Installing Scalix CE on CentOS4 successfully :-)

[blogananda]

<Pre-requisites>

Read the installation manual first :-)

Location of installation docs would be :

<your-install-directory>/scalix-9.4.0-community-intel-rh/documentation/*.pdf

It's definitely worth reading it even before you start doing anything. One of the best (simplest) installation manual I would say. The installer seems to be very picky about the Linux distribution. It seemed to work only for their supported list of Linux distros. So to install on CentOS4 distribution, make it look like RHEL4 for the installer. Change the file /etc/redhat-release (obviously!). That's all you need to do! (isn't it nice ;)

So, do the following :

Code: Select all

root# cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS release 4.1 (Final)
root# mv /etc/redhat-release /etc/redhat-release.orig
root# cp /etc/redhat-release.orig /etc/redhat-release

Edit /etc/redhat-release and make sure it has the following :
----------------------------------------------------------
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant)
----------------------------------------------------------
Note : The above step is mandatory. Is you do not do that, then the installation will fail saying it's not a supported OS (which seems to be the case)

Make sure you have the right/required space/partition as documented in the installation guide. Though it is recommented not to have the "everything" option selected at CentOS installation time, that's how I did it in my system just to avoid running into any kind of package dependency problems. Again, the installation manual explains clearly on the packages that would be sufficient to install Scalix CE. You may want to consider doing it that way (and let us know that goes)

Download Java1.4.2
Download JDK1.4.2+ from java.sun.com and installed it. I read some posts suggesting not to use JDK1.5 but JDK1.4.2.x instead.

Installation of Java is straight forward.

Code: Select all

root# chmod +x j2sdk-1_4_2_09-linux-i586-rpm.bin
root# ./j2sdk-1_4_2_09-linux-i586-rpm.bin
root# rpm -ivh j2sdk-1_4_2_09-linux-i586.rpm
root# which java
/usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_09/bin/java
root# java -version
java version "1.4.2_09"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2_09-b05)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_09-b05, mixed mode)

Download Tomcat 5.0.28
The reason I downloaded this particular version because this is what was shown in the installation manual's screen shot :) You may want to give a shot with the latest version.

Code: Select all

root# pwd
/root
root# wget http://apache.mirrormax.net/jakarta/tomcat-5/v5.0.28/bin/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.28.tar.gz

</Pre-requisites>

Download scalix CE (http://www.scalix.com/communityedition/index.html)
File : scalix-9.4.0-community-intel-rh.tar.gz

Code: Select all

root# gunzip scalix-9.4.0-community-intel-rh.tar.gz
root# tar xvf scalix-9.4.0-community-intel-rh.tar
root# cd scalix-9.4.0-community-intel-rh
root# sh ./scalix-installer-community

After a few clicks on continuing the installation, this is how the "Installer log" showed on my system :

-----------------------------------------------------
- Network check passed
- Filesystem check passed
- Java and Tomcat check warning -- No valid Tomcat directory found. You may install Tomcat now or use the Installer in the Config. steps.
- Dependency check passed
- Running services check passed
-----------------------------------------------------

Select the default Mailnode name shown.

Mailnode name : myhostname, mydomainname (enter your hostname and your registered domain name)

It also gives a clear message :

" If you're not sure what a mailnode is or are installing a single scalix server, please accept the default name given here. "

So just go with the default values.

Create Admin User
Username : sxadmin
password : *********

Install Tomcat [ refer page 20 in installation guide]
Source File : /root/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.28.tar.gz
Destination : /root
it will be installed in /root/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.28

Once you complete the installation, you should be able to reach the following URL's but, make sure you enable the popup windows on your browser first!

To log into Scalix Administrator :
http://your-domain-name:8080/sac

A seperate Administration window should pop up.

login : sxadmin
password : ********* [ the one that you mentioned before ]

To use web email client :
http://your-domain-name:8080/webmail

login : sxadmin
password : ********* [ if you still haven't created any new account ]

Gotcha's
This is how I had partitioned my hard drive.

Code: Select all

root# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1              12G  1.2G   11G  11% /
none                  379M     0  379M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda6             9.7G  697M  8.5G   8% /home
/dev/hda2              15G  186M   14G   2% /opt
/dev/hda5              12G  3.7G  7.3G  34% /usr
/dev/hda3              15G  1.4G   13G  11% /var
/dev/hda8             9.8G  427M  9.4G   5% /vfatfs

- I had a seperate "/opt" parition with 14G free space.
- There was an empty "opt" directory inside /var partition (which is "/var/opt")
- I moved the /var/opt to /var/opt.orig directory. (root# mv /var/opt /var/opt.orig)
- Then I created a symbolic link betweem /opt and /var/opt (root# ln -s /var/opt /opt)
- when /var/opt is referred, it actually goes to "/opt", which is a seperate partition
- The intension is to use the free 14GB /opt partition for Scalix

But dont know for what reason, when I sym linked /var/opt to a different partition (with the same name "/opt"), the installation failed and complained that /var/opt is not empty (even in spite of removing the "lost+found" directory). So I went back and removed the symbolic link that I created, moved back /var/opt.orig to /var/opt and when I tried it again, the installation succeeded!

Q1 : Why does the installation expects the directory "opt" to be in the same physical partition where "/var" is present ?

Q2 : Is there any kind of ACL's involved when using a different partition for /var/opt ?

