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not having to maintain my own webmail interface.

And there's plenty of open source webmail interfaces:

• Horde/Imp
• Squirrel Mail

http://squirrelmail.org/download.php

Interface takes a bit of getting used to, but its allright. It doesn't look as pretty or as polished as gmail but it'll work. Obviously you could/should use an email client and just access them through POP or whatever.

Squirrelmail is pretty good if you want to go the php route.. Zimbra has a very nice web client. And there's always Outlook Web Access or whatever they are calling it nowadays. Exchange has it's own problems but Gmail is just not enterprise class. I could see it as a student-only email service however.

I use Dreamhost and their email is accessible by webmail if desired. They use http://www.squirrelmail.org/squirrelmail. It's automatically set up at mail.yourdomain.com at works fairly well. They have a support wiki set up with their email and webmail config, with details on a bunch of different email clients. My customers I've set up with it like the flexibility of having both a desktop email client at the office and access to the webmail portion when they're away (One of my big customers is a used car dealership, so they're often off at auctions and whatnot).

http://www.squirrelmail.org/

Easy...set up a linux box at home and install Postfix and Squirrelmail . These work great and will do as you wished.

Here's a good link for setting up virtual hosting before you put on the webmail front end.

Most IMAP clients cache local copies of the messages to speed up display and allow for offline use. I know that the already-seen messages in both Mail.app and Thunderbird are visible even when I can't reach my mail server. I'd would just recommend using IMAP and running your own server, with clients that cache. Also set up SquirrelMail on the server so that you can access your mail from kiosk-type computers and you'll be all set.

I've run a setup like this for years and it works out great.

Well, maybe you could use Squirrelmail.

http://www.squirrelmail.org/plugin_view.php?id=153

try that.. or you could try squirel mail http://www.squirrelmail.org/ and a phpicalendar solution

Squirrel Mail does what you're talking about. I use it with my IMAP server. I have a web server on one machine running SquirrelMail and the imap/MTA server on another machine. Also its easily configured to run over https. Of course, squirrelmail isn't as fancy nor does it have the indexing and search. But it seems like it would be a good starting point to add those kinds of features.

Have you thought about http://www.squirrelmail.org/ ? Sounds like what you are after

I just installed it, and it seems pretty slick thus far. I think they still have a few things to add beyond search, namely:

- Server-side sorting so that all messages don't need to be downloaded in order to view, say, the 15 newest.
- Special folder support, such as Junk, Sent, Trash, etc. Currently send mail just goes off into the ether.

Other than that, I'm pretty impressed. I personally currently use Squirrelmail for my webmail needs, but it feels a bit clunky. If they can meet Squirrelmail's features (at a minimum) I can see this being used all over the place. I find the use of a DB for things like user/session/whatever management to be a bit odd, but at least actual files don't have to be used then.

If you have a server box handy, you can just leave squirrelmail (http://www.squirrelmail.org/) going to serve a web imap interface. I use my phone's web browser to get my imap mail through squirrelmail.

It's probably not as easy to use as the pay apps, but it does get the job done just fine for quick email checks..

Look at postfix + mysql
http://www.sweeney.demon.co.uk/pfix_imap_virtual.h tml

Mostly, U will need a cluster for everything.
If you are seeking for a all around opensource, start with this link, later, to use LVS, the tool for makeking load balancing clusters go here:
http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/

And if you really are looking for a opensource cheap software costs (not very cheap tco) also you can build your OWN san with ata over ethernet:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/aoetools/

And for webmail a usefull but also ligth interface:
http://www.squirrelmail.org/

With all the licence cost savings, you can Invest a lot of time, and have a fair amount of flexibility.

Sendmail inc, has high availability solutions:
www.sendmail.com

Also, you can spend a lot of money and buy a very bit IBM machine with lots, and lots of lotus notes licenses, with that kind of money spent, you can put IBM at your knees if a lawer makes a good contract..

Also, to complete the solution you can setup nagios and mrtg for monitoring.
http://www.nagios.org/
http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/

I think, to setup the hole thing, U will need, like about 50 good servers, (maybe u can try IBM openpower with virtualization, it IS a risc CPU), and like.. humm.. a month of technical tests...

The mysql backend will give you centralized administration, LVS will provide scalability and good servers will give you uptime...

