There are a number of free webmail packages, some of which allow the reading
of mail stored in maildirs. (In fact, any IMAP-based webmail package should
allow the reading of maildirs using the C-client patch). Here are two that
I've found particularly promising:
1) IMP (http://www.horde.org/imp). Pretty cool IMAP-based webmail package
written using PHP3.
2) Webmail (http://webmail.woanders.de). This is a POP/IMAP package written
in Perl.
Both allow for sending/viewing attachments.
I have also seriously considered writing my own webmail package for
performance reasons. My general approach would be to bypass POP and IMAP
altogether and do webmail reads via direct file i/o on the mail files. This
is probably how the major players do it; I doubt, for instance, that hotmail
uses POP or IMAP to read its mail files, because it's just inefficient to
call up webmail CGI, have the webmail CGI communicate with a POP server, and
retrieve a message if all that needs to be done is a simple local/NFS file
read.
cheers,
Ed
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sam [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, January 11, 1999 11:23 AM
> Cc: qmail Mailing list
> Subject: Re: web-based mail
>
>
> Allen Versfeld writes:
>
> > This is probably a case of Famous Last Words, but:
> >
> > How hard can it be to set up a web-based pop3 client?
> >
> > Given that all I want is to give my existing users access to their mail
> > through the web. Look at Web-pop (an add-on for MDaemon) to see what I
> > mean.
>
> First of all, you need to use the correct terminology. What
> you're looking
> for is not a web-based pop3 client. You're not looking for a web-based
> gateway to the POP3 protocol, you're looking for a web-based
> direct gateway
> to your mailboxes.
>
> If you store your mail in mailbox files, almost any Mailbox WWW CGI client
> will do. Perhaps you'll need to make slight code adjustments to have it
> look into $HOME/Mailbox, instead of /var/spool/mail.
>
> If you store your mail in Maildirs, I do not know of any Maildir WWW CGI
> clients, which is why I've been writing my own, for the past couple of
> months. In fact, I'm using this WWW CGI right now, and if I
> don't find any
> bugs in the next couple of weeks, there'll be some alpha code out there to
> play with. It'll still be alpha code, though, and I wouldn't bless it for
> production deployment just yet.
>
>
>
> >
> > Admittedly, I am no programmer, but wouldn't it be (relatively) easy to
> > write a cgi (or perl or something) script sending appropriate commands
> > to my pop3 server?
> >
> > This is another task with an unreasonable deadline, any ideas other than
> > buying a package which costs many US dollars? (our exchange rate sucks
> > big lumpy bits)
> >
> > My only requirement is that we can stick with qmail - I have spent way
> > too much sweat learning linux and qmail (simultaneously) to want to
> > dump either of them.
> >
> >
> > Also, are there any web-based remote administration packages out there?
> > More specifically, I need to be able to provide privilidged users with
> > the right to add users remotely.
> >
> >
> >
> > Oh, I wrote in about a week ago, saying that I was setting up qmail on
> > RedHat 5.1, couldn't retreive remote mail, etc.
> >
> > I am sure lots of people replied (hint, hint) but I wouldn't have
> > known, because soon after I sent it through, our mail server (Exchange,
> > ack, ptew) fell over.
> >
> > A blessing in disguise! with exchange gone, I started receiving
> > incoming mail, and since installing checkpassword (shouldn't this
> > package be mentioned in the documentation somewhere????? (apologies if
> > it is)), I can read mail through a pop3 client...
> > --
> >
> > Allen Versfeld
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Wandata
> >
> > "I hate quotations" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
> >
> >
>