The first time when my installation failed, it mentioned/recommended somewhere to use tomcat-4.1.29. So I downloded and tried to use that at installation time. But when I reached the part as "referred in page 20 in installation guide", it said, I needed a tomcat with version 5.x. So you may want to stick to the same versions that I have used to be on the safer side.

Enjoy :-)
http://blogs.sun.com/Ananda

[ScalixSupport]

Thank you for sharing this with the community.

Sascha.

[dawsonj]

I followed your advice and also had to add elinks and some other things before I finally got there.

It gave me sxadmin and I entered password but it does not appear to work.

I have tried including domain name too but nothing seems to let me in.

[dawsonj]

I am now getting this message and I tried disabling firewall.

sx admin does not seem to be able to log in in anyway

its home directory is set to root as well

[dawsonj]

I have fixed everything except for main issue is that I cannotl login to tomcat or scalix admin because the user name and password is not accepted.

I have re-installled three times and tried different user names etc etc

Can I change the password at unix command line level somewhere or is somethingelse wrong?

[florian]

Looking at the instructions posted above, one thing might be a problem.

The sxadmin username for SAC must be the Authentication Identifier. By default, this is set to sxadmin@fqdn.of.your.server, e.g. sxadmin@scalix.us.company.com.

you can check the Authentication identifier from the command line, just enter "omshowu -n sxadmin" and check the first line of the output.

If you forgot your password, you can reset it on the command line using the
ommodu -o sxadmin -p <newpassword> command.

all those commands are fully documented through man pages.

Cheers,
Florian.

[blogananda]

Hi Dawsonj,

Sorry for not checking my own posting :roll: Could you please cut-and-paste whatever error messages that you get ? Iam no expert :lol: but we'll try to fix it.

..blogananda

[kali]

Thank you for sharing this with the community.

Sascha.

To all,

Installing on CentOS is very easy - it IS the RH distribution after all! The only thing that needs to be done is to change the /etc/redhat-release file to read "Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4" at a minimum. (I prefer to use the AS designation as that is what CentOS is.

Once that is done - the installation is identical to all instructions given in the Scalix documentation - no other difference at all. Just a head's up however, when there is a major update (new release number), it will overwrite the redhat-release file.

[sutton.ryan]

In stalling on Centos was easy. If a scalix staff could reply, I need to know if a small company starts with Scalix CE and outgrows it, pays for Scalix EE, would the fact that CE is installed on Centos void any support? Should Fedora be used instead if future use of EE is a possiblity? Will this community forum provide 'how to' or a guide to upgrade to Fedora Core 5 for a working FC4 Scalix server?

Also, how much is involved to change from CE to EE edition down the road (given Fedora or if Centos becomes supported)?

Thanks for any feedback.

Ryan

[florian]

Well..... now you're really asking for a politically difficult answer! .-)

- while Centos is an officially unsupported environment, we know how it has been created and recognize it's structure (we breeze Linux and Unix, after all... ;-). Therefore, as to the best of my knowledge, we will and won't reject to support you on this platform, neither on CE or EE, except for in cases probably where OS could play a role - most importantly with all the authentication and Single Sign On issue.

- using Fedora is not really a solution; if you check our datasheets, officially we do support Fedora Core (and SuSE Pro) "for Evaluation only", so for production systems, we do heavily recommend using either RHEL3/RHEL4 or SLES9.

- We do not currently support Fedora Core 5, neither for our Scalix 9 nor for our upcoming next release; we have a conservative platform support strategy where stability is always preferred over bleeding edge, because this is what our customers want.

- As of 9.4, changing from CE to EE is a simple, 15-minute-upgrade that will not involve data loss. With the upcoming new release, things get even easier as you'll only require to add a license key to enable the Enterprise features.

Hope this helps,
Florian.

[sutton.ryan]

Florian,

Thanks for the quick reply. I find Centos to be just about 100% the same as RHEL and prefer it over fedora for a server. The 5 year life cycle for support/updates on RHEL/Centos is preferable for me as I do not like to upgrade a working server. I also don't like a server labeled as legacy. Even my RHCE instructor recommended Centos over Fedora! (if short on $$$).

The most likely situation I see for my small business clients is the purchase of a Dell server with RHEL......after the free year of RedHat Network, the server would be changed to Centos using yum to continue up2date service (given the customer chooses not to pay for RedHat Network Subscription). Dell 'N' (this post will be deleted) servers may also be an option which get Centos from the start.

I have Scalix CE running on a test Centos4 server. It was simple to install. I like it. It looks like Scalix CE>EE is a true option to MS Exchange and has reasonable licensing as compaired to Zimbra open source email server. Scalix CE is definately easier to work with as compaired to OpenXchange Open Source edition.

I have several clients each under 20 users running on Contribs SME 6 servers. They are going to upgrade the LAN/servers/everything......I bet they choose the RH/Centos/Scalix solution over MS SBS server when they see the cost savings.....given they will use Scalix CE to start. Does Scalix offer the 50% discount on CALs (the first 25) for EE for CE customers considering MS SBS? In my opinion Scalix should make the move from CE to EE easy and affordable. Scalix is a fine product. Don't give any CE user a reason to consider a non Scalix email solution!

Ryan

[florian]

Hi Ryan,

thanks for your kind words; we at Scalix put all our work into creating a product that is easy to use, powerful, stable and feature-rich, in a few words simply the best email organisations can find on Linux.

We believe we've the easiest install process as compared to other Linux-based products as well as the