And if EVEN you like, you can make a Linux Routers using sangoma hardware:
http://wwww.sangoma.com/

Everything can be done with Linux by now... The cuestion is how much responsability do you want to have regarding the stability, and overall functionality of the solution.

IBM, HP, RedHat, SuSe, and ANY Linux Consulting firm would be interested in having you as a success history.

Good Luck, and May the Source be With You

1. Start making things more reliable on the backend. For starters, put IPCop in as a firewall, place all the machines behind it. On the backend you can use the best tool for the job, and no one knows you're running Linux/FreeBSD/OS X.
2. Once that is working well, move e-mail to something web based like SquirrelMail. SquirrelMail acts like an IMAP client, so all you have to do is turn on imap on exchange and you can start using SquirrelMail with it. This help immensely with setting people up with e-mail, and users can still use any client they would like if they prefer.
3. Set up the mail server to drop anything with an executable extension and .zip extension.
4. Set up an online trouble ticket system. Do not fix anything unless it is put in the system. This helps in several ways, you automatically have a written record of everything you've done, and you can more easily prioritize what needs to be done. It also stops people from stopping you in the hall to fix "just this one quick thing". When they say they couldn't put it in the help desk because their computer wasn't working, show them that there is always another classroom/computer that is closer than the phone.
5. Lock the computers down. Do not allow anyone to install anything. Show them the SPA website and how the district is liable for $150,000 for each infringement of illegally installed software. This should help you convince the superintendent and BOE of the policy.
6. Setup file server and accounts for every person. Allow any person to use any computer and have their documents and settings follow them.
7. Learn Ghost or your favorite imaging software and Windows RIS. Tie this in with the step above, if you can't fix the problem in 15 minutes, re-image the machine. DeepFreeze might be another product to look into.
8. You must have a filtering solution put in place to be compliant with e-rate and COPA. We use SquidGuard, but there is also Dan's Guardian, which can be plugged into IPCop. Block all Active X controls with filtering. Once people get tired of IE not working, they might be more acceptable to Firefox.
9. The easiest way to get them to use Firefox is to install it on the machine, remove Internet Explorer. Put the Firefox shortcut on the desktop, but replace the icon with the one from Internet Explorer and rename the shortcut Internet Explorer. This also works to migrate people to OpenOffice.org. :-)

The fastest way to gain the respect of others is to start writing grants. Once you are bringing in new equipment and monies from grants, people will start to trust you.

No matter how stable and secure the network and computers are, staff will still believe they are unstable. It's just something you have to shrug off.

There's a VERY easy way to stop MUCH of the Microsoft supported liberal garbage, simply notify Microsoft that because of their financial and name support of liberal corruption that you are going to openly publicize and promote freeware replacements to their software products. FREE OS - Linux (to replace Windows) http://www.linux.org/ [linux.org] MS Office replacement (to replace MS Office) http://www.openoffice.org/ [openoffice.org] WEB Server products (to Replace MS IIS Server) http://www.apache-asp.org/ [apache-asp.org] Linux Applications (many are free) (additional free applications) http://www.linux.org/apps/index.html [linux.org] Web Mail replacement for MS Exchange http://www.squirrelmail.org/ [squirrelmail.org] PHP-Nuke Content Management System http://phpnuke.org/ [phpnuke.org] Combatting Microsoft Liberal Media Corruption through MSNBC, NBC, and MSN Let Microsoft know that because THEY have their name associated with NBC / MSNBC / MSN that you will stop buying their products in the future, but that many of the great opensource (i.e. FREE) products below that work as Microsoft replacements will be promoted to friends, family, and businesses everywhere. U.S.-based news media needing information on topics not specifically addressed in the list below should contact the Waggener Edstrom Rapid Response Team at rrt@wagged.com or 503-443-7070. Additional PR contacts can be seen here (do NOT accept any excuses, THEY SUPPORT MSNBC AND NOTHING BUT STOPPING THE LIBERAL RANTS IS ACCEPTABLE. PERIOD!!) http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.asp [microsoft.com]

It seems to me that this would be a great extension to the capabilities of a Wiki software package, such as Wikipedia's MediaWiki.

