SquirrelMail

From Superk

After getting everything working well with my SMTP/IMAP server (including Authenticated SMTP), it was time to find a decent webmail client that would offer an ideal way of retrieving and working with email from any location. In our company, some employees travel quite often so the ability to easily access and manipulate their mail is very important.

I've recently experimented with a few webmail clients to round out my email server solution. Originally Courier's sqWebmail seemed like the obvious choice since it would so seemlessly integrate with Courier-IMAP and provide simple and efficient performance. As a simple client, this worked well, but lacked some of the key functionality I am looking for in a client.

I also read good things about the SilkyMail client so I decided to try that as well. I had some difficulty getting things to work properly with this client and after some frustration gave up. I was able to get the main page to show, but could not get a login screen. This was proving to be too much work for a client that still did not provide all the functionality I was looking for.

I should explain what functionality it is that I am looking for in a client. Because I'm attempting to replace Domino/Notes in basic functionality, I am looking for a minimal amount of group calendaring in a web client. The ability to work with IMAP is also key as my whole server depends soley on IMAP at this point (POP may be added later as an optional, though not recommened, service). Finally, authenticated SMTP must be supported - spam relaying is a nuisance and a hazard to any company's domain and must be avoided as much as possible.

I accidentally stumbled upon SquirrelMail (sort of). Actually, I had heard about it many times, but never took the time to look at it. I had the impression that it was a far too simplistic client with very few features. After the frustration I had with SilkyMail, I finally decided to check out SquirrelMail as a possible option. What I found surprised me and impressed me a great deal!

SquirrelMail installed flawlessly and worked easily with my running system with very little modification. Because it addes an include into Apache's httpd.conf for it's configuration, there is little that needs to be done for Apache to work with it. Configuration of the webmail client itself is performed using a simple Perl script that's included with SquirrelMail and located in /etc/squirrelmail. The entire configuration is menu-driven and well commented. After completion of the configuration script, the file /etc/squirrelmail/config.php is updated and works as the heart of the entire program. I did notice at this point that the Perl configuration script writes the LDAP Port entry incorrectly each time the configuration script is run. Using any text editor it is possible to fix the config.php file so that the the line "'port' => 389" is configured properly in the section for LDAP server configuration.

Even in its default configuration, SquirrelMail is very functional as a simple mail client. However, SquirrelMail's site offers a plethora of plugins that can greatly expand the abilities of this webmail client. Much of the client is based on a SQL backend that offers a huge degree of flexibility and power. While I will not go into much of what is available in plugins (see the SquirrelMail site at http://www.squirrelmail.org for details), I will say that one of my primary desires in a webmail client was satisfied with the group calendar plugin! This plugin allows for both personal and defined public calendars to be used. Public calendars can be restricted to simple groups or opened to all users via the administration tool accessible from the SquirrelMail client.

There are many, many more advantages to using SquirrelMail that I won't attempt to discuss here, but it is well worth the effort of installing it and giving it a try. This client has fullfilled my needs to a tee and has rounded out my mail server solution very nicely.