Q: I got "You don't have permission to access openwebmail.pl on this
server" error?
A: Your apache is not properly configured to execute CGI program.
Please edit the httpd.conf for your apache and modify it as follow:
AllowOverride All
Options ExecCGI
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
You will notice "Order allow,deny" and "Allow from all" lines are
missing in default.
Then reload httpd.
(thanks to Thomas Chung, tchung1970.AT.users.sourceforge.net)
ps: If you are using Mandrake:
httpd config file is loated at /etc/httpd/conf/commonhttpd.conf
httpd reload command is "service httpd reload"
If you are using FreeBSD:
httpd config file is loated at /usr/local/etc/apache/httpd.conf
httpd reload command is "/usr/local/sbin/apachectl restart"
Q: I got "Internal server error" when running Open WebMail?
I got "can not do setuid" error?
I got "Software error: Can't locate etc/openwebmail.conf in @INC" error?
A: There are many possible answers...
1. Please check you have installed a complete set of perl 5.005 or above.
And You uncompress the openwebmail-1.xx.tgz with proper parameter.
It should be "tar -zxvBpf openwebmail-1.xx.tgz"
2. Your openwebmail scripts may have wrong owner or mode.
The permission of all openwebmail*.pl should be
mode=4555
owner=root
group=mail
3. Your perl may be compiled with suid ability disabled.
a. check if you have a executable of suidperl,
then 'chmod 4555 suidperl'
b. Or recompile your perl with suid enabled
Here are the steps:
1. grab the perl source tar ball
2. sh Configure -de (de means default perl config)
3. edit config.sh and set this :
d_dosuid='define'
d_suidsafe='undef'
4. then make, make install (make suidperl if needed)
5. if you have compiled suidperl, then chmod 4555 suidperl
if you don't have suidperl, change #!/usr/bin/suidperl to the path of your perl
(thanks to Nemo Kaiser, nemoo.AT.users.sourceforge.net)
c. Or use uty/suidwrap.pl to generate C wrappers for all suid scripts.
Here are the steps:
1. cd cgi-bin/openwebmail
2. perl uty/wrapsuid.pl /fullpath/cgi-bin/openwebmail
3. change #!/usr/bin/suidperl to the path of your perl
All suid scripts will be renamed to .scriptname.pl and
the C wrapper will be generated and named as script.pl
(thanks to Chris Heegard, heegard.AT.NativeI.com)
4. The MIME::Base64 or CGI module on your system may be too old
a. install MIME-Base64-2.12.tar.gz
b. install CGI.pm-2.74.tar.gz
5. Please install the libnet-1.0901.tar.gz, this is required since
version 1.60.
ps: In most cases, you can run the './openwebmail.pl' in text terminal
to get more information about the error.
Q: Can I install openwebmail without iconv() support?
A: Yes, you may copy the uty/iconv.pl.fake over the iconv.pl,
which doesn't use iconv() at all but still support charset conversion for
Chinese and Japanese.
Q: I got "Can't check filesystem of script ./openwebmail.pl for nosuid"?
A: Your openwebmail may be installed on a filesystem mounted nosuid.
Please remove the nosuid parameter from /etc/fstab or install openwebmail
to other filesystem.
ps: 'man mount' for more information about nosuid
Q: I got "Please execute '.../cgi-bin/openwebmail-tool.pl --init' on
server first!"?
A: This is to init the mapping tables used by openwebmail, you need to
telnet to your server
su root
cd the_cgi_bin_dir_for_openwebmail
./openwebmail-tool.pl --init
Q: I got "Please execute script openwebmail-tool.pl with full path!"
in executing 'openwebmail-tool.pl --init' with full path?
A: This may happens on platforms that run suid scripts through /dev/fd/.
Please run the script from where it is located.
cd the_dir_of_your_openwebmail_cgi
./openwebmail-tool.pl --init
Q: I got "Please change the 3 options in openwebmail.conf...."
in executing 'openwebmail-tool.pl --init' ?
A: You may has wrong settings in your openwebmail.conf.