In addition to the ability to edit the page, the Wiki would allow you to upload a file. For an example of uploading files to a server in a PHP application (such as MediaWiki), see SquirrelMail.

When you did upload a file, the web page would be modified with a link to the file. Other functions, with appropriately named links, would allow you to delete a file, replace a file, add a link to an already-uploaded file on another page, and so on.

Of course, whatever protection is deemed necessary, such as authorizations and approvals, would also be built in (e.g. for uploading, downloading, renaming, linking, and deleting).

Doing this in a Wiki has a lot of advantages:

1. It works in any browser, and it is fairly intuitive to use.

2. As with Wikipedia, the Wiki pages can include instructions, and links to tutorials, on how to use the file storage.

3. It avoids the need to come up with a one-size-fits-all file hierarchy up front. The real world always seems to resist hierarchical categorization, and the Wiki solves this, since the same file can be linked from various pages. For example, a file that is the result of a collaboration can be linked from the pages for both authors/artists.

4. It allows the creation of other pages that reference the files, such as reviews, best-of lists, and so on.

If I recall correctly squiremail has a plugin for allocating some space to users. Check it out. Link to squirrelmail plugin

And then Google get to read, index, and (at a later date) profit from your emails...

Personally I've set up SquirrelMail on my little home server and am busy working out how to get it to work in https mode only.

That's got the advantage that it too is web based but it's (hopefully) private to boot (my sysadmin incompetence not withstanding :)

Having said that I do have a gmail account but I have every expectation that a future Google will become a.n.other corporation and all their current concerns about privacy will be slowly eroded "to enhance our customer experience whilst maximising shareholder value" etc. etc.

Keystroke logging ? SquirrelMail has a perfect
plugin for that kind of things...

http://www.squirrelmail.org/plugin_view.php?id=159

Of course you got to have your own webmail, but without it, security is pointless :)

That's it.. set it up on a system at home and use https to access it. They can't read the email then. Screw-em for trying..

http://www.squirrelmail.org/

Microsoft MUST "crash" for supporting the Gay Agenda!

MAKE MICROSOFT GET OUT OF GAY POLITICS OR MAKE THEM CEASE TO EXIST! SEND A MESSAGE TO EVERY OTHER CORPORATION IN AMERICA THAT SUPPORTING HETEROPHOBIA WILL BE THEIR END!

http://www.nodnc.com/modules.php?name=News&file=ar ticle&sid=293

There's a VERY easy way to stop MUCH of the Microsoft supported liberal garbage, simply notify Microsoft that because of their financial and name support of liberal corruption that you are going to openly publicize and promote freeware replacements to their software products.

FREE OS - Linux (to replace Windows)
http://www.linux.org/

MS Office replacement (to replace MS Office)
http://www.openoffice.org/

WEB Server products (to Replace MS IIS Server)
http://www.apache-asp.org/

Linux Applications (many are free) (additional free applications)
http://www.linux.org/apps/index.html

Web Mail replacement for MS Exchange
http://www.squirrelmail.org/

PHP-Nuke Content Management System
http://phpnuke.org/

Combatting Microsoft Liberal Media Corruption through MSNBC, NBC, and MSN

Let Microsoft know that because THEY have their name associated with NBC / MSNBC / MSN that you will stop buying their products in the future, but that many of the great opensource (i.e. FREE) products below that work as Microsoft replacements will be promoted to friends, family, and businesses everywhere.

U.S.-based news media needing information on topics not specifically addressed in the list below should contact the Waggener Edstrom Rapid Response Team at
rrt@wagged.com
or 503-443-7070.

Additional PR contacts can be seen here (do NOT accept any excuses, THEY SUPPORT MSNBC AND NOTHING BUT STOPPING THE LIBERAL RANTS IS ACCEPTABLE. PERIOD!!)

