Open WebMail is a webmail system based on the Neomail version 1.14 from Ernie Miller. Open WebMail is targeted on dealing with very big mail folder files in a memory efficient way. It also provides many features to help users to switch from Microsoft Outlook smoothly. FEATURES --------- Open WebMail has the following enhanced features: 1. fast folder access 2. efficient messages movement 3. smaller memory footprint 4. convenient folder and message operation 5. graceful filelock 6. virtual hosting and account alias 7. pam support 8. full content search 9. better MIME message display 10. draft folder support 11. spelling check support 12. POP3 mail support 13. mail filter support 14. message count preview 15. confirm reading support 16. BIG5/GB conversion (for Chinese only) REQUIREMENT ----------- Apache web server with cgi enabled Perl 5.005 or above CGI.pm-2.74.tar.gz MIME-Base64-2.12.tar.gz Authen-PAM-0.12.tar.gz ispell-3.1.20.tar.gz hc-30.tar.gz INSTALL ------- First, please connect to http://turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw/openwebmail/ to get the latest released openwebmail and required packages. If you are using FreeBSD and install apache with pkg_add, then just 1. cd /usr/local/www tar -zxvBpf openwebmail-X.XX.tgz 2. modify /usr/local/www/cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc/openwebmail.conf for your need. 3. add 'Thttpd_user' to the 'Trusted users' session in your sendmail.cf, where 'httpd_user' is the effective user your httpd runs as. it is 'nobody' or 'apache', please check it in the httpd configuration file 4. If your FreeBSD is 4.2 or later a. chmod 4555 /usr/bin/suidperl b. change #!/usr/bin/perl to #!/usr/bin/suidperl in openwebmail.pl, openwebmail-main.pl, openwebmail-prefs.pl spellcheck.pl and checkmail.pl If you are using RedHat 6.2/CLE 0.9p1(or most Linux) with apache (by clarinet@totoro.cs.nthu.edu.tw) 1. cd /home/httpd tar -zxvBpf openwebmail-X.XX.tgz mv data/openwebmail html/ rmdir data 2. cd /home/httpd/cgi-bin/openwebmail modify openwebmail.pl, openwebmail-main.pl, openwebmail-prefs.pl, spellcheck.pl and checkmail.pl a. change all '/usr/local/www/cgi-bin/openwebmail' to '/home/httpd/cgi-bin/openwebmail' or make a symbolic link with 'ln -s /home/httpd /usr/local/www' modify auth_unix.pl a. set variable $unix_passwdfile to '/etc/shadow' b set variable $unix_passwdmkdb to 'none' 3. modify /home/httpd/cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc/openwebmail.conf a. set mailspooldir to '/var/spool/mail' b. if /usr/local/www is not link to /home/httpd at 2.a set ow_htmldir to '/home/httpd/html/openwebmail' set ow_cgidir to '/home/httpd/cgi-bin/openwebmail' else set ow_htmldir to '/usr/local/www/html/openwebmail' c. set spellcheck to '/usr/bin/ispell' d. change default_signature for your need e. other changes you want 4. add 'Thttpd_user' to the 'Trusted users' session in your sendmail.cf, where 'httpd_user' is the effective user your httpd runs as. it is 'nobody' or 'apache', please check it in the httpd configuration file 5. add /var/log/openwebmail.log { postrotate /usr/bin/killall -HUP syslogd endscript } to /etc/logrotate.d/syslog to enable logrotate on openwebmail.log ps: if you are using RedHat 7.1, please use /var/www instead of /home/httpd It is highly recommended to read the doc/RedHat-README.txt(contributed by elitric@yahoo.com) if you are installing Open WebMail on RedHat Linux. ps: Thomas Chung (tchung@pasadena.oao.com) maintains a tarbal packed with an install script special for RedHat 7.x. It is available at http://openwebmail.org/openwebmail/download/ If you are using other UNIX with apache, that is okay Try to find the parent directory of both your data and cgi-bin directory, eg: /usr/local/apache/share, then 1. cd /usr/local/apache/share tar -zxvBpf openwebmail-X.XX.tgz mv data/openwebmail htdocs/ rmdir data 2. modify /usr/local/apache/share/cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc/openwebmail.conf a. set mailspooldir to where your system mail spool is b. set ow_htmldir to '/usr/local/apache/share/htdocs' set ow_cgidir to '/usr/local/apache/share/cgi-bin' c. set spellcheck to '/usr/local/bin/ispell' d. change default_signature for your need e. other changes you want 3. cd /usr/local/apache/share/cgi-bin/openwebmail modify openwebmail.pl, openwebmail-main.pl, openwebmail-prefs.pl, spellcheck.pl and checkmail.pl a. change the #!/usr/bin/perl to the location where your perl is. b. change all '/usr/local/www/cgi-bin/openwebmail' to '/usr/local/apache/share/cgi-bin/openwebmail' modify auth_unix.pl a. set variable $unix_passwdfile to '/etc/shadow' b set variable $unix_passwdmkdb to 'none' 4. add 'Thttpd_user' to the 'Trusted users' session in your sendmail.cf, where 'httpd_user' is the effective user your httpd runs as. it is 'nobody' or 'apache', please check it in the httpd configuration file USING OPENWEBMAIL WITH POSTFIX ------------------------------ If you are using postfix instead of sendmail as the MTA(mail transport agent): 1. chmod 644 /etc/postfix/main.cf 2. Use postfix 'sendmail' wrapper for the option sendmail in the openwebmail.conf. In most case, postfix installs the wrapper where the original sendmail lives (/usr/lib/sendmail or /usr/sbin/sendmail) CHECK VERSION OF CGI MODULE --------------------------- It is reported that Open Webmail will hang in attachment uploading when used with older version of CGI module. We recommend using CGI version 2.74 or above for Open WebMail. To check the version of your CGI module : perldoc -m CGI.pm | grep CGI::VERSION To install the newer CGI module: 1. download new CGI module (CGI.pm-2.74.tar.gz) 2. cd /tmp tar -zxvf CGI.pm-2.74.tar.gz cd CGI.pm-2.74 perl Makefile.PL make make install SPEEDUP ENCODING/DECODING OF MIME ATTACHMENTS --------------------------------------------- The encoding/decoding speed would be much faster if you install the MIME-Base64 module from CPAN with XS support 1. download MIME-Base64 module (MIME-Base64-2.12.tar.gz) 2. cd /tmp tar -zxvf MIME-Base64-2.12.tar.gz cd MIME-Base64-2.12 perl Makefile.PL make make install SPELL CHECK SUPPORT ------------------- To enable the spell check in openwebmail, you have to install the ispell or aspell package. 1. download ispell-3.1.20.tar.gz from http://www.cs.ucla.edu/ficus-members/geoff/ispell.html and install it, or you can install binary from FreeBSD package or Linux rpm ps: if you are compiling ispell from source, you may enhance your ispell by using a better dictionary source. a. download http://turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw/openwebmail/download/contrib/words.gz b. gzip -d words.gz c. mkdir /usr/dict; cp words /usr/dict/words d. start to make your ispell by reading README 2. check the openwebmail.conf to see if spellcheck is pointed to the ispell binary 3. If you have installed multiple dictionaries for your ispell/aspell, you can add them to specllcheck_dictionaries in openwebmail.conf ps: To know if a specific dictionary is successfully installed on your system, you can do a test with following command ispell -d dictionaryname -a PAM SUPPORT ----------- PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) provides a flexible mechanism for authenticating users. More detail is available at Linux-PAM webpage. http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam/ Solaris 2.6, Linux and FreeBSD 3.1 are known to support PAM. To make Open WebMail use the support of PAM, you have to: 1. download the Perl Authen::PAM module (Authen-PAM-0.12.tar.gz) It is available at http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~pelov/pam/ 2. cd /tmp tar -zxvf Authen-PAM-0.12.tar.gz cd Authen-PAM-0.12 perl Makefile.PL make make install ps: Doing 'make test' is recommended when making the Authen::PAM, if you encounter error in 'make test', the PAM on your system will probablely not work. 3. add the following 3 lines to your /etc/pam.conf (on Solaris) openwebmail auth required /usr/lib/security/pam_unix.so.1 openwebmail account required /usr/lib/security/pam_unix.so.1 openwebmail password required /usr/lib/security/pam_unix.so.1 (on Linux) openwebmail auth required /lib/security/pam_unix.so openwebmail account required /lib/security/pam_unix.so openwebmail password required /lib/security/pam_unix.so (on Linux without /etc/pam.conf, by protech@protech.net.tw) If you don't have /etc/pam.conf but the directory /etc/pam.d/, please create a file /etc/pam.d/openwebmail with the following content auth required /lib/security/pam_unix.so account required /lib/security/pam_unix.so password required /lib/security/pam_unix.so (on FreeBSD) openwebmail auth required /usr/lib/pam_unix.so openwebmail account required /usr/lib/pam_unix.so openwebmail password required /usr/lib/pam_unix.so ps: PAM support on some release of FreeBSD seems broken (ex:4.1) 4. change auth_module to 'auth_pam.pl' in the openwebmail.conf 5. check auth_pam.pl for further modification required for your system. ps: For more detail about PAM configuration, it is recommended to read "The Linux-PAM System Administrators' Guide" http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam/Linux-PAM-html/pam.html by Andrew G. Morgan, morgan@kernel.org ADD NEW AUTHENTICATION TO OPENWEBMAIL ------------------------------------- In case you found auth_unix.pl and auth_pam.pl are not suitable for your need, you may want to write new authentication for your own. To add new authentication into openwebmail, you have to: 1. choose an abbreviation name for this new authentication, eg: xyz 2. write auth_xyz.pl with the following 4 function defined, ($realname, $uid, $gid, $homedir)=get_userinfo($user); @userlist=get_userlist($user); $retcode=check_userpassword($user, $password); $retcode=change_userpassword($user, $oldpassword, $newpassword); where $retcode means: -1 : function not supported -2 : parameter format error -3 : authentication system internal error -4 : password incorrect You may refer to auth_unix.pl or auth_pam.pl to start. 3. modify option auth_module in openwebmail.conf to auth_xyz.pl 4. test your new authentication module :) ps: If you wish your authentication to be included in the next release of openwebmail, please submit it to openwebmail@turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw. VIRTUAL USER SUPPORT -------------------- Open WebMail uses sendmail virtusertable to map a virtualuser to the real userid in a system. A virtualuser can be either in the form of a pure virtualusername or virtualusername@somedomain. Please refer to http://www.sendmail.org/virtual-hosting.html for more detail When a user logins Open WebMail with a loginname, this loginname will be checked in the following order: 1. Is this loginname@HTTP_HOST a virtualuser defined in virtusertable? 2. Is this loginname a virtualuser defined in virtusertable? 3. Is this loginname matched by the username part of a specific virtualuser? 4. Is this loginname a real userid in system? Here is an example of /etc/virtusertable projectmanager pm johnson@company1.com john1 tom@company1.com tom1 tom@company2.com tom2 mary@company3.com mary3 Assume the url of the webmail server is http://mail.company1.com/.... The above virtusertable means: 1. if a user logins as projectmanager, openwebmail checks project@mail.company1.com project@company1.com project as virtualuser ---> pm 2. if a user logins as johnson@company1.com openwebmail checks johnson@company1.com ---> john1 if a user logins as johnson, openwebmail checks johnson@mail.company1.com johnson@company1.com ---> john1 3. if a user logins as tom@company1.com, openwebmail checks tom@company1.com ---> tom1 if a user logins as tom@company2.com, openwebmail checks tom@company2.com ---> tom2 if a user logins as tom, openwebmail checks tom@mail.company1.com tom@company1.com ---> tom1 4. if a user logins as mary, openwebmail checks mary@mail.company1.com mary@company1.com mary as virtualuser mary as real user mary as username part of a specific virtualuser ---> mary3 AUTOREPLY SUPPORT ----------------- The auto reply function in Open WebMail is done with the vacation utility. Since vacation utility is not available on some unix, a perl version of vacation utility 'vacation.pl' is distributed with openwebmail. This vacation.pl has the same syntax as the one on Solaris. To make it work properly, be sure to modify $myname, $sendmail definition in the vacation.pl. If the autoreply doesn't work on your system, you can do debug with the -d option 1. choose a user, enable his autoreply in openwebmail user preference 2. edit the ~user/.forward file, add the '-d' option after vacation.pl 3. send a message to this user to test the autoreply 4. check the /var/tmp/vacation.debug for possible error information BIG5<->GB CONVERSION -------------------- Openwebmail supports chinese charset conversion between Big5 encoding (used in taiwan, hongkong) and GB encoding(used in mainland) in both message reading and writing. To make the conversion work properly, you have to 1. download the Hanzi Converter (hc-30.tar.gz) by Ricky Yeung(Ricky.Yeung@eng.sun.com) and Fung F. Lee (lee@umunhum.stanford.edu). 2. tar -zxvf hc-30.tar.gz cd hc-30 make 3. copy 'hc' and 'hc.tab' to cgi-bin/openwebmail or /usr/local/bin 4. modify the openwebmail.conf g2b_converter and b2g_converter. FILTER SUPPORT -------------- The mailfilter checks if messages in INBOX folder matches the filters rules defined by user. If matches, move/copy the message to the target folder. If you move a message to the DELETE folder, which means deleting messages from a folder. If you use INBOX as the destination in a filter rule, any message matching this rule will be kept in the INBOX folder and other rules will be ignored. COMMAND TOOL checkmail.pl ------------------------- Since mail filtering is activated only in Open WebMail, it means messages will stay in the INBOX until user reads their mail with Open WebMail. So 'finger' or other mail status check utility may give you wrong information since they don't know about the filter. A command tool 'checkmail.pl' can be used as finger replacement. It does mail filtering before report mail status. Some fingerd allow you to specify the name of finger program by -p option (ex: fingerd on FreeBSD). By changing the parameter to fingerd in /etc/inetd.conf, users can get their mail status from remote host. checkmail.pl can be also used in crontab to prefetch pop3mail or do folder index verification for users. For example: 59 23 * * * /usr/local/www/cgi-bin/openwebmail/checkmail.pl -a -p -i -q The above line in crontab will do pop3mail prefetching, mail filtering and folder index verification quietly for all users at 23:59 every day . GLOBAL ADDRESSBOOK and FILTERRULE --------------------------------- Current support for global addressbook/filterrule is very limited. The administrator has to make a copy of addressbook/filterbook to the file specified by global_addressbook or global_filterbook by himself. ps: An account may be created to maintain the global addressbook/filterbook, for example: 'global' ln -s your_global_addressbook ~global/mail/.address.book ln -s your_global_filterbook ~global/mail/.filter.book Please be sure that the global files are writeable by user 'global' and readable by others ADD SUPPORT FOR NEW LANGUAGE ----------------------------- It is very simple to add support for your language into openwebmail 1. choose an abbreviation for your language, eg: xy ps: You may choose the abbreviation by referencing the following url http://i18n.kde.org/stats/gui/i18n-table-KDE_2_2_BRANCH.html http://babel.alis.com/langues/iso639.en.htm http://www.unicode.org/unicode/onlinedat/languages.html 2. cd cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc. cp lang/en lang/xy cp -R templates/en templates/xy 3. translate file lang/xy and templates/xy/* from English to your language 4. add your language to %languagenames in openwebmail-shared.pl, then you can set default_language to 'xy' in openwebmail.conf ps: If you wish your translation to be included in the next release of openwebmail, please submit it to openwebmail@turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw. ADD MORE BACKGROUNDS TO OPENWEBMAIL -------------------------------------------- If you would like to add some background images into openwebmail for your user, you can copy them into %ow_htmldir%/images/backgrounds. Then the user can choose these backgrounds from user preference menu. ps: If you wish to share your wonderful backgrounds with others, please email it to openwebmail@turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw DESIGN YOUR OWN ICONSET IN OPENWEBMAIL --------------------------------------- If you are interested in designing your own image set in the openwebmail, you have to 1. create a new sub directory in the %ow_htmldir%/images/iconsets/, eg: MyIconSet ps: %ow_htmldir% is the dir where openwebmail could find its html objects, it is defined in openwebmail.conf 2. copy all images from %ow_htmldir%/images/iconsets/Default to MyIconSet 3. modify the image files in the %ow_htmldir%/images/iconsets/MyIconSet for your need ps: If you wish the your new iconset to be included in the next release of openwebmail, please submit it to openwebmail@turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw TEST ----- 1. chdir to openwebmail cgi dir (eg: /usr/local/www/cgi-bin/openwebmail) and check the owner, group and permission of the following files ~/openwebmail.pl - owner=root, group=mail, mode=4755 ~/openwebmail-main.pl - owner=root, group=mail, mode=4755 ~/openwebmail-prefs.pl - owner=root, group=mail, mode=4755 ~/spellcheck.pl - owner=root, group=mail, mode=4755 ~/checkmail.pl - owner=root, group=mail, mode=4755 ~/vacation.pl - owner=root, group=mail, mode=0755 ~/etc - owner=root, group=mail, mode=755 ~/etc/sessions - owner=root, group=mail, mode=770 ~/etc/users - owner=root, group=mail, mode=770 /var/log/openwebmail.log - owner=root, group=mail, mode=660 2. test your webmail with http://your_server/cgi-bin/openwebmail/openwebmail.pl If there is any problem, please check the faq.txt. The latest version of FAQ will be available at http://turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw/openwebmail/download/doc/faq.txt TODO ---- Features that we would like to implement first... 1. web calendar 2. web disk 3. shared folder 4. mod_perl compatibility Features that people may also be interested 1. maildir support 2. online people sign in 3. log analyzer 12/16/2001 openwebmail@turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw