as your data directory) might look like
+ this:
+
+ $ rm `find /var/attach/directory -atime +2 | grep -v "\." | grep -v _`
+
+ Remember to be careful with whatever method you do use, and to test out
+ the command before it potentially wipes out everyone's preferences.
+
+c. Setting up SquirrelMail
+
+ There are two ways to configure Squirrelmail. In the config/ directory,
+ there is a perl script called conf.pl that will aid you in the
+ configuration process. This is the recommended way of handling
+ the config.
+
+ You can also copy the config/config_default.php file to config/config.php
+ and edit that manually.
+
+4. RUNNING SQUIRRELMAIL
+-----------------------
+
+ Point your browser at the URL at which SquirrelMail is installed. A
+ possible example of this is:
+ http://www.yourdomain.com/squirrelmail
+
+ It should be pretty stright forward to use. Some more documentation
+ might show up one day or another.
+
+
+5. RUSSIAN CHARSETS
+-------------------
+
+ For information on how to make SquirrelMail work with Russian
+ Apache, see the README.russian_apache in the doc/ subdirectory.
projects / squirrelmail.git / blobdiff