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Is There a Linux Client Solution for Exchange 2007?
CrazedSanity writes "I have been working at my state job for about 7 months now, using the Exchange plugin for Evolution to check my email. Very recently the higher-ups decided to migrate to Exchange 2007, which effectively destroyed my ability to check my email through any method other than webmail (which means I have to constantly refresh/reload the webmail window). I'm sure somebody else has encountered the problem, but I'm wondering if anybody has come up with a working solution?" Note: CrazedSanity's looking for a client that will work with Exchange in a situation where replacing the Exchange install with an open-source equivalent isn't an option.
Virtualize a Windows box with Outlook.
Take a dollar, divide it by 100, take two and call me in the morning.
Just telnet in and use SMTP commands.
uhm, thunderbird ?
or one of the many other mail clients?
That's how I deal with my mail where I work. If you aren't the IT guy that manages your exchange server and they don't have webmail turned on, Thunderbird should talk to exchange.
According to the Crossovers Compatibilities list, Outlook 2007 is rated meh (my interpretation of bronze) with a few silver ratings by other people. http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=2841
This is of course for Crossover's version of wine with their proprietary fixes, for good ol gnu wine has Outlook 2007 listed as garbage.
Personally, I would nag on the IT people to free themselves from depending on an untrustworthy company.
but I realized that the webmail was actually better than virtualizing a box or trying in vain to hack the evolution-plugins. I ended up with the following solution:
I have a terminal-window that runs a bash-script that uses wget (or curl, don't really remember) to pull down the webmail-main-page and actually grep for the "boldness" of the new messages. When ever there is a bold line somewhere in the main view it makes a noise and flashes a tcl/tk-window saying that there are new stuff on the web-mail. I tab to the correct place in the firefox, refresh and there you go.
I know the solution is a little weird, but it works and it does what I need, so I really do not care to try out something else (except advocating OSS in my work place).
give fetchmail a try?
So what's the big problem?
Did you try the work they were doing here? They did mention that it's supposed to work with Exchange 2007.
"He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." - Duck Soup
One of the many howtos on how to setup thunderbird/lightning with an exchange server: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/03/30/howto-thunderbird-and-ms-exchange-server/?
Exchange supports IMAP, you could use that plus any IMAP compatible email client (most of them are).
Thunderbird works well with ms exchange.
I use it at work.
The only solution I've found is to enable Imap on the exchange server, and also enable SMTP for incoming mail. Then install Thunderbird.
You can also use the ldap features of Active Directory to do lookups of people's email addresses.
There's a calendaring plugin for thunderbird called lightning, but it doesn't seem to work with Exchange 2007 (I can't accept meeting invitations).
AccountKiller
I have a perfectly good solution that does not involve replacing Exchange, does involve replacing Evolution, and in fact would allow you to use virtually any client you wish. Exchange has IMAP support; it just has to be enabled. The only downside is that this doesn't sync contacts/calendars. Another possibility is using Outlook Web Access, although you wouldn't be able to use the Full interface in any Linux browser. Finally, what about Evolution-Brutus? It basically involves running some software on a Windows computer that proxies traffic between Evolution and Exchange. I've heard it works great.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Just do it 2 or 3 times a day, and let it be known that if there's anything that needs an immediate response, you have a phone on your desk.
Embrace the constraint, and use it to your advantage.
I just waited until the same higher-ups that forced the upgrade got so fed up with the poor performance of Exchange 2007 that they forced us to switch back.
Took about 3 weeks.
evolution?
it is an option...I'm just saying.
What's wrong with Outlook Web Access? Use Firefox or even Prism/XULRunner or whatever and you have everything you need.
Yes, Zimbra, and many other Groupware solutions meant just for that purpose.
Use OWA.
If your boss cares about you and gets imap enabled, bonus for him. Otherwise, demerit for him.
If the company is willing to live with it, so should you.
Or leave.
I for one like the idea of not using email for ever single little thing, and I purposely turn off new email notifications.
OWA is not that bad, and if more people use it from non-ms platforms, MS might actually make it better.
"Piter, too, is dead."
OpenChange is an open source MAPI client that supports all versions of Exchange up to and including 2007, it is native MAPI and thus does everything you would expect an Exchange client to do, and it does it a reasonable speed.
http://www.openchange.org/
There is already an Evolution plug-in that will be mainlined into GNOME 2.24. However, you can currently get it for Fedora 10 and other platforms.
