ClearFoundation

Please run this release in a test VM or box, not on a live system!

The Zarafa and ClearOS 6 Mail Stack was released. Originally, we planned on just releasing the base Zarafa components, but all the pieces fell into place so most of the mail stack is available. The details are in the blog post and release instructions:

- Blog Post
- Installation and Configuration

Discussion Topics

A full integration test will begin this week, but right now we are interested in comments and questions about the underlying Zarafa implementation.

- Have we missed a Zarafa feature that you need? For example, Zarafa has "manager" and "direct reports" defined for every user. We could add these to the add/edit user page in ClearOS if desired.

- The Zarafa system uses the internal MySQL server instead of the main MySQL server. Does anyone prefer using the main MySQL server?

- By default, the Zarafa web client runs on the standard Web Server. Should we add support to have it run under the webconfig engine as well (port 83?)

Glad its finally hit the ground

Good to see the facility to appoint a user as "Zarafa admin" to manage the public folders. Perhaps the default quote should be higher than 100MB? that doesn't go far...and would be better to drill it down from unlimited if required?

From my experience with Zarafa the system-mysql backend is fine until you need to dump or restore it for backup purposes. It causes headaches, and the Zarafa provided scripts for database manipulation don't work (case in point is their script to move attachments from Mysql to the filesystem). Nothing more than a general inconvenience such as having to find your system-mysql password, and the Zarafa database etc...

Having Zarafa Webaccess running off the standard web server simplifies things somewhat. I only moved it in 5.2 so that it was not dependant on the PHP version as there were many and the php-mapi extension had to be rebuilt. Because no one likes to remember port numbers in URLs I also used a ProxyPass config to pass data to the webconfig in 5.2...IMHO this added extra complexity and made it hard to implement https connections for webmail, and also complicated z-push. If we can i'd like to see webaccess https only using the normal web server...

I've never really investigated it, but Zarafa offers a Zarafa-contacts functionality such that users can store contact information in LDAP...is that feasible?

Good to see the 'webapp' in the repo too, this is the ultimate replacement of webaccess and is pretty reliable from my testing in 5.2

Will Zarafa support a multi-tenancy setup? or are you still going for the single mail domain target for SOHO use

Its also been requested in the past to be able to configure 'zarafaSendAsPrivilege' so that nominated users can send on behalf of someone else. Such that user1@domain.com can actually appear as full.name@domain.com when sending mail. I couldn't spot a better way of achieving except without some clever maps in postfix to change outgoing mail. Is it possible to select the outgoing mail based on the users list of predefined aliases?

Last one! for some reason the default /etc/zarafa/server.cfg disables POP3 and IMAP (see disabled_features = imap pop3), not really sure why - it would appear you can then enable POP/IMAP access on a per user basis, but thats not a setup i'd see frequently? It would be better to enable globally...
doc.zarafa.com/7.0/Release_Notes/en-US/h.../#_UserAccessControl

I have no interest in the Zarafa implementation. Will we be able to pass mail thru (after being checked for spam and viruses) to another mail server as we can in 5.2?

Wow -- thanks Tim. That's awesome feedback.

@ duncan

That "mail gateway" feature needs to be implemented properly and should really be a separate app. That has been a feature request for quite some time, but it has yet to materialize. I realize that version 5.2 can be configured as a mail gateway, but it's not a proper implementation. Here's why.

A mail gateway needs to have a list of valid e-mail addresses so that it can reject invalid mail addresses right away. Without this information, the target mail system will be creating backscatter. That's not being a good Internet citizen and it will get the mail gateway listed on blacklists too.

In the first mail stack release, the SMTP Server app no longer has the "Mail Forward" configuration option. We have to be good Internet stewards, and making it easy to create backscatter doesn't fit the bill. That "Mail Forward" feature in SMTP should really transform into the Mail Gateway app. This new app would need a way for an administrator to provide a list of valid e-mail addresses. This could be done via:

- an LDAP / Active Directory Connector
- a simple import tool
- manually editing a list in the app web interface

The "Mail Forward" feature will likely still appear in the final version of 6 since its original intention (forwarding outbound mail) is still required. I'm no a fan of enabling backscatter though.

I'm having a little trouble getting this working, hope this is the right place to post. I'm pretty sure it's the result of a faulty configuration on my part rather than an issue with the program. I have everything installed and it's showing up in the web config and everything. I can open the web based mail client and write messages. The problem is that I can't seem to send or receive mail. This is of course kind of a problem in a mail server.