Please modify youropenwebmail.conf as openwebmail suggested and
don't forget to redo 'openwebmail-tool.pl --init' again.
Q: The login menu showed okay, but I always got login failure?
A: Check auth_module option in openwebmail.conf:
If it is 'auth_unix.pl',
check if $unix_passwdfile_encrypted and $unix_passwdmkdb in auth_unix.pl
are correct
If it is 'auth_pam.pl',
make sure you have followed the instructions of 'PAM SUPPORT' in readme.txt.
If you still got login failure, you can debug the pam module by:
1. modify auth_pam.pl
uncomment all the lines of log_time(...)
2. login to openwebmail
3. check the /tmp/openwebmail.debug for more information.
Q: It took a long time in the first login?
A: Openwebmail has to initialize some mapping tables for future use,
it creates these tables in the first successful login, this guarentees
that openwebmail creates files only if it is correctly installed.
ps:This automatic table initialization has been removed since openwebmail-1.80.
The sysadm have to initialize the db by himself explicitly with the command
'./openwebmail-tool.pl --init'
Q: It took a long time in every login?
A: You probably have wrong settings for option dbm_ext and dbmopen_ext in the
openwebmail.conf, please execute uty/dbmtest.pl to find correct settings.
Q: Openwebmail hangs at every login after I saved the preference in the firsttime?
A: You probably have wrong settings for option dbmopen_haslock in the
openwebmail.conf, please execute uty/dbmtest.pl to find correct settings.
Q: Will it speedup the login if the GNU copyright page is removed?
A: The GNU copyright page should be displayed for less than 1 second.
if you see it for a very long time after you login, then openwebmail
is busy in processing your INBOX folder (eg: mail indexing, filtering,
trash cleaning..)
Q: Some of my users login okay, but others don't, why?
A: It is possible that you are upgrading from version prior to 1.41
to the newer version. The virtual user support is totally reimplemented.
It uses virtusertable instead of genericstable for user mapping now.
Please refer to
http://www.sendmail.org/virtual-hosting.html to know how to translate
entries in genericstable to virtusertable.
Q: The login is okay, but I can't change by my password with openwebmail?
A: There are 2 possible answers for this:
1. Your passwdfile is not local accessible.
If you use auth_unix.pl for authentication and your
$unix_passwdfile_encrypted is not a local accessible file
(ex: examples in auth_unix.pl that are terminated with |),
the changepassword feature won't be available.
In these cases, you have to use auth_pam.pl to get the changepassword
to work.
2. Your system doesn't support saved set-user-ID, so openwebmail won't get
enough privilege to change the passwd file.
Try to set savedsuid_support to 'no' in openwebmail.conf to solve
this problem.
3. The authentication module which you used doesn't support password
changing, ex: auth_pop3.pl
Q: I use openwebmail with NIS/YP system, the user can login but can not
change their password?
A: The NIS/YP password can not be chnged with auth_unix.pl, you need to
use the auth_pam.pl as the uthentication module.
Q: I got "Couldn't open XXX-session-0.370606494136155!" error after login?
A: You openwebmail-1.xx.tgz was uncompressed with improper parameter.
It should be "tar -zxvBpf openwebmail-1.xx.tgz"
Or you can refer to the file permission list in the end of readme.txt
ps: you may check the permission cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc/sessions first,
it should be owner=root, group=mail, mode=770
Q: I got "Software error: Can't locate MIME/Base64.pm in @INC"?
A: Please install the MIME-Base64-2.12.tar.gz.
Q: I got "Software error: Can't locate Text/Iconv.pm in @INC"?
A: Please install the Text-Iconv-1.2.tar.gz, this is required since
openwebmail-1.80
Q: I got "Use of uninitialized value in subroutine entry at /xxx/DB_File.pm
line yyy" error ?
A: The line you got error should be inside the sub routine tie_hash_or_array.
Please find the following comment line in DB_File.pm:
# make recno in Berkeley DB version 2 work like recno in version 1
And add the following line just beofre the above line:
$arg[3] = 0666 unless defined $arg[3] ;
(thanks to Paul Marquess, Paul.Marquess.AT.btinternet.com
and mainely_linux.AT.users.sourceforge.net)
Q: Everything works fine, but I got timeout when clicking the calendar button?