The current Evolution plug-in uses OWA web page scrapping and is really lame, and it most likely broke from web interface changes in 2007.
If you are not happy with just OWA (although it does refresh itself and do popup notification etc) and want something that will notify you when you get new mail, get any ActiveSync device (iPhone, iPod Touch, any Windows Mobile, some Treo's, anyone know if Android supports it?).
It will be - portable and push-synced and if you DO want to see the email in all its glory, you can always pull up OWA for that specific message.
Other than that, you may also want to run an old windows XP desktop somethere and RDP to it. Easier on resources and installation than VMs.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
... running just enough software to get you through your Office requirements. We do that for engineers that would prefer native Linux/X for CAD layout and run XP in virtualbox for office-related work.
I spend a day every 2 or 3 months trying to hack away at the evolution exchange plugin to get it to even work with my exchange 2003 install, which used to work for me (in ubuntu 6.10). I wouldn't have a problem using OWA, except when you use OWA in firefox, there doesn't seem to be any search functionality (talk about crippling a user interface), so it's useless other than checking for new mail.
I'm very happily running outlook 2007 in virtualbox, running in seamless mode. It gives you access to all the functionality of your exchange server, and in 2007, the (near instantaneous) search feature is even better than in evolution.
I am, however, looking forward to a maturing openchange, so we'll see what that brings.
the higher-ups decided to migrate to Exchange 2007, which effectively destroyed my ability to check my email through any method other than webmail
So your organization migrated to Exchange 2007 and didn't provide any way to check it other than webmail? No client at all?
Or do they say "use Outlook and we'll support it, or else pick whatever you like but we won't support it"?
Or did they say "use Outlook", but you don't like Outlook and so you're going around their rules?
Just thought I'd ask.
The Exchange 2007 web services API should make this job easier.
Introduction to Exchange Web Services in Exchange 2007
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb408417.aspx
New Programmability Features in Exchange Server 2007
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332450.aspx
More discussions:
Exchange 2007
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3891474
http://psankar.blogspot.com/2007/10/write-evolution-plugins-using-mono-c.html
"Exchange Server 2007 has a Exchange Web-Services Interface. IIUC Working with web-services should be a lot easier and featureful when done via Mono than plain C. So implementing support for Exchange 2007 can be done via this Mono plugins (which I am planning to takeup as my ITO task)"
If your job requires Windows, perhaps maybe you should, uhh, install Windows.
Similes are like metaphors
Having admin'ed Exchange since 5.5, let me point out...
Yes, Exchange supports POP3 and IMAP (pull)... not by default, but not difficult to enable.
Yes, Exchange supports SMTP... but since mail is often sent by Exchange, it's often disabled for outbound access. IF you want to look at enabling relay, you can require authentication, or you can allow (private) subnets to relay.
I have to wonder what's so bad about OWA... and there is a tool called OWANotify which acts as a systray icon to identify when mail arrives (instead of leaving OWA open).
this isn't anything new... but...
Exchange offers: User collaboration... scheduling, public folders for sharing (though this is being phased out in favor of SharePoint), etc. These are not available except via OWA and Outlook (via MAPI)
Additionally, mail is stored on Exchange based on "Single Instance Storage", meaning that if I send an email to 20 other users in the exchange database (which there can be multiple of), only 1 copy will be stored. This presents a HUGE space savings as it relates to the database, and backup jobs (when performed correctly), as well as file server space (since most people just throw their PST's on the file server, which is being backed up anyway).
I *HATE* quotas since it forces people to use PST's which fight against the benefits that Exchange brings. There are other approaches (auto archive, cleaning the trash bin, etc) that can be as effective.
Assuming you don't care about anything EXCEPT email (which Exchange is *WAY* overkill for, price, feature, and resource-wise), I would recommend IMAP (since that keeps data on the server) over POP3. Though I use OWA myself :)
YMMV
Older versions of office work very well under Wine and they are supported under Crossover. You owe it to yourself to check out Codeweavers.
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/
I found my inner child, then I got caught abusing it...
IMHO, that's not an option. TELNET into Exchange Servers nowadays has been (mostly) blocked due to the inherent vulnerabilities, i.e.- taking over an e-mail server. Not only that, but what with IMAP, SMTP is about the last thing anyone wants in this 'make it pretty' world in the newer servers. I've gotten along with 'mail' and 'pine' for the longest time, but not everything is easy to someone who doesn't understand how to or has not learned the 'old' ways; or how an e-mail server works. Everything doesn't need to be GUI, but try to do anything without it (at least in the world of the average user).
What folks seem to be missing here is that the attraction to Exchange isn't that it's just a mail server. It's the calendaring, tightly coupled with the server that makes it work. Nothing else short of Google Apps has come close to working as well as Outlook + Exchange does.
Now, having said that, there's plenty of good work going on integrating other systems together (I personally run standard IMAP / SMTP for mail, and use Google Calendar for my calendaring). This works great, but is not 'exchange compatable'.
There are some other workarounds - An outlook 2007 client can be configured to publish it's calendar up into Google Calendar via some plugins - once you do that, Thunderbird + Lightning comes very very close to working the same as Outlook does, but it's not exactly an elegant solution.
We've hit hte same problem at one of my clients regarding Outlook 2007 - Evolution no longer works, and some of hte Linux folks are stuck.
The last bit is, as others have said, a vmware install of XP -just- running Outlook. It's not as horrible as you might think :)
Event Management Solutions : http://www.stonekeep.com/
I hadn't heard until today that Exchange 2007 changed the protocol and broke Evolution. Nobody is complaining about that fact?
Is this not Slashdot? I expected roughly 50% of the responses to be, "See! This is why Microsoft is evil!" with the other 50% being, "What's the big deal? Just use IMAP!"
Solutions in order of difficulty/time 1. If you have pull with the Exchange administrator, ask him to enable IMAP or POP3 2. Install IE using ies4linux or CrossOffice. It will allow you to use OWA in the normal mode which automatically refreshes. 3.Install Outlook 2007 with CrossOffice. They are now reporting that Office 2007 works with only a few problems under Linux. 4. Install Windows/Office under a VM. Modern VMs allow you to hide the desktop/start menu and interact with the application as if it were native(minus theming). 5. Wait for the 2007 support within Evolution
Use Outlook with CrossOver Office. CodeWeavers supports Outlook 2003 which should provide a MAPI implementation compatible with Exchange 2007.
----- obSig
That's the short answer.
You can jack around with Openchange, T-Bird, Lightning, Evolution and various forks until you're blue in the face. And all that is predicated on a series of ifs (IF the admin's enabled smtp, IF the same is true for imap, IF Evolution doesn't just decide to die that day, IF a recent update doesn't frag the libraries you're using for access, etc.)
There just isn't anything else right now that really provides Outlook's functionality for Exchange 2007.
What about Activesync? That always has to be there, and they can't easily change the protocol because it would break the execs' Windows Mobile gadgets.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
There are a lot of problems with Google Apps, as they stand presently.
While excellent web applications, they pale in comparison to the features that lots and lots of people require in MS Office. In addition, they have issues with security, namely people's documents ending up in other people's accounts. This is a Bad Thing(tm) for businesses.
On top of that, they provide no kind of regulatory compliance that I've seen.
I really like the apps. I use them almost exclusively for my personal work, but they're not ready for prime time.
If they'd just offer them on the Google Appliance, a lot of issues would be solved, but I imagine they're waiting for them to come out of beta before that happens
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Our email is being moved over to Exchange.. after being moved off Exchange, to something else.
Previously, the admins dared not place Exchange on the internet, lest it be hacked. So the only way to get your mail was via VPN. Since they configure the concentrator to only allow Windows clients with the firewalling on, you can't access anything on your local network, and yea verily, this did sucketh.
Presently, there is a public IMAP server (running some variety of not-Exhange). And it's nice to be able to get your email without crippling your network connection, and from the IMAP client of your choice (ie, Thunderbird), installed on the device of your choice.
Soon, they intend to move us back onto Exchange. Because they still dare not place Exchange onto the internet, it will be secured behind something called Intelligent Application Gateway, which appears to be some kind of SSL proxy server.
So our options are....
Given that the current solution works fine, I'm none too happy ; reading the announcement the first question that arose was "Are they idiots?", closely followed by "How fat was the wad of sweaty Billbucks they were given?"