I'm pretty sure I've forwarded all the necessary ports - in addition to SMTP I've also got IMAP, POP3, and the secure versions of both forwarded just in case to the server itself (I only had the SMTP port forwarded for my router, though). I've double and triple checked that the email addresses are right. It's possible my ISP is blocking port 25 (I hear lots do, and this is my first time trying to run a mail server) which would explain why I'm unable to deliver mail from my gmail client but I can't seem to send mail within my LAN either.

I followed the steps listed here to get things running. Aside from forwarding the ports through the firewall is there anything I should know about this, knowing that I've never run a mail server before? I'm also fairly new to ClearOS. I'm somewhat familiar with linux and can ssh into the server to change configuration files and permissions and stuff if necessary but it looks like I should be able to handle this through the web interface.

The main way I've tried to test it is by sending e-mail from me@server.network.net to otheruser@server.network.net (so I don't need to worry about port forwarding from my router or the dynamic dns or my ISP quite probably blocking port 25). Is there any problem with doing this?

One other thing: I'm running this on a physical machine. I installed ClearOS on this machine for the express purpose of messing around with it anyway, and the only things of any value on the machine are backed up.

I'm happy to provide any information needed to help get this running.

Glad to hear that zarafa test are already underway I will set up a 6.2 box to test, however a suggestion just to add regarding what tim said:

* Please allow option of mysql database for backup purposes for community users, it's fine for people who professional they will have zarafa-backup but for community it makes it hard.

* Public folders should probably be increased alot, we had a company who had a public folder of 18GB of e-mails definately 100MB won't be enough, I think thel imitation should increase.

I'll provide more feedback next week.

@ Dylan - hold off on implementing a mail server right now This initial release was really intended for getting some initial design feedback and I would not be surprised if some functionality is not working. The next step is to integrate the suggested changes and start running a live server (eat or own dog foot). We'll then release a beta and we can go from there.

I've never really investigated it, but Zarafa offers a Zarafa-contacts functionality such that users can store contact information in LDAP...is that feasible?

That will have to wait. This should be done in a generic way so that other software packages could take advantage of it. Kolab has the same functionality and I'm sure others do too.

Will Zarafa support a multi-tenancy setup? or are you still going for the single mail domain target for SOHO use

Multi-tenancy won't be supported.

Its also been requested in the past to be able to configure 'zarafaSendAsPrivilege' so that nominated users can send on behalf of someone else. Such that user1@domain.com can actually appear as full.name@domain.com when sending mail. I couldn't spot a better way of achieving except without some clever maps in postfix to change outgoing mail. Is it possible to select the outgoing mail based on the users list of predefined aliases?

I'll have to look into that. Adding to the Zarafa Extension is the first step - tracker #616

for some reason the default /etc/zarafa/server.cfg disables POP3 and IMAP (see disabled_features = imap pop3), not really sure why

Unintended. We can certainly change that!

So far this looks really good. I did have to enable imap and pop manually as pointed out by Tim. Easy fix though.

One thing I haven't been able to make work properly is imapsync. It keeps throwing a "NO APPEND" error which is confusing me.

Other than that, the implementation is great and the webapp is very slick. I haven't used Zarafa before now but I certainly feel like I've been missing out. Can't wait for the final release!

Peter,
Just got it installed, nice that it works out of the box, just a couple of things:


Zarafa-App

In clearos 5.2 you were allowed to disable/enable pop/imap in the web interface along with also changing the ports, is this going to be possible again or is this just not available due to this being a beta test if that's the case then fair enough that's fine.

User creation

When adding a new user now on clearos There is an e-mail section that is blacked out while alias is available to write. Is it possible on 6.2 for you to enable to not make the username the e-mail address? That would be great some times we would like to have a username mail.info and of course there can be an alias that is info but when sending it will send as mail.info and not info@domainname.com

If this is a feature you can impliment that would be pretty amazing.

webmail/certs

It's really great that https works out of the box without doing quite alot of configuring like before on 5.2 for that thanks alot you've saved alot of monitinous work for me

I just wanted to know a few things:

* Z-push when it gets implimented/in your testing repos will that also be https by default like the webmail or will we need to use proxy pass for that too?



mysql/attachments

I just set up zarafa to use the normal mysql which seems to only work if you set the user to be unlimited if you choose a normal quote like 10GB it's full up.

system-mysql quotas seem fine, so I'm guessing clearos isn't set to use the normal mysql at all. Are there any plans in the near future to support normal mysql for zarafa?