There's a VERY easy way to stop MUCH of the Microsoft supported liberal garbage, simply notify Microsoft that because of their financial and name support of liberal corruption that you are going to openly publicize and promote freeware replacements to their software products. FREE OS - Linux (to replace Windows) http://www.linux.org/ MS Office replacement (to replace MS Office) http://www.openoffice.org/ WEB Server products (to Replace MS IIS Server) http://www.apache-asp.org/ Linux Applications (many are free) (additional free applications) http://www.linux.org/apps/index.html Web Mail replacement for MS Exchange http://www.squirrelmail.org/ PHP-Nuke Content Management System http://phpnuke.org/ Combatting Microsoft Liberal Media Corruption through MSNBC, NBC, and MSN Let Microsoft know that because THEY have their name associated with NBC / MSNBC / MSN that you will stop buying their products in the future, but that many of the great opensource (i.e. FREE) products below that work as Microsoft replacements will be promoted to friends, family, and businesses everywhere. U.S.-based news media needing information on topics not specifically addressed in the list below should contact the Waggener Edstrom Rapid Response Team at rrt@wagged.com or 503-443-7070. Additional PR contacts can be seen here (do NOT accept any excuses, THEY SUPPORT MSNBC AND NOTHING BUT STOPPING THE LIBERAL RANTS IS ACCEPTABLE. PERIOD!!) http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.asp

There's a VERY easy way to stop MUCH of the Microsoft supported liberal garbage, simply notify Microsoft that because of their financial and name support of liberal corruption that you are going to openly publicize and promote freeware replacements to their software products.

FREE OS - Linux (to replace Windows)
http://www.linux.org/

MS Office replacement (to replace MS Office)
http://www.openoffice.org/

WEB Server products (to Replace MS IIS Server)
http://www.apache-asp.org/

Linux Applications (many are free) (additional free applications)
http://www.linux.org/apps/index.html

Web Mail replacement for MS Exchange
http://www.squirrelmail.org/

PHP-Nuke Content Management System
http://phpnuke.org/

***

Combatting Microsoft Liberal Media Corruption through MSNBC, NBC, and MSN

Let Microsoft know that because THEY have their name associated with NBC / MSNBC / MSN that you will stop buying their products in the future, but that many of the great opensource (i.e. FREE) products below that work as Microsoft replacements will be promoted to friends, family, and businesses everywhere.

U.S.-based news media needing information on topics not specifically addressed in the list below should contact the Waggener Edstrom Rapid Response Team at
rrt@wagged.com
or 503-443-7070.

Additional PR contacts can be seen here (do NOT accept any excuses, THEY SUPPORT MSNBC AND NOTHING BUT STOPPING THE LIBERAL RANTS IS ACCEPTABLE. PERIOD!!)
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.asp

Face it, people who https://squirrelmail.obscurehost/ can upload attachments to their heart's content and you'll never know what's in them. They can also use any other upload form on the web (yahoo groups has them for group file areas, also work with https) to snarf a zipfile full of whatever secret stuff they want. There's no way to easily log that, and if you log it the hard way, you're going to have a hard time finding the culprits. If they use halfway decent steganography, you won't be able to find the secret source code or whatever inside the lengthy JPEG uploads of the latest corporate "product photos" even if they didn't use https and you looked. And good luck taking action without a preponderance of the evidence.

Plus, all the geeky engineers have USB drives on their keychains.

You're only stopping the casual nontechie espionage, but perhaps that alone is worth it. Don't tell your Sarbanes-Oxley signatories that you have everything covered, though, because you don't, and they could be personally liable if they believe that.

Believe it or not, but a LOT of people like webmail, it keeps their mail centralized. This might be why they aren't offering IMAP ;)

(but then again, most users don't know how to use IMAP)

a standards-based webmail package written in PHP4. It includes built-in pure PHP support for the IMAP and SMTP protocols, and all pages render in pure HTML 4.0 (with no JavaScript required) for maximum compatibility across browsers. It has very few requirements and is very easy to configure and install. SquirrelMail has all the functionality you would want from an email client, including strong MIME support, address books, and folder manipulation.

BSD runs fine with just the posix utilities and libraries.

Besides for something to be gnu all of it needs to be gnu. Go read the license?

1. By "something" do you mean a piece of GPLed software? That's true, but . . .
2. . . . Being "GNU" and being distributed under the terms of the GPL are orthogonal. The Emacs manual is GNU, but not GPLed. SquirrelMail is GPLed, but not GNU. And . . .
3. . . . being GNU means that the Free Software Foundation holds the copyrights, and has made the software part of their system.
4. The license explicitly permits the aggregation of GPLed and GPL incompatible software. Nobody but you has a problem mixing GNU and non-GNU at the application level.
5. 
   