A: Please check your apache error log if it has lines like below:
[...] openwebmail-cal.pl: Use of uninitialized value in subroutine entry
at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi/DB_File.pm line xxx.
If yes, please refer to the solution in previous question.
Q: I got "can't open /var/log/openwebmail.log" error?
A: Please check the openwebmail.log permission, it should be
owner=root, group=mail, mode=660
Q: Most functions work fine, but I could not send message.
I got "Can't locate Net/SMTP.pm in @INC ..." error?
I got "Internal server error"?
A: Please install the libnet-1.0901.tar.gz, this is required since
openwebmail 1.60.
Q: I am sure the sendmail was running up on my mail server, but I got
"Couldn't open SMTP server 127.0.0.1" error when sending mesages?
A: Your sendmail may be configured to listen on the server_ip:25 only,
it didn't listen on 127.0.0.1:25
You can either
a. override the option smtpserver in openwebmail.conf and
set it to your server_ip
b. modify the sendmail.cf and find the following line
O DaemonPortOptions=Port=smtp,Addr=x.x.x.x, Name=MTA
(where x.x.x.x is the server_ip)
Please change the x.x.x.x to 0.0.0.0 to make sendmail
listen on all IPs binding on the server network interfaces.
Q: I still got the "Couldn't open SMTP server 127.0.0.1" error?
A: Please check the permission of your /etc/protocols and /etc/services,
it should be 0644. (-rw-r--r--)
Q: I got 'Sorry, there was a problem sending your message' error?
A: a. Please check if smtpserver option in openwebmail.conf points to valid
SMTP server, its default is '127.0.0.1'. If you set it to name of some
other SMTP server, please be sure the SMTP server allows mails relayed
from your host.
b. When SMTP server is set to 127.0.0.1, please be sure the hosts.allow
has the following entry
sendmail : localhost 127.0.0.1 : allow
Q: Does openwebmail support SASL authentication on SMTP?
A: Yes, but only the PLAIN type authentication is supported.
The username/password will be encoded with base64, so it is not very secure.
To enable the SASL authentication:
1. set option smtpauth to yes in openwebmail.conf
2. set the smtpauth_username, smtpauth_password in smtpauth.conf
Q: The 'From' field of my message contained only 'username@'?
A: You may has wrong setting for option domainnames in openwebmail.conf
please list all domainnames separated with comma, or
use auto for this setting, openwebmail will use the hostname in the url
or call '/bin/hostname' to get the fqdn of your host.
Q: The domainname detected by openwebmail is not what I want,
how can I specified the outgoing mail domain for all my users?
A: Please set the domainnames option in openwebmail.conf from 'auto' to
the domainname you want. Multiple domainnames can be specified only
if seperated by comma
Q: How can I use LDAP to authenticate user in openwebmail?
A: You have 2 ways to do this:
1. use the auth_ldap.pl written by Ivan Cerrato, pengus.AT.libero.it
2. use auth_pam module and let pam to talk with ldap server.
Below is an article posted at sourceforge by "ispman.AT.user.sourceforge.net
(http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=1462314)
---------------- begin ----------------
I hope this is useful to someone:
I was able to get openwebmail to authenticate using ldap/pam on a system
with Redhat 7.1, pam_ldap135, and OpenLDAP 2.0.18.
In openwebmail.conf ~
auth_module auth_pam.pl
In auth_pam.pl ~
my $pam_servicename="openwebmail";
my $pam_passwdfile_plaintext="/etc/passwd";
vi /etc/pam.d/openwebmail:
#%PAM-1.0
auth required /lib/security/pam_unix.so
auth sufficient /lib/security/pam_ldap.so
account required /lib/security/pam_unix.so
account sufficient /lib/security/pam_ldap.so
That's it. LDAP users will authenticate with the pam_ldap module and
system users with pam_unix.
---------------- end ----------------
Q: How can I use multiple virtual domains with openwebmail?
A: First, you have to decide whetherto use real virtual hosting or
just user alias.
1. The User Alias
User alias is much simpler, your system is actually a one domain machine.
You only have to define the user alias in virtusertable.
For example, you have 1 real domain server.com and
2 virtual domain virtual_1.com, virtual_2.com
for your server.
You already have tom and john on this server.
And now you want 2 more tom and john for each virtual domain.
Define the following entries in your virtusertable will make it.
tom@virtual_1.com tom1
tom@virtual_2.com tom2
john@virtual_1.com john1
john@virtual_2.com john2
And how these users are used?
If the user logins as tom and the webmail url is http://virtual_1.com/....
then alias tom@virtual_1.com will be matched, real user tom1 will be used.
If the user logins as tom and the webmail url is http://virtual_2.com/....
then alias tom@virtual_2.com will be matched, real user tom2 will be used.
If the user logins as tom and the webmail url is http://server.com/....
then real user tom will be authenticated.
If the user logins as tom@virtual_1.com, then no matter what the url is,
the alias tom@virtual_1.com will be matched, user tom1 will be used.
In the user alias mapping, users of different virtualdomains are actually
mapped to the real domain and then passed to same authentication module.
2. Real Virtual Hosting
The real virtual hosting means your system is configured to a multiple
domain machine in either smtpd, pop3d, webmail and authentication module.
You will need to use the per domain config file in openwebmail for each
of your virtual domain. These config files will be loaded based on
1. the domainname part in loginname, or
2. the hostname in the url of the webmail
For example:
If the user login as tom and the webmail url is http://virtual_1.com/...,
config file for virtual_1.com will be loaded
If the user login as tom and the webmail url is http://virtual_2.com/...,
config file for virtual_2.com will be loaded
If the user logins as tom@virtual_1.com, then no matter what the url is,
config file for virtual_1.com will be loaded
Each domain can have its own set of options in its config file,
including domainname, authentication module, quota limit, mailspooldir ...
A more detailed example is described in the Kevin Ellis's webpage:
"How to setup virtual users on Open WebMail using Postfix & vm-pop3d"
http://www.bluelavalamp.net/owmvirtual/
Q: The default mail domain for my user is always wrong, how can I set it?
A: To have openwebmail find the correct mail domain for the user,
you'd give it some hint.
For example, if the webmail url is
http://mail.server_1.com/cgi-bin/.....,
and you want the email for tom to be tom@virtual_1.com.
You can achieve this in either the following 3 ways:
1. create per user config file etc/users.conf/tom
and set option domainnames to virtual_1.com
2. create per domain config file etc/sites.cof/mail1.server_1.com
and set option domainnames to virtual_1.com
While 1 is only for the user tom, the method 2 has effect for all users
who logins with the url http://mail.server_1.com/cgi-bin/....
Q: I want to change not only the domainname part but also the username part
of the default email address?
A: You can use the virtusertable or the per user config file
1. virtusertable:
One or more email address can be defined in virtusertable for same user,
all those email addresses will be used as the default email address for
that user
2. per user config file:
You can set the default_fromemails option in the per user config file.
Multiple default email addresses can be specified only if you seperate
them with comma.
ps: While virtusertable is convinet in setting default email addresses for
many users, per user config file let sysadm control many properties for
a specific user.
Q: How can I disallow the user to set their from email address?
A: set option enable_setfromemail to 'no' in either openwebmal.conf or per
user config.
Q: Some of my messages were moved to trash folder automatically?
A: Your messages were either filtered by 'global filter rule',
'faked smtp filter', 'faked from filter' or 'faked exe contenttype filter'.
Global filter will filter messages with know virus attachments. The global
filter rules are defined in the file global_filterbook
(global_filterbook is defined as %ow_etcdir%/global_filterbook in
openwebmail.conf.)
The 'faked smtp filter' will filter messages that have a faked smtp
source, those messages are often from spammers.
The 'faked from filter' will filter messages whose From: field is different
than the email address in the SMTP envelope address, those messages are
often generated from virus.
