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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.
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.
I don't think Thunderbird does Exchange 2007 yet. You know them zany Microsoft folks and their new protocols all the time! I wonder why they make such dramatic changes all the time, I really wonder, I just can't figure it out... hmmm...
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
uhm, thunderbird ?
or one of the many other mail clients?
Ummm... Tbird doesn't speak Exchange's protocol.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
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).
You could also configure the IMAP service on the Exchange server and use a regular mail client like Thunderbird. You still get the semi-realtime mail updates of Exchange, though you won't get things like Calendar sync or server-based contacts.
Take a dollar, divide it by 100, take two and call me in the morning.
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/?
Well, Exchange does support IMAP, but usually Exchange admins disable it for the explicit purpose of preventing people from using clients other than Outlook.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
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
Upgrade to thundercougerfalconbird!
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.
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.
Only if the helpful (note that he said state job) IT staff have loosened the security policies and enabled POP3 or IMAP. Then he has the problem that the groupware (calendars/tasks/public folders/apps using custom forms) doesn't work.
You are missing the whole point of exchange. All the integration with the other essential features. Calendaring ect.
They're more likely to enable OWA (webmail) than POP3 or IMAP. Last time I checked those two were off by default. But, if IMAP is on, Thunderbird works fine for email. Squirrelmail works too. (Don't ask, it was a weird request.)
it is an option...I'm just saying.
So what's the big problem?
You're assuming a couple of things:
1. That the admin staff have left IMAP enabled. This is by no means guaranteed.
2. That the person posing the question doesn't need anything more than basic email functionality and can live without the shared calendars.
3. That Exchange 2007 supports IMAP IDLE (I really don't know myself). Without it, you're stuck hitting "Check for new mail" on your client rather than "refresh" in the browser - not really much of an improvement.
By default, Exchange 2007 has POP3 and IMAP services disabled out of the box. An administrator has to run services.msc and change their states from disabled to automatic, and start them. SMTP to the Internet also is disabled and needs to be explicitly enabled, and a command run to get anti-spam agents enabled and running. However, this is not out of malice, this is just a basic common sense "ship as few possibly hackable features running out of the box as possible, let the customer enable what he/she needs" philosophy.
Once the services are enabled, Exchange 2007 is as good a POP/IMAP server as anything out there. Thunderbird works well with it. Of course, both the POP and IMAP servers support SSL/TLS.
Maybe some Windows admins are trained to only allow Outlook to connect, but it takes almost no time at all to allow other E-mail clients such as Thunderbird or mail.app to work without any issues.
What's wrong with Outlook Web Access? Use Firefox or even Prism/XULRunner or whatever and you have everything you need.
Well, Exchange does support IMAP, but usually Exchange admins disable it for the explicit purpose of preventing people from using clients other than Outlook.
I thought most countries had laws against cruel and unusual punishments!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruel_and_unusual_punishment
I guess those usually only apply to the government.
Well, Exchange does support IMAP
Exchange is more than a mail server.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Yes, Zimbra, and many other Groupware solutions meant just for that purpose.
go, voltron!
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."
Unfortunately Outlook Web Access automatically refreshes.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
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.
I was going to say... you can't tell me that Exchange doesn't support POP or IMAP.
Though I would have been terribly surprised.
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
IMAP is fundamentally broken, so most Exchange admins don't want to encourage users to use it. Use POP, you admin will be more likely to enable that.
Use Outlook with CrossOver Office. CodeWeavers supports Outlook 2003 which should provide a MAPI implementation compatible with Exchange 2007.
----- obSig
Exchange is more than a mail server.
It's an Adventure!
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!
You could close the tab ;-)
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.
"The only downside is that this doesn't sync"
And do you really think that's an "only"? A client for a groupware server that "only" lacks groupware support?
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.
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
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
POP is fundamentally broken, so most Exchange admins don't want to encourage users to use it. Use IMAP, your admin will be more likely to enable that.
Exchange is more than a mail server.
You misspelled "less".
(joking, not trolling)
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
I'm curious as to the reason you consider IMAP to be broken. POP, of course, may be easier to implement but is almost completely useless.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
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....
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
IMAP is fundamentally broken? You must be talking about Microsoft's implementation of it. I use it and it works well. Just use a real mail server.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
:-( 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.
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
Linux + Wine + ies4Linux + OWA.
I'm curious why you say IMAP is fundamentally broken. As a side note, Gmail's POP is quirky; I find that IMAP works much better with Gmail.
I need to store my mail on my mail server (so I can get to my mail from multiple computers), and I like using a local mail client. I need to consolidate mail from six e-mail addresses into one mailbox, so setting POP to "leave mail on the server" isn't a solution. How would you suggest I do this?
The only way I know of would be to set all my other addresses to be forwards instead of full-fledged mailboxes, but that has the undesirable side effect of not allowing me to log in to a particular account's web interface to be able to send mail with the proper return address (I occasionally need to do this). I could also set those accounts to be both mailboxes *and* forwards, but then I've got extra copies of my mail lying around all over the place, and spam would never get deleted, and then my mailboxes would overflow and I'd have to clean up giant piles of paper... you get the idea.
Mlts - I think CrazedSanity is trying to illustrate that using Email is only a small portion of using Outlook. A "solution" may imply that calendaring needs to auto-sync, or that contacts need to auto-load. POP3 is great, but from my experience with company email, half of the battle is getting good collaboration, which often requires coding against the API to implement properly. When CrazedSanity upgraded to Exchange 2007 he must have noticed components that worked prior are now broken and make his work day more cumbersome. What I've learned living in the FOSS world and talking to the Microsoft world is: 1. Look for backwards compatibility mode, 2. Code your own, or 3. Simply Wait. -Tres
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!
What you're probably running into, actually, isn't Microsoft's malice or even an admin's laziness. You're probably at the mercy of some boneheaded consultant who came in and told management that it was "SOX-compliant" to leave all of that off. Grrr. Do I have issues with "consultants" and "auditors?" Why, yes. Yes, I do. Thanks for asking.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
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 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.
Until said clients implement (or maybe decipher, considering Microsoft documentation) the protocol that Outlook uses.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Yes it does. Just go to http://exchangeserver/public (replace exchangeserver with the FQDN of your server)
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Absolutely correct. If I make the major investment into an Exchange server, + Outlook CALs, I'd like to get some use of the features like automatic meeting scheduling. And that requires that people actually use Outlook, and the best way to encourage that is to make email Outlook only.
While I use Thunderbird for my private email, Outlook/Exchange as a productivity tool is very hard to beat if you are herding cats, or worse, manage scientist and engineers.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
Using Evolution in IMAP mode should still be able to handle meeting requests, but you won't be able to view other people's calendars etc that way. I'm not 100% certain that he needs to constantly refresh the window.. iirc, and it's been a while, but there are ajax calls to update the inbox etc... Sounds like a perfect situation for Prism.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
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
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.
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
Because the MAPI SDK is only available for windows clients.
Dunno about EWS
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."
It would also be nice if Exchange supported webdav or iCal formats for calender sharing and LDAP for your address book. But then if those services were fully functional you wouldn't have to use Outlook for your client, and therefore windows as your OS, and therefore Active Directory as your authentication source, therefore using Active Directory CALs,or Exchange CALs, and Office CALs (Outlook no longer the free client with Exchange CALs) and you wouldn't have to pay your MS tax.
well I don't know. Will I get to keep my AwesomeBar?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I'm impressed! That so much better than open relay by default back in the MS Exchange 5.5 (OK - so it was only in a patch, but phenomonally stupid to let it go out just the same).
Use webmail...
Broken in Exchange or broken more generally?
meh
PostPath is the only thing close to Exchange right now that runs in Linux: http://www.postpath.com/
Insert_Ending_Here
Evolution Exchange uses the web interface with Exchange 2003. Maybe they have something in svn?
http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/svn.shtml
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".
Respect the Constitution
http://zarafa.com/
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.
Protector of Capitalist views,
Meorah
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...
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
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.
Work bio at MMWD
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
This is a bit like criticising Windows XP based on an article about Windows 95, isn't it?
Unless you are an email-holic, hitting the refresh vutton every now and then is not that much of a big deal.
But if you want a CalDAV / GroupDAV server then why would you go with Exchange instead of something free, which provides both a web interface and a thick-client interface to mail, address books, and calendaring?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Have you heard about Scalix? http://www.scalix.com/
I disagree with the reasoning, its more for security then anything else. Why run 'extra' services?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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 ----
I'm curious why you say IMAP is fundamentally broken.
The IMAP specification is dramatically more complex than the POP specification. Because of this, making a bug-free implementation of IMAP has proven difficult. Because of differences between implementation in various clients and servers particular combinations may experience major bugs, like your mailboxes eating themselves and mail getting lost. Most major mail servers that use IMAP (like Citadel) have fixed the mailbox eating problems, but they'll still drop mail and you client may still eat the mailboxes. Netscape Communicator notably had this problem.
This is opposed to POP, which will work fine with almost any combination of client-server.
I need to store my mail on my mail server (so I can get to my mail from multiple computers), and I like using a local mail client. I need to consolidate mail from six e-mail addresses into one mailbox, so setting POP to "leave mail on the server" isn't a solution. How would you suggest I do this?
With POP? You can't. It doesn't change the fact the IMAP spec is broken.
The only way I know of would be to set all my other addresses to be forwards instead of full-fledged mailboxes, but that has the undesirable side effect of not allowing me to log in to a particular account's web interface to be able to send mail with the proper return address (I occasionally need to do this).
I'm in exactly the same situation and this is what I do.
Once the services are enabled, Exchange 2007 is as good a POP/IMAP server as anything out there.
I've got to strongly disagree with this, at least with Exchange 2003 and prior.
The IMAP server was fairly buggy, and would cause most mail clients to lock up or get stuck, or unable to retrieve email without restarting the app.
Particularly with large numbers of messages in a folder, it often would just fall over.
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.
So the 90% of the other clients using outlook would be able to just use Outlook if they wanted to 8)
Managing scientists? Is that even possible?
You know how they usually say "or die trying"?
In this case there is no second option.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.