   
   So, the question remains; should a system be known by the same name as its kernel? Or should it have a moniker that indicates its more complete heritage?
   
   -Peter
   
   PS: Debian has created a BSD version of their GNU system, they call it , which seems perfectly appropriate to me.

I can't really comment on 'best', but our users have found that squirrel works pretty well for them. We use it as a frontend to IMAP. The one area it seems to fall flat compared to native clients is for those users that make regular use of drag and drop for sorting messages into folders.

You will never get people who use Microsoft to switch only partially. You have a better chance at scrapping the whole Exchange/Outlook system for Squirrelmail. Just do it all in one fell swoop. Better to have those people complain and be secure, rather than have people complain and still have a system that isn't (e.g. Outlook).

I just don't understand why someone would move 12 years of their life into the data warehouse of someone you don't control.

You're right. Re-read Brad Templeton's privacy concerns over Gmail and the prospect of storing the "12 years of your life into the data warehouse of someone you don't control" becomes rather dubious.

However, from a purely technical standpoint there are some real advantages to chucking your mail archives into Gmail. The search feature is second to none (who even needs labels?), the interface beats any webmail (Squirrelmail? come on!) or IMAP reader hands-down, and the conversations feature is a real bonus (Mark Lyon informs me that GMail automatically makes conversations from the messages as they are uploaded with his Gmail loader).

The bottom line is, I don't know whether to upload all my old mail to Gmail yet, and for me the jury's still out until the geeks and the lawyers agree.

Squirrel Mail is often overlooked, it's plugins give it shared calendars with (some) outlook compatability, todo lists, and tons of other stuff. The calendaring system is very simplistic ( no auto-repeat of an event, events are limited to 6 hour intervals ), but depending on what you use it for, it's very nice.

Squirrel Mail is often overlooked, it's plugins give it shared calendars with (some) outlook compatability, todo lists, and tons of other stuff. The calendaring system is very simplistic ( no auto-repeat of an event, events are limited to 6 hour intervals ), but depending on what you use it for, it's very nice.

Squirrel Mail is often overlooked, it's plugins give it shared calendars with (some) outlook compatability, todo lists, and tons of other stuff. The calendaring system is very simplistic ( no auto-repeat of an event, events are limited to 6 hour intervals ), but depending on what you use it for, it's very nice.

A lot of hosts come with webmail access included (Dreamhost gives everyone webmail.[domain].com, for example).

If you want to install your own, have a look at SquirrelMail, Open Webmail, or Horde IMP. I've only used SquirrelMail, and it's pretty good.

That said, you'll be hard pressed to find anything with an interface anywhere near as good as Gmail. Cheap hosting is also likely to be slower and less reliable.

just not well enough to sign off an enterprise solution on...

I wouldn't sign off an enterprise solution on PHP full stop. Vile language.

So says someone who did some work on Squirrelmail a little while back - man it sucks trying to support all the little incompatibilities and changing defaults and changing configurations everywhere. When you're undoing an automatic quote of variables depending on a guess from some other variables you know you've got "Visual Basic for da interweb" - except with a less stable API.

That and the separate functions per DB type which caused all+dog to write their own copy of Perl's DBI in PHP before Pear came along.

It might be an OK language for developping small stand-alone web apps, or a web app which runs on one infrastructure that you control and validate - but it's not a language for writing stuff you can install on any webhost and expect a complex app to keep working across versions.

*grumble*

Let's start with the shell--zsh is by far the best one I've used. It has everything.

Moving on, Links (web browser) and Naim (AIM/ICQ/IRC client) rock. The only issue with the former is that Links doesn't support cookies, so I have Lynx in case I want to post on /. or something.

I don't have a console mail client on my machine--I have other methods of getting my email. For accessing my email account with my uni, I ssh into my uni's shell account and use pine from there or I use Links to access the Squirrelmail setup on my web server (over HTTPS, of course). To access my fastmail.fm account, I just use Links to access their web interface (they support both web and IMAP access for free).

For downloading stuff, I use giFTcurs, the btdownloadcurses.py BitTorrent client, and the venerable wget, depending on what I'm looking for and where I'm downloading from.

And, for the part that will generate the most flamage, my text editor of choice: Joe! Its interface is just as simple as nano, but with more features, such as find/replace and decent copy/paste, using text selection. On a related note, I use most as my pager--coloured man pages are good.

And, finally, who could forget NetHack?

Hmm...now I have an urge to find out how to make live CDs, so I can make a ``CLI survival kit'' live CD. Well, maybe not, as I'm too bloody lazy, but it's an idea...

their webmail is the best I've ever used

Relying on a webmail system for your primary communications just seems foolish.

I follow your point, and mostly agree, but I have two comments:

• Webmail is accessable from anywhere, on any machine. I routinely check my mail from random machines wherever I happen to be. To use your example, if I'm in an airport and "desperately need to review" something in my email, I can sit down at a public terminal, slip in a credit card, and be reading my email.
• SquirrelMail runs on my server in my closet, which is where my email gets sent to. Private email, only I get to see it, web access. It's the best of all worlds.

Doug

According to the details I've seen on the exploit, it's not just Hotmail and Yahoo that are vulnerable but most webmail interfaces. Has anyone tested this against Horde and SquirrelMail?

SquirrelMail is pretty nice.

Likelyhood is that it just needs configured... For example, look under "Text Encoding" here.

sometimes it is useful to have web-based email addresses

So run your own mail server and install IMP/HORDE or Squirrelmail.

but i still don't see how some dumb Electricbird is gonna beat a dinosaur....and the one on fire is already dead as far as i can tell.... heh its like naming a mail client after a squirrel...

I failed to mention this, but all email is accessed via SquirrelMail. We also use Amavis to scan all incoming and outgoing emails for viruses. Both of these combined during the busiest part of the day seems to keep the server quite busy load-wise. I was thinking the new scheduler and job spool methods would help manage things a little better. Now don't get me wrong, the current setup is not terrible, but I am looking for improvements.

However, given your opinion, I will stick with 2.4 for now. Thanks for the info.

I use and administer squirrelmail on my system. I'm happy. My users are happy...

If you run your own mail server, I'd recommend installing SquirrelMail. All you basically need is an imap connection to the server that hosts the email, and your web server has to be able to run PHP scripts.

I know it has a funny name, but SquirrelMail is free, open sourced, and fairly easy to install. And it should do everything that you need it to do. (it may not have *all* the bells and whistles, but it gets the job done) And so long as you're running it on your mail server, you can firewall out imap to everyone but localhost.

I use this for my home server since I host my own email too. I use it for those rare times when I can't get an SSH connection to the server so that I can use pine instead. Oh, and the college that I work for went with using this for our web-based email that we use here for the students. While there may be better ones out there, the word "free" was very attractive, plus it did what we needed it to. So we host 4000+ email accounts with using this to access them. (though we changed the logos and graphics and things like that. It's fairly customizeable as well.) I'd say it was worth your time to check it out.

For those of you who like to do your own thing, but still want the webmail then look no further than Squrrel Mail.

Chock full of features and can be configured to your heart's content with the robust plugin system. I've been using it as my sole email client for over two years now without regret.

Find a cheap domain hosting provider that gives imap access and php support and your set.

Like I mentioned in the parent post bluebottle supports hotmail accounts so you can transition into a new account while still checking your old account (from within bluebottle). This of course adds the benifit of the TMDA (like) support to your existing hotmail account as well.

Squirrelmail has a plugin that does this too (for running on your own server) as well as support for other existing pop accounts (I think bluebottle does too, but its based on Horde not Squirrelmail)

One problem with Squirrel I have had (Suse 8.2, not sure about the version but pretty recent) is that it sometimes fails with folders with boatloads (several thousand) of mail in it

Most likely php was timing out. In your php.ini or eqiv there is a setting that caps how long any single php request can run for. You can either up this or get the folder displaying in less time. By changing options for SquirrelMail to use ServerSide sorting(admin option), not every changing your display prefs "Enable Sort by of Receive Date" to No, and making sure you have Courier setup with plenty of allowed IMAP connections you can speed things up alot.

Haven't tested with several thousand but with about 2 thousand messages the inital folder view delay went from around 35 seconds to 4 seconds. Your times might be different since I'm running everything on an old 300Mhz Sparc/Solaris system. Other then that if you haven't already checked it out I'd suggest look at SquirrelMail's performance tuning ideas here.