The 'faked exe contenttype filter' will filter messages that have
executable attachment with faked contenttype, eg: audio, midi...
These messages are often generated by viruses, the borwser will download
the attachment because its contenttype is audio and then execute the
downloaded file because it file extension is exe/com/bat/scr/pif/lnk.
The three faked xxx filters are default disabled and the default can be
changed in openwebmail.conf. The user can also enable/disable it in
the user preference.
Q: What are "messages with faked smtp"?
A: In short, they are messages coming from mail servers that fake their
name from other machines.
Where is a message coming from?
A message sent from machine A to machine B may have 2 cases:
a. A ---> M1 ---> M2 ---> B (M1, M2 are mail servers)
In this case, openwebmail use M1 as the from server.
Since most of the time, A is windows machine using outlook.
b A -------------------> B
In this case, openwebmail use A as the from server.
How do we know if a from server fakes his name?
Each host may have 3 names in the mail header:
$byas - name used by this server when saying hello to incoming connection
$relay - name used by this server when relaying mail through other host
$connectfrom - ip and name detected by other hosts resolved from DNS system
when receiving connection from this server
A from host is faking his name if
a. $byas doesn't equal to $relay, and
b. $connectfrom doesn't equal to $relay, and
c. $connectfrom has different domain than the desition server B, and
d. $connectfrom is not private IP
Q: I still want the filtered messages, how can I disable faked smtp filter
and faked exe contenttype filter completely?
A: 1. Set default_filter_fakedsmtp and default_filter_fakedexecontenttype
to 'no' in openwebmail.conf. This will turn off the two filter for
all newly created user
2. Uncheck the faked smtp filter and faked exe contenttype filter option
in user preference. This will disable the two filters for a specific
user
Q: I could not add attachments?
Open WebMail was hanged when I pressed the 'add' button to add attachments?
A: 1. Your CGI or MIME-Base64 module may be too old,
Please download CGI.pm-2.74.tar.gz and MIME-Base64-2.12.tar.gz in
http://turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw/openwebmail/download/packages/
and install them to your system.
2. Your proxy may limit the size of a POST request.
Try to add attachments with no proxy setting in your browser.
If you are the administrator of the squid proxy server,
please set the request_body_max_size option to a larger value.
Q: Attachments disappeared when I forwarded a message?
A: Check permission of the following directories
cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc - owner=root, group=mail, mode=755
cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc/sessions - owner=root, group=mail, mode=770
cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc/users - owner=root, group=mail, mode=770
Q: The permission of cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc is correct but attachments
still disappeared in message forwarding?
A: Hmmm, please upgrade to the latest version.
Some very old version(1.03,1.04) has little problem in attachment handling.
Q: When I checked 'edit folder menu', I found some folders were empty but
took disk space?
A: The disk space occupied by a folder shown in 'edit folder menu' includes
the size of a folder and its index. Though folder is empty, the folder
index still has some data structure to maintain.
Q: When I clicked 'spell check' button, I got "Internal Server error" in new
window?
A: Please be sure that you have installed ispell-3.1.20.tar.gz
Q: Ispell has been correctly installed, but spellcheck still doesn't work?
A: The spellcheck in old version of openwebmail doesn't work on RedHat 7.x,
please upgrade your openwebmail to the latest version.
Q: Why is openwebmail-spell.pl a suid root program?
A: Because it needs to read the preference file, ~/mail/.openwebmailrc,
of different users to get their language and dictionary setting.
Q: I got 'Couldn't get read lock on ....' error?
'Couldn't get write lock on ....' error?
A: This may happen if the folder openwebmail want to access is locked by
other process. Most of the time, it is due to the concurrent accesses
to the folder by other mail client through the pop3/imap daemons.
This is okay, just back to previous page and try again.
If you always got this error and be sure it is not caused by pop3/imap,
you may try to debug the filelock in the following steps:
1. install the 'lsof' utility on your system
(lsof is available at http://freshmeat.net/projects/lsof/)
2. cd your_web/cgi-bin/openwebmail
patch < uty/filelock.pl.diff
3. step 2 will turn the filelock.pl to a version special for debugging,
the debug output will be written to /tmp/openwebmail.debug
4. login into openwebmail and do some operation that will cause lock error,
then check /tmp/openwebmail.debug for further information
5. Finally, don't forget to do 'patch < uty/filelock.pl.diff' again to
reverse filelock.pl back to normal version.
Q: I have problems in reading some mail....
A: please check
http://turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw/openwebmail/download/doc/changes.txt
to see if any update fixes your problem and download the
openwebmail-current.tgz
Q: The autoreply function doesn't work?
A: An incoming message won't be replied by vacation.pl if
1. the destinated username has entries defined in /etc/alias which causes
the mail routed to another account without calling vacation.pl
2. the destinated username doesn't not appear as an recipient in To: or Cc:
3. this message is sent by the destinated username himself
If your message is not in the above 3 cases, please be sure that
vacationinit and vacationpipe in openwebmail.conf have pointed to the
path where the vacation program is.
If the path is correct, you can do debug with the -d option
1. add the '-d' parameter to the vacationpipe in openwebmail.conf
like below
vacationpipe /usr/local/www/cgi-bin/openwebmail/vacation.pl -d -t60s
2. choose a user, enable his autoreply in openwebmail user preference
3. check the ~user/.forward file, the '-d' option should appear after
vacation.pl
4. send a message to this user to test the autoreply
5. check the /tmp/vacation.debug for possible error information
Q: When I enable autoreply feature, others get "Returned mail: see
transcript for details" instead of my autoreply message?
A: Your sendmail may be configured with Sendmail Restricted SHell or smrsh.
vacation.pl file needs to be added to smrsh.
If you are using RedHat 7.1, you may link vacation.pl to /etc/smrsh/
cd /etc/smrsh
ln -s /var/www/cgi-bin/openwebmail/vacation.pl /etc/smrsh/vacation.pl
(thanks to Emir Litric, elitric.AT.yahoo.com)
Q: Can I use openwebmail with SSL?
I got "site not found" or "could not connect to the server" error?
A: Yes, openwebmail can work with SSL.
The error is due to IE doesn't do keepalives correctly when using SSL.
Please add the following line to your Apache configuration for SSL
(or VirtualHost container)
SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown
(thanks to Happy Camper, hcamper.AT.users.sourceforge.net)
Q: I got "Software error: ndbm store returned -1, errno 49, ..."?
A: The user may exceed his quota limit on the file system.
Please remove unwanted files or increase the quota for user.
Q: My SENT folder shows -1 or other negative message size rather then
regular message size?
A: This problem occurs if you installed Open WebMail on the same partition
where quota is enabled. Open WebMail uses temp files in
cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc/sessions folders.
Solution is to move sessions folder to another partition with no Quota.
Please read RedHat-README.txt for detailed explanation on setting up
this, since this problem mostly occurs on RedHat Linux 6.2 and bellow.
(thanks to Emir Litric, elitric.AT.yahoo.com)
Q: I got "db warning - msg xxx index missing in INBOX" in log?
What does this mean?
A: It may have two possible meanings.
1. Your message is moved to other folder by the openwebmail filter module
While openwebmail always maintains the index consistenct with the folder
content, openwebmail only calls the mailfilter in the following two
condition:
a. before browing the message list of a folder
b. before reading a message of the INBOX
If a message(aaa) matching the filter rule comes to INBOX folder, this
message will become the neighbor of one of the existing messages(bbb)
in the index db. If the user is reading message bbb, then aaa will
become the target linked by the right or left arrors in the buttom of
the readmessage webpage. Now if user clicks the arror for next page,
you will get the db index missing error since the message(aaa) is
moved to other folder by the filter before being accessed..
2. Your message is removed by other pop3/imap client.
Do you use outlook and openwebmail at the same time?
Q: I got "db warning - msg yyy index inconsistence in INBOX" in the log?
Does it mean my message were lost?
A: No, you message were not lost, it just means the index db was not reflecting
the newest state of your mail folder, openwebmail did the reindex
automatcially after logging this message.
Q: There were strange characters in the mail filter menu and those rules could
not be deleted?
A: This is due to the dbmopen() of your perl didn't add the ".db" extension
automatically, so the ~/.filter.book and its index were written to the same
file. This problem can be fixed by properly setting option dbm_ext and
dbmopen_ext. To find the correct setting for the two options:
perl cgi-bin/openwebmail/uty/dbmtest.pl [enter]
and you will get output like this:
dbm_ext .db
dbmopen_ext none
dbmopen_haslock no
Then put the three lines into your openwebmail.conf.
Q: My openwebmail was okay, but I got "Your request didn't contain the proper
session ID cookie -- access denied!" in these days?
A: Openwebmail puts user uploaded attachments in
cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc/sessions/ temporarily.
User will get error if there is no space left on the partition where
cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc/sessions/ lives or user has exceeded his disk quota.
Please move cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc/sessions to a larger partition with
diskquota disabled, then create a symbolic link to that new directory
cd /new_place
mkdir sessions
chmod 770 sessions
chown 0 sessions
chgrp mail sessions
cd yourweb_cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc/
rm -Rf sessions
ln -s /new_place/sessions .
Q: The Open WebMail is very slow on my machine?
A: It depends on how you define the "slow".
The response time of Open WebMail in normal operation would be:
7 second on a p133 machine.
4 second on a p200mmx machine.
2 second on a celeron300 machine.
less than 1 second on a P4-1.6G machine
ps: Some operations would take more time than normal operation, for example:
indexing on a large folder, adding large attachment to a message.
It is recommended that you install Open WebMail on a medium-sized machine.
(ex: Celeron 300 with 128MB ram). Actually it runs quite well on a pentium
200mmx machine if you have enough ram installed.
There is an analysis of memory usage of Open WebMail available at
http://turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw/openwebmail/download/doc/memory.usage
Q: How can I upgrade from old version of Open Webmail?
A: Each version of openwebmail is made to be backward compatible with
old ones, no user setting or mail message will be lost after upgrade.
The upgrade steps:
1. make a copy of your old openwebmail.conf
2. install new openwebmail in the same location as old version
3. update the new openwebmail.conf with the setting in old one.
Q: How can I move old messages in my mail client into openwebmail folders?
A: a. If your mail client program supports IMAP and your mail server has
imapd installed, you may move old messages in the mail client to
remote folders on mail server through the IMAP protocol.
Be sure to put the folders under ~/mail so openwebmail can find them
automatically.
b. Some mail client stores or can export messages into unix mbox format
folder file.(eg: Eudora) You can just upload the mbox file to the
~/mail/ and openwebmail will find them automatically.
ps: If your folder file is in dos text format, you may need use the
following command to stripe out the \r at each end of line.
perl -pi -e "s/\r\n/\n/" folderfile
Q: How can I report problem?
A: If your Open WebMail doesn't work, please post your problem on
openwebmail forum http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=108433
with the following information
OS
Perl Version
your openwebmail.conf
the ls -l of the perl executable used in your openwebmail.pl
the ls -l of your cgi-bin/openwebmail and cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc
the ls -la of the ~user/mail/
the error message in your browser
If your Open WebMail works but it shows strange output for some messages,
please forward the message as an attachment to us
(openwebmail.AT.turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw)
ps: clicking the 'forward as attachment' icon in message reading menu
Q: Can I specify the composemessage menu as the openwebmail default?
A: You can call the openwebmail with url
http://server/openwebmail.pl?action=composemessage&to=EMAIL&subject=SUBJECT
Q: Can I specify the calendar month view as the openwebmail default?
A: You can call the openwebmail with url
http://server/openwebmail.pl?action=calmonth
Q: Can I specify the calendar day view as the openwebmail default?
A: You can call the openwebmail with url
http://server/openwebmail.pl?action=calday
Q: Can I call openwebmail from my programs with username/password specified?
A: this is a little dangerous since the loginname and password will
be displayed on the URL line of the user's browser.
You can call the openwebmail with url
http://server/openwebmail.pl?loginname=USER&password=PASS
or even with action specified
http://server/openwebmail.pl?action=calmonth&loginname=USER&password=PASS
Q: Can I get the mail/event status of a user before he logins openwebmail?
How can I get the username before user really types it?
A: If a user has ever successfully logined into openwebmail, the loginname
will be stored to cookie "openwebmail-loginname" at the browser side.
The following CGI script demostrates how to use this information.
-----------------------------------------
#!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI qw(-private_tempfiles :standard);
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
my $info;
my $loginname = cookie("openwebmail-loginname");
if ($loginname ne "") {
$info=`/usr/local/www/cgi-bin/openwebmail/openwebmail-tool.pl -m -e $loginname`;
}
print $info;
------------------------------------------
Q: I already have a web application which would do authentication for user,
how can I integrate openwebmail with it so the user doesn't need to login
again when click the openwebmail link?
A: All you have to do is to write a very simple auth_xxx.pl which checks if
a user have already logined on your web application through server session
file or cookies.
And the link to call the openwebmail.pl should be
http:/xxxx/openwebmail.pl?loginname=USERNAME&password=dummy
Q: How can I setup IE to trigger Open WebMail compose window when I click
a "mailto:someone@somehost" link?
A: In Windows Explorer, if you go to Tools -> Folder Options, click on the
File Types tab. In the window that appears, scroll down the list to the
entry for "URL:MailTo Protocol". Highlight URL:MailTo and click edit.
Choose to edit the action for open. By default it probably has a
command to open Outlook Express (or your default email client).
Change the Application to read:
"C:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe" http://your_server/cgi-bin/openwebmail.pl?loginname=NAME&password=PASS"
This will make Windows open Internet Explorer and go directly to the .pl
page and login with the specified user and pass.
(Thanks to Mike Andrews, mike.AT.lcso.org)
Q: How can I set an alias/redirection/link to the openwebmail script so users
can use openwebmail with a shorter url?
A: Please create a file, index.html, like below. Either a or b is okay.
Then put this index.html to the location mapped by the url you want.
a.
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
b.
---------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
Q: Can I install openwebmail without root priviledge?
A: Yes, try the auth_pop3.pl. Some information is available in it.
Q: Can I setup mail account for user without creating the unix acount?
A: Yes, you need postfix + vm-pop3d + openwebmail.
Kevin Ellis(kevin.AT.bluelavalamp.net) has made a webpage for this,
it is available at http://www.bluelavalamp.net/owmvirtual/
Q: I have set openwebmail for virtual user with vm-pop3d, but I got
"Sorry, root login is disabled for security's sake" at login?
A: Please check the descriptions in auth_pop3.pl and find which case you
are using. If you are using case b, don't forget to set the $local_uid
to the uid used by your vm-pop3d for all virtual users.
Q: Can Open WebMail be used with mod_perl?
A: No, lots of code needs to be changed to make Open WebMail a good behavior
program under mod_perl. Currently, it can not be used with mod_perl.
Q: Does Open WebMail support maildir and vpop3mail user by Qmail?
A: No, It doesn't.
Q: Will Open WebMail support maildir and vpop3mail used by Qmail?
A: Maybe, but it won't be implemented in the near future since we don't use
qmail on our mail server. It is said that qmail has a 'mbox' compatible
mode, you may use that mode with openwebmail.
Q: Can Openwebmail do xxx function or have yyy control option?
A: The best way to know all features of openwebmail is to check the
cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc/openwebmail.conf.help. Please check it.
Q: Can I use Open WebMail in a commercial web site?
A: Yes. Open WebMail is GPLed software (please see copyright.txt for
detail of GPL). You can distribute/use/modify/sell it freely ONLY IF
a. The GPL Copyright page must be kept untouched.
b. Any improvement of Open WebMail or any product based on Open WebMail
must be released to the public for free in source form if it is not for
internal use.
c. Products based on Open Webmail must be also distributed under GPL.
07/28/2002
openwebmail.AT.turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw