CentOS Linux Server Guide

Postfix Mail System - Step by Step Guide -

Linux WebMail - SquirrelMail Installation on CentOS Linux

Step1: Check if squirrelmail packages already install

First, you can check if squirrelmail already installed in your system.

rpm -qi squirrelmail

If you do not have squirelmail installed, please install now using yum command. Please make sure that you have internet connection.

yum -y install squirrelmail

Step2: configure squirrelmail packages

Now, we are ready to start configure our squirrelmail. Run the following command

/usr/share/squirrelmail/config/conf.pl

Next, you will see the following screen. We can start to configure the squirrelmail's server setting. Press <2> and press <Enter Button>.

Note: You can customize the squirrelmail to your organization preference such as logos, organization name etc. under Main Menu's option 1.

SquirrelMail Configuration : Read: config.php (1.4.0)
---------------------------------------------------------
Main Menu --
1. Organization Preferences
2. Server Settings
3. Folder Defaults
4. General Options
5. Themes
6. Address Books
7. Message of the Day (MOTD)
8. Plugins
9. Database
10. Languages

D. Set pre-defined settings for specific IMAP servers

C Turn color off
S Save data
Q Quit

Command >> 2

Next, press <1> to configure our domain name

SquirrelMail Configuration : Read: config.php (1.4.0)
---------------------------------------------------------
Server Settings

General
-------
1. Domain : localhost
2. Invert Time : false
3. Sendmail or SMTP : Sendmail

A. Update IMAP Settings : localhost:143 (uw)
B. Change Sendmail Config : /usr/sbin/sendmail

R Return to Main Menu
C Turn color off
S Save data
Q Quit

Command >> 1
The domain name is the suffix at the end of all email addresses. If
for example, your email address is jdoe@example.com, then your domain
would be example.com.

[localhost]: example.local

Great! Next let us save the Squirrelmail Configuration. Press <s> to save and <q> to quit.

SquirrelMail Configuration : Read: config.php (1.4.0)
---------------------------------------------------------
Server Settings

General
-------
1. Domain : example.local <-- take the changes here
2. Invert Time : false
3. Sendmail or SMTP : Sendmail

A. Update IMAP Settings : localhost:143 (uw)
B. Change Sendmail Config : /usr/sbin/sendmail

R Return to Main Menu
C Turn color off
S Save data
Q Quit

Command >> s

Data saved in config.php
Press enter to continue...
Exiting conf.pl.
You might want to test your configuration by browsing to
http://your-squirrelmail-location/src/configtest.php
Happy SquirrelMailing!

Step3: Check your configuration

Open your browser. Then enter the address http://your-ip-address/src/configtest.php. This will run a test on your squirrelmail configuration. For security concern, you might need to move the configtest.php to some other location after the installation. The example below shows the result page of the test

SquirrelMail configtest

This script will try to check some aspects of your SquirrelMail configuration and point you to errors whereever it can find them. You need to go run conf.pl in the config/ directory first before you run this script.

SquirrelMail version: 1.4.8-5.el5.centos.10

Config file version: 1.4.0

Config file last modified: 20 May 2010 14:04:49

Checking PHP configuration...
    PHP version 5.1.6 OK.
    PHP extensions OK.
Checking paths...
    Data dir OK.
    Attachment dir OK.
    Plugins OK.
    Themes OK.
    Default language OK.
    Base URL detected as: http://192.168.139.128/src (location base autodetected)
Checking outgoing mail service....
    sendmail OK
Checking IMAP service....
    IMAP server ready (* OK Dovecot ready.)
    Capabilities: * CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 SASL-IR SORT THREAD=REFERENCES MULTIAPPEND UNSELECT LITERAL+ IDLE CHILDREN NAMESPACE LOGIN-REFERRALS STARTTLS AUTH=PLAIN
Checking internationalization (i18n) settings...
     gettext - Gettext functions are available. You must have appropriate system locales compiled.
     mbstring - Mbstring functions are available.
     recode - Recode functions are unavailable.
     iconv - Iconv functions are available.
     timezone - Webmail users can change their time zone settings.
Checking database functions...
    not using database functionality.

Congratulations, your SquirrelMail setup looks fine to me!

Note: For maximize the security, perhaps you should rename or move the configtest.php somewhere and remove the SquirrelMail version display at SquirrelMail Login Page.

Step4: Restart Apache server

Now, let us restart the apache server and make sure the apache services automatic start-up when system boot.

service httpd start

chkconfig httpd on

Step5: Login your webmail

You can now access your webmail using http://ipaddress/webmail

Optional: URL Redirection

If you prefer to access SquirrelMail from the root of your domain, we need to do a little trick called "URL redirection".

Create the file /etc/httpd/conf.d/sqroot.conf

vim /etc/httpd/conf.d/sqroot.conf

Now, add in lines below and save it.

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /usr/share/squirrelmail
</VirtualHost>

Then, restart your appache services and test it using http://ipaddress

service httpd restart

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