Webmail

From CafeWiki

Having the system email in an IMAP (Maildir) store means that gaining access to an email account is possible from a number of places - multiple computers on the local LAN, mobile devices or the web. For web access, it is important that you have a secure and full featured interface. In the past, I've used Squirrelmail and have been quite satisfied with it; the system requirements are very light and it is simple to install.

Roundcube, however, has some advantages with a nicer and more intuitive interface at the cost of a slightly more complex install. Roundcube may mot be quite as stable as Squirrelmail since it hasn't been around as long, although I've never noticed any instability. I'd say it's a wash, either way you'll get a workable webmail interface.

This wikipage will describe the setup for Roundcube, since that is what I currently use and can remember how I actually did the install ;-)

Installation

First of all, despite the fact that you can find how-tos that say you can install roundcube under ubuntu with the following command:

apt-get install roundcube roundcube-mysql

Don't do it! The problem is that the version of Roundcube in the apt repository is not the most recent, when I tried this I got Roundcube 0.2.x when the current stable release was 0.4.x. This resulted in a non-functioning system due to a ubuntu specific bug in the earlier version (the current version was OK). Therefore, the best apporach is to follow the installation instructions on the Roundcube wiki. In summary this is as follows:

mkdir /path/to/installdir
cd /path/to/installdir
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/roundcubemail/files/roundcubemail/0.4/roundcubemail-0.4.tar.gz/download
tar -xvzf roundcubemail-0.4.tar.gz
chown -R webserveruser:webserveruser * 

That is, pick an install location, get the source files (the filename may be different), un-tar the download and allow the webserver user to have ownership of the install.

Configure the roundcube mysql database:

mysql -u roundcube -p password roundcube <SQL/mysql.initial.sql
$mysql> CREATE DATABASE roundcubemail;
$mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON roundcubemail.* TO username@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
$mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Replace the database, username and password to appropriate values for your installation.

Set up a SSL website for the roundcube interface as described on the Webserver page.

Start the install wizard by browsing to the mail server installer program, https://url-to-roundcube/installer/

Lock down the config, temp and logs directory for the install.

Simple!