Your options are ; give money to MS, or use a client that sucks (OWA lite). All the other clients suck LESS than OWA Lite, but to access any of them you must give some money to MS. Minimum spend being "a copy of a MS operating system", for IE, and maximum being Outlook. I'm not sure what the license cost of an IAG tunnel client is, but since you have to run it on Windows, it's a guaranteed winner for MS.
I would use evolution to connect to OWA. Here is an article on the topic:
http://jaysonrowe.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/connecting-evolution-to-exchange/
I have done this in the past and it works great.
K
Install the ReloadEvery Firefox add-on. Right click and select how often you want to reload the Exchange web interface page.
This could get you by until your email app supports Exchange 2007.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
There is a utility called fetchexc that will fetch incoming mail from Exchange 2000/2003 OWA servers. It would need some updating to work with 2007, though.
http://www.saunalahti.fi/juhrauti/index.html
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I've had to deal with a similar situation. The bottom line is that Exchange sucks if you don't use Windows. We have IMAP enabled so email access mostly works. Calendar access is a more difficult issue. It annoyed a few of my colleagues and me enough to write a Java application using EWS to export to iCal for read only access to calendars. We still need to use web access (OWA light) to make calendar changes. Our code is here http://code.google.com/p/exchange-calendar/
There are about two or three drop-in replacements for exchange these days, more or less open and free, and then there is the outlook plugin for evolution. Which sucks (I use it daily), because the Gods of Gnome have decided that the evolution-'platform' is going to be their next Operating System or something - extremely difficult to fiddle with, both in source and in configuration, because you need to be running two or three CORBA-like services at the same time and have god knows how many libraries in arbitrary places.
What all of these people don't realize is that all that concentration on a single endpoint is nice, but that they really must make *both* client *and* server. They must not only make a drop-in replacement for exchange, they must also make a client-library implementation to fit inside a GUI, so that they control both ends. So you can still be hybrid if you wish (and who wouldn't - no more 2G limits on your mailboxes for starters), but you can also be fully 'in' as it were.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
It states: "I have been working at my state job for about 7 months now" So we can only assume the worst about network and IT services.
So why the hell do so many people suggest turning on IMAP/POP, it's very unlikely that policy would allow (even if the poster were personal friends with an admin) this to happen. Then you've got to take into consideration the elements in between the Exch box and the client, again very unlikely such security changes will be allowed, even if same said friendly admin even has access. It seems the majority of people replying have very little knowledge of public sector or large business's infrastructures. Think about it, these changes are made, within a couple of weeks some update or reloaded config overwrites the changes, or worse a stifler for security turns off these features as per documentation for those boxes. FFS people make your post's relevant!
Out of all these post's very few have provided an actual answer to the question, and I don't profess to have one. However in your position I would run (as suggested) IE on Linux, RDP or VM (spec permitting).
Good luck Sir!
http://www.perfectreign.com/stuff/outlook_save.jpg
Now, we only have Exchange 2003 and I only have Outlook XP running under Crossover office, but it is a suggestion.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Maybe put things in perspective. Unless you paid for your work computer, or have to provide IT services for yourself, you should probably use what your given. Most people tend to forget that when they use a computer at work, it isn't their computer. I use whatever PC I have at work. Once I'm at home, I use what I want ... SUSE.
Another option is to start coding ...
Sorry this is the world we live in.
Surely there is some way to make the exchange server talk using some means that is compatible with the Evolution exchange plugin, no?
I just googled 'exchange 2007 evolution plugin' and saw some talk of using openchange MAPI plugin for evolution. no idea what that might be, but it seems to be the direction things are taking based on the conversations I read from about a year ago.
If not, get sun virtualbox and run a virtual machine with XP running on it. Better than nothing.
Salut,
Jacques
If you have a Citrix (or similar technology) infrastructure in your company, maybe they can publish an Outlook icon/app to those who use Linux. No need to run a VM in this case.
Seriously. Quit.
I'm using Evolution with exchange addons to communicate with Exchange server. It communicates over outlook web access and gives me calandar, reminders, contacts, global address list favorites of the public folder, and inbox ofc. I've gotten 80% of the kinks worked out. The only real gotcha is that you never really know if all of your messages are showing up. I routinely (1x per 3 days) have to my /home/user/.evolution/mail/exchange folder to keep the mail refreshing properly.
The last part is making me want to shell out $40 for crossover office, as I have been hearing it's stable.
I for one have tried the Evolution connector, Brutus, OWA(which was turned off), IMAP via thunderbird(IMAP was also turned off) and the only working solution Office 2003 via CrossOver Office. Of them all Brutus did the job but required a VM running Windoze to get the job done. Suffice it to say that Good ol' Microsoft has done a pretty good job of painting us into a corner when it comes to Open-Source alternatives to Outlook. So hopefully someone will open source a non-microsoft tool/connector/whatever soon to help us poor MS haters get by without ever having to dual boot or use wine to get EMAIL.
Subject says it all. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
You could just get another job working for freetard.com....
Hope you find the solution that you're looking for. But for those times that you have to use OWA for webmail, use a greasemonkey script to auto-refresh the messages list pane.
Install greasemonkey if you haven't already; find the autoreload/autorefresh script at userscripts.org that best fits the need; set the script to auto reload the URL of the messages list pane in OWA.
I use this when I have to use OWA, and it works well. Keeps me logged in, too. No little pop-up alerts on new messages, but that can be a blessing if you find those as annoying as I do.
As the post above you mentions, I don't think you entirely get the point. Telnet as well as being a way toget a remote shell is also a great way to communicate with servers that use ASCII protocols. For instance I can enter "$ telnet google.ca 80" and type in "GET / HTTP/1.0" and it will return 200 OKAY plus the google homepage. The same goes for SMTP and FTP. So as long as the server supports SMTP you can "telnet" into it.
The more you know.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
If your job requires Windows, maybe they should, uh, issue you a machine with Windows on it.
Set some boundaries here. If having you available to answer email 24/7 isn't worth paying for a laptop and a Windows and Office license to those "higher-ups", you can let that email wait until morning.
0 1 - just my two bits
:-( Evolution works through the OWA interface, and does not connect directly to the Exchange server. This is a lot like Entourage works. I find it surprising that Evolution does not work with Exchange 2007. If Entourage did that, people would be screaming bloody murder. Throw out your Evolution prefrences and set it up from scratch, and try it again. I would be VERY surprised if it did not work.
Okay, I just did a Google search, and suprisingly, it doesn't work, but many people are stating that it should work thorough MAPI or IMAP. Of course, you would not be able to sync your calendar or contacts with the server, and in effect, your smartphone on the BES or Good server, but at least you could work.
Or just install Crossover Office and install Outlook 2007. I would be shocked if your company did not have a license for it, and its actually a pretty nice little e-mail program.
Use wine and outlook, The license of exchange covers the use of outlook.
I've been using Thunderbird with IMAP along with Outlook on Windows, as Outlook doesn't work very nicely with mailing lists and GnuPG signatures... Along with Lightning (calendar extension) I'm sure this would be a good replacement. I know you can see calendars with Thunderbird (w/ Lightning) but haven't really tried using it (i.e. accepting, creating, etc.)
Overall Thunderbird if much faster than Outlook (my outlook datastore is ~2GB, 40000 emails and I imported them all in Thunderbird) and it doesn't need lengthy recoveries after power failures.
If you want to download full IMAP folders automatically, you need some manual tweaking - see this bug:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=329229
citrix.
Linux + Wine + ies4Linux + OWA.
I second the first suggestion. Nowdays most pc's are fast enough to run virtual environments without affecting productivity(hope youre running a dual core box by now with at least 2GB of RAM). Running XP with office 2007 on virtual box over ubuntu linux has little to no performance impact and its rather a cool factor to have it (show off seamless RDP). ;)
The next best option is to beg your exchange admin to give you IMAP access and open it up on the firewall (or make you use some type of VPN -- another headache w/linux) to login.
You can always hack the exchange server and enable imap for your account
note: for IMAP, then you'll also have to setup exchange as your SMTP server (some people that have exchange dont open SMTP or 587 on their firewalls for this since RPC over HTTPS exchange connection runs over HTTPS) and if you want your address book you'll also have to get your exchange admin to open up ldap to an active directory server to query for listings.
1st option is easier.
You could use a mail synchronizer that sends all your exchange content to someplace like Google and then you have a couple more (many of them open source) options of getting the data from Google.
For example you can use Cemaphore's MailShadowG (www.cemaphore.com) and that will keep your exchange box and Google account in sync. However that product has the problem that you still need to run Outlook someplace so you would still need a windows box or a virtual machine running Outlook and MailShadowG. But the upside is you wouldn't have to use Outlook.
Unfortunately right now there aren't many great options for getting Exchange 2007 data into a free environment.
More info here; haven't tried it myself though:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Outlook_Web_Access
body massage!
Here's what I did at an earlier job:
1) Ran Windows Server on a colo box
2) Everyone who had *nix machines could log in into this machine, and run Outlook
3) Setup a filter to *redirect* all email to an IMAP server
4) Setup local IMAP server (or share IMAP server among fellow *nix users)
5) Use any client to talk to IMAP server
This works well if there's more than one person with this situation, so you can share the Windows and IMAP resources. But that requires Windows Server, to allow multiple people to be logged in at the same time.
Thunderbird does the job for me quite nicely with our exchange server, but the lightning plugin doesn't do shared calendars, it only stores the data locally. I imagine this would be a total show-stopper for anyone who actually wants to arrange a meeting with anyone aside from just themselves.
I ask because it's not clear: Does your IT department (or, in fact, Info Security, etc.) approve of or support you trying to connect to the mail server from a Linux system? Are you within your company's approved use terms? It would seem to me that if your company approves of you checking your mail with something other than Outlook they would be providing support to you for doing so.
Please don't get me wrong--I'm all for Linux and open source, and all those great things. But your company email solution belongs to your company, and they must have a say in how you're connecting to it. Expecting the company to open up IMAP or POP3 or something else for you may be inappropriate.
That said, if they do support/encourage/allow what you're doing, good luck, I'll be looking for that answer myself.
----- Connection reset by beer
Exchange is a groupware product. Many people use it just for the e-mail aspect.
If you are using it mainly for e-mail, configure a rule on the Exchange server to forward your gMail account (or whatever) so you can IMAP to it.
If they support OTA iSync and you have a compatible phone, you could use the phone to Sync and then have the phone Sync to your PC. That would get you contacts and calendar items too.
http://www.ibiblio.org/ais/siberia.htm
Using the Freedom of Speech while I still have it.
I had the same problem. Then I found out that my company had a citrix server! I can now run outlook on the Citrix server and it looks like it's running on my desktop. All I had to do was install the Citrix Client for Linux. It's as good as having outlook running on Linux (as long as you're connected to the network).
It's 'very' similar to tunneling an X application through ssh, except the app is a Winblows app.
-Bluto6430
I use OSX and Entourage to hit our Exchange servers. Yes, it's still Microsoft, but it's much faster than Outlook and almost as full-featured. It points straight to the same servers that Outlook Web Access serves up, so I suspect it's working in a similar way as the Evolution + OWA setup. If I were the king of the forest, I'd change this junk out and replace it with Google Mail for Domains.
If so, why aren't developers using either the MAPI protocol or Exchange Web Services? You can argue their intentions, but Microsoft has made this much easier for developers to create competing clients.
I spend a fairly large portion of my time in VMs, they work pretty well, and for something fairly lite, you can get away with a relatively small VM... I've been considering putting together a VM on a thumb drive (16gb) that will have my thunderbird, xchat, and pidgin setup on it.. though, I've also been thinking on an MSI Wind, or Dell S10 for the same purpose... I don't like carrying a full laptop with me, and think that smart-phones are too cumbersome.
If you can spare 256-512MB of ram, then an XP VM without the UI decorations, with Outlook should run fine on any modern computer.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
While not an open source solution, the best solution for working with an exchange server from a Linux host is a copy of office with outlook and crossover office to run it. I works well but is not cheap.
We're going to be trying Brutus at our office, for possible deployment to select clients who don't want/need all users running Outlook. They are using Outlook Web Access for many employees, but the problem a tech sees is the users commonly click on an email link, and currently their Novell mail client still comes up.
Brutus requires a connecting agent to be installed server-side, so isn't an option for everyone. But if you're in a position where you have sway with the server admins (or are one), it could be a viable solution.
As to the suggestions of Thunderbird/etc, this is good, but can they get full calendar support? This is very important in an exchange environment, where calendaring (shared calendars, delegates, etc) is the killer feature.
I've been pushing to offer Zimbra or similar as an alternative to Exchange for our clients, but I've still got some headway to make there.
