I am fairly experienced with IMP. Squirrelmail and openwebmail I installed after they came up in this discussion. Both web mail servers were little more than apt-get install on debian sid, so we can cross installation effort on Deiban out of the equation.
Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
Hino frames in openwebmail.
I have mostly some experince with squirellmail and quite like it.
The major thing I dislike about it is the use of frames.
I don't know about database setup. The default setup for openwebmail is to handle local users using PAM authentication. In that mode, it's handling your home directory. It has some protection against going above your homedir, but I haven't done a security audit for that.* basic "file manager" (in case you want to deal with attachment)
What fiels/storage does it manage? Do you assume users have their own
home directories? Allocated space in the database?
Granted. However, openwebmail's interface is more akin to a standard email client.* dead easy to use for end users (I tested it with my girl friend which doesn't like computers and refuse to learn - and she loved it)
Most webmails I know are quite simple and present a resonable interface.
This is an important one. In fact, I think this is the most important advantage openwebmail has to offer over the rest. Unlike squirrelmail and imp, in openwebmail you can select the encoding in a way which is independant than your selection of the UI language. You can choose to read or compose mail in whatever encoding you like using the webmail's controls (unlike using the broser's controls). This means that the mail goes out in a consistant encoding, and less problems happen. I would not think lightly of this feature.* Full support for language encoding (logical hebrew, visual hebrew, UTF, you name it)
What kind of support is that?
Like I said - none of them took me more than a few seconds. A single minute at most.* Very easy to install (takes about 5 minutes, readme is always available)
Squirrelmail now tends to be an RPM package that comes with the
distro...
It's an intersting add-on. Defenitely not the live-or-die feature.* HTML mail composing - for those who like to write those emails with huge fonts and ugly colors). Of-course text mail composing is also supported.
Should I consider this a non-feature? ;-)
I guess it's hard to give "bold this" or "make this in bigger font" to lynx users. I don't like such features myself, however.* Browser friendly - it detect which browser you use and disable/enable the feature automatically (so no HTML composing with LYNX ;)
MY idea of "browser-friendly" is to make features availble to as many
bowsers as possible.
Except I'm not sure where they are stored. In Squirrelmail they are stored in an LDAP server. IMP uses a postgresql database for those, which means that we often lost addressbooks when doing upgrades. No big deal, but still a point to consider. Not everyone likes managing a database. I like the Squirrelmail way best - use the technology that was designed to do the task at hand.* Stable - very stable, runs at my house for over 1.5 years without any problem.
* Address book support, filters support etc - all inside, and easy to be configured...
Indeed it shouldn't be a performance bottleneck. At least if it doesn'tActually, it does. You've unknowingly hit the nail on the head. It has no external IMAP storage support, just PAM and tons of databases. This means that getting it to plug into an existing system should prove difficult to impossible. This also means that I have not found how to set it up to serve non-real users. After all, I don't want my passwords going back and forth via the web all the time - it's not a secure enough environment due to client side limitations.
handle the storage: the imap server is the one doing the hard work.
Anyway, one point that I did not yet see in this discussion is where theMail storage:
mail storage is.
IMP - IMap
Squirrelmail - IMap
openwebmail - It's got a list of 10 different authentication methods (mysql, postgresql, ldap, pam, reading shadow directly, and combinations), but mail storage is always local. It can retreive pop3 mail after client login, but that's not exactly the same.
Extras:
openwebmail - file browser, html mail composition, calender, and so on. Some of these are available on squirrelmail through plugins.
Addressbook :
IMP - database
Squirrelmail - database or ldap
openwebmail - ??. Probably local folder somewhere, or inside user's home directory.
If you want to access the same mailbox from other clients, a separateActually, that's not a problem so long as it is legitimate to run a pop3 server on the same filesystem. This does mean a MUCH more difficult setup, however.
storage in the webmail is probably not such a great idea.
Also, the thing that makes openwebmail lose big time for me is that it requires some sort of "real user" for each email user. I can probably work around this by doing some sort of database or LDAP setups, but I would then have two systems (one for delivering the mail, one for retreiving it) to synchronize. If someone solves that for me, openwebmail may become a viable option. Also, I'm not sure it supports maildirs, which means I don't think I can plug it into my existing setup.
Shachar
-- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Systems Consulting http://www.lingnu.com/
================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
