SquirrelMail - Webmail for Nuts!

When saving, enter the following:

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 ZZZ      | |__) |  ####    | | | |    /  \   
  ZZZZ    |  _  /    ##     | |_| |   / /\ \  
    ZZZ   | | \ \   ####    |____/   / ____ \ 
 Z   ZZ   |_|  \_\ ##  ##           /_/    \_\
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Visit Preferences to set your user name

== Requirements ==

* [http://squirrelmail.org/docs/admin/admin-1.html#ss1.1 System Requirements] - What you need to get started
* An editor besides Notepad and !WordPad would help. See EndOfLine.

== Known problems ==

* IIS on Workstation is limited to 10 connections.
* Windows XP has a known problem when handling some PHP intensive applications. [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317949/en-us KB 317949] documents this bug. It's fixed in [http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/sp1/default.mspx Windows XP Service Pack 1a].
* IIS 6.0, PHP & !SquirrelMail is a working combination however due to stability problems between PHP & IIS this combination is not recommended for a production environment.
* You are encouraged to use !SquirrelMail with apache, but many of the PHP files were unintentionally written for UNIX or Linux distributions. For example, you must have Perl installed if you want to use the installation script ({{conf.pl}}). But even if you don't install Perl, you can manually edit your configuration file located in {{C:\yourwebdirectory\config\config.php}}. And for many administrators, this will work fine! Also, if you install Plugins, you might need certain UNIX or GNU utilities like {{patch}}, {{cat}}, {{grep}}, {{sed}}, etc. See the workarounds below.

== Installation ==

Extract the !SquirrelMail distribution to your htdocs directory. You can either put the files in the root of your web documents if !SquirrelMail is the only thing the web site will be used for or you can put them in a subdirectory like {{/mail}}. If !SquirrelMail is the only thing running on the server I suggest using the root since it will mean less to type each time for the user.

Now you need to modify the {{conf/config.php}} file to set up your site configuration. Make sure that you have the right IP address for your IMAP server and SMTP server (you do have an IMAP server and SMTP server up and running already don't you?).

You should initially disable all of the plugins. Get the core working first before you start playing with extra features.

Create a directory {{C:\Data}} and within that directory create two more directories {{c:\Data\Data}} and {{C:\Data\Attachments}}. Specify these as your Data and Attachment directories.

At this point you should be able to open up a browser and go to http://127.0.0.1/. If that fails, try http://127.0.0.1/index.php. If the second one works and the first didn't, you need to edit {{httpd.conf}} and add {{index.php}} on the {{!DirectoryIndex}} line. I recommend putting it before {{index.html}} so that if {{index.html}} is accidently created it won't interfere with !SquirrelMail. Alternatively with IIS, you should go through the default page setup again and verify that {{index.php}} is added. If you're still getting nothing, but {{test.php}} worked, then you might have put an invalid hostname in {{httpd.conf}}. You cannot just make up a hostname like jaylee.com. It must be registered in DNS in order for it to work correctly. If you do not have a fully qualified hostname for your system (if you're not sure, you probably don't) use the IP address of the server instead.

== Workarounds ==

* Here is a link to some open source utilities, precompiled for Win32: http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ I would suggest at minimum that you have the files {{cat.exe}} (needed for the plugin SquirrelSpell) and {{patch.exe}} (for many plugins that need to patch something). You might also need {{grep.exe}} or others. Try putting them in your {{C:\WINDOWS}} or {{C:\WINNT}} directory, or someplace in your {{PATH}}.

* Or try http://mingw.sourceforge.net/ which is another set of GNU utilities and the cat, grep, and patch you might need.

* You could even install Cygwin from http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/ This is entirely free, and provides a reliable, full UNIX environment under Windows, including all UNIX tools and Perl. There's even Apache w/PHP if you select them to be installed from the Setup screen (they're under Web -- this might not be quite what you need if you're not using Apache, i.e. you still might have to download PHP separately, but can compile it using Cygwin, which should work much more smoothly than compiled natively).

* Note on Cygwin: It can be an extremely large, cumbersome install when only a few additional UNIX-type files might be needed (note the words "all" and "full" when Cygwin is mentioned). Best bet from my experience: Avoid Cygwin unless you _need_ a complete set of UNIX tools for Windows, and for !SquirrelMail, that is normally not the case. Most servers can be run fine without Perl or Cygwin on a Windows-based !SquirrelMail system!

* Apache httpd and PHP are both available free for certain uses (see their licenses) for Windows. Microsoft's IIS (Internet Information Services) comes with Windows Server 2000, XP Professional, Vista, and Server 2003 systems, and may be available on other systems. See InstallingSquirrelMailWindowsIIS for details on installing this web server.

* Perl (as noted above, not required but supported by !SquirrelMail) can be found for Windows at [http://www.activestate.com/ ActiveState ActivePerl]

* Important note for Windows v. UNIX file systems: You should un-tar and gunzip files with the proper Windows-style CR-LF (carriage return line feed) sequences. Please See EndOfLine. If you don't, Notepad may not be able to edit your files and {{patch.exe}} may crash, among other things!

* You may sometimes need to reverse the direction of slashes (///) to the Windows-style backslashes (\\\) in some configuration files. This could be true for Aspell, Apache, PHP, or any GNU or UNIX utility you run. e.g. {{C:/Aspell/bin/aspell.exe -d en_us -a}} may be better than {{C:\Aspell\bin\aspell.exe -d en_us -a}}

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