Crossover Office support Office 2007...easy peasy
1. Install Outlook 2007 on a Citrix server and publish it
2. Install Citrix client on your linux box
3. Run Outlook 2007 over Citrix
When the company I work for "upgraded" Exchange and disabled IMAP/POP3/SMTP (and refused to enable them even though many people use Macs), another guy that works there wrote a Perl script to download our messages from the OWA WebDAV interface and then ran IMAP/SMTP servers on that Linux box for Thunderbird.
Do you have a Terminal Services server running somewhere on your domain? Or an old box lying around somewhere? Maybe you could remote desktop in and use Outlook in Windows without actually having to virtualize it on your own hardware.
Another idea -- could you forward all your email to another POP-accessible account and check it from that?
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
Ever since they signed that "interoperability" deal with Microsoft it seems that "interoperability" has ceased. Thanks Novell!!
If your organization is using Exchange Server 2007 and hasn't provided you with a client then you are not using the same basic system as everyone else in your organization.
Maybe you have a good reason - like, they only give you one computer and you need to use it as a test bed for a Linux server of some sort.
But maybe you just don't like Windows. If that's the case, guess what? Nobody cares. Use the corporate systems (or governmental systems) the way the people who run them intend.
If you want to be Mr. Linux on your own time, go for it, but that computer on your desk at work? It isn't yours. It's theirs.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Try win4lin, $29.99. I have used it and it works very well. You do need a valid XP CD/key.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Since when have you had to refresh OWA to see new e-mail? I detects new messages, displays a popup, and even makes a noise. Maybe that is only in IE, too bad :)
I've been working through all the solutions to get something running on my EEEPC 701 Laptop
Novell looks like they have an Evolution solution but it isn't free.
I still haven't got Outlook 2003 running on my eeepc running Xandros and wine but others have running Ubuntu and wine.
These are the only solutions I would guarantee as successful and reasonably light weight.
- alittlebitdifferent
Use webmail...
PostPath is the only thing close to Exchange right now that runs in Linux: http://www.postpath.com/
Insert_Ending_Here
http://www.openchange.org/
Evolution Exchange uses the web interface with Exchange 2003. Maybe they have something in svn?
http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/svn.shtml
my buddy and i both got on the good side of our citrix admin who gave us access to his desktop/admin server with our linux ica client which works perfect.
MS publishes the APIs for how their RPC over HTTPS, think its current name is now Outlook Anywhere works. They do this basically so that cell phone and other mobile applications can access the Exchange server. If you want to create a Linux based E-mail app or add functionality to connect to Exchange 2007 that doesn't use IMAP or POP, the best methodology would be to create a connection using the Outlook Anywhere APIs. It could be a cool project, I would be interested in working on it with anybody who wants to step up. Perhaps a interesting approach could be to build Outlook Anyway to IMAP intermediate application that could then be employed to act as an intermediary between whatever Linux client or heck even Windows mail client you wish to use and Exchange 2007. I mean basically you could put the app on your machine, set it first to talk to Exchange 2007 and then setup mail client of choice to talk to IMAP and SMTP on intermediary app. Not saying it wouldn't introduce some delay, but if done right, it would be "wicked helpful" If done in JAVA or "I cannot even believe I am suggesting this" .NET limited to mono supported APIs, then it could be single app for both Window and Linux users. Hit me back if you would be interested in doing something like this. I think we should call it "Mailman in the Middle".
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Running with Linux for over 20 years!
IMHO, that's not an option. TELNET into Exchange Servers nowadays has been (mostly) blocked due to the inherent vulnerabilities, i.e.- taking over an e-mail server. Not only that, but what with IMAP, SMTP is about the last thing anyone wants in this 'make it pretty' world in the newer servers. I've gotten along with 'mail' and 'pine' for the longest time, but not everything is easy to someone who doesn't understand how to or has not learned the 'old' ways; or how an e-mail server works. Everything doesn't need to be GUI, but try to do anything without it (at least in the world of the average user).
That's true, blocking SMTP is very effective at keeping your mailbox clean and spam-free... but the average user who can't do anything without a GUI is also unlikely to find much use for an email server that doesn't send or receive email.
xenapp / presentation server linux client would work rather well, assuming you have one setup with outlook loaded on it and ready to go. paste shortcut to desktop, go go go.
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ies4Linux (IE under wine) does not work with Exchange 2007 OWA premium. It can only do the light mode, and not the 'premium'. This is because ies4Linux (and the mac wine equivalent) reports itself as Windows 98- and Exchange 2007 rejects it for the premium mode. Alas, there is no way to change the browser agent...
Another workaround is to use Opera browser for your webmail. You can set Opera to auto-reload a page as often as every 5 seconds. That way you won't have to do anything but look at the webmail page. Getting it to stop is more difficult, but you could have a second tab open that does not auto-reload, and if you see new mail come up you could reload the second copy of the page and work from there. Or right-click and open new emails in new tabs; ymmv.
1.) Get the admins to enable IMAP.
2.) If they won't do that, see if they will install Brutus Server (unlikely if they won't do 1 but might be worth a try.)
Brutus wraps the MAPI API and provides a CORBA API. There's an evolution plugin that talks to Brutus Server.
I have never used Brutus.
-- Wodin
I'm sure you come across this already - mainly because if you do a search for Outlook and Thunderbird this is one of the options you get.
I originally tried and didn't like it because it didn't work all that well with the Exchange (2003) service I was using.
But then one afternoon on a slow day, I tinkered around with it and came up with a fairly workable solution. I'm not too sure what the scripting language is but there's enough in the standard scripts to get a fair idea how to use it.
It's all based on the OWA interface, so you just need to tweak it here and there to get it to work. If you can't find anything better, I'm confident you could get this to work.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
IE doesn't need screen refeshes to show new mail in OWA 2007 (or 2003, AIR). You really need to be running a Windows/ Office laptop or box - it's not like they cost lots of money...
A lot of the solutions to allow other clients and the like access involve weakening the security of Exchange - not really a good option.
When someone releases a messaging/ calender client that has the same functionality as Outlook 2007, I'll have a look - but not until then.
There are a lot of problems with Google Apps, as they stand presently.
On top of that, they provide no kind of regulatory compliance that I've seen.
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/security_discovery.html/
Regulatory compliance options with the paid service seems to actually be a selling point of google apps.
The fact that the apps are clunky, the protocols seem a little off, and Google being the new new evil seem like reasons to sort of avoid Google. Google apps is the cheapest way to get CYA satisfy the regulators and legal compliance that I know of. The only options I know of are configure Google apps or pay an admin that knows what they are doing six figures to set up and maintain Exchange/Zimbra/Notes/etc. are the only options I know of.
The latter will probably result in happier users, but I can see how Google for email would get chosen.
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There is a connector for Evolution / Exchange 2007 integration available here: http://www.openchange.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=65&Itemid=74
set folder="imap://username@hostname"
set spoolfile="imap://username@hostname/INBOX"
set mail_check=60
and perhaps
set beep_new
wget --user=UNAME --password=PWORD https://webmail./ ORGANIZATION .com/exchange/FULL.NAME/Inbox/?Cmd=contents -O mail --quiet
MAILCOUNT=`cat mail | grep -i -o "icon-msg-unread.gif"|wc -l`
echo "You got $MAILCOUNT new messages"; rm mail
Works like a charm
Unless you are an email-holic, hitting the refresh vutton every now and then is not that much of a big deal.
Have you heard about Scalix? http://www.scalix.com/
I've not tried it with 2007, but crossover office works well with 2003, very well.
And the latest version does support office 2007 apparently
MadnessASAP. I think we all know that you can use telnet to connect to servers which use interactive TCP protocols. However MS-Outlook is not one of those by default, at least not for any of its useful functions.
Zimbra is the correct answer
Will they open that up for you? that pretty much works anywhere on any modern browser.
Sure IE gets more support so it looks 'prettier' but other browsers work fine.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...to pay your $699 licensing fee you cock smoking teabaggers!
You must get tired from looking for email in so many places. Why not just consolidate your mail on your linux box. You can use many distro's to do this.
This link is for the Unbuntu distro. I have heard it works.
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/features/mailserver
I think the real question is why would you company sell there soul to ms on a exchange server. Muahahaha!
The really need to look at open source.
There's a simple POP-to-OWA server on SourceForge called OwaGate. You can get the source code tarball here. I use it, Thunderbird and Lightning. Works OK, not everything you might need. Could also use an SMTP-to-OWA component and IMAP-to-OWA.
I don't think the trouble with Exchange is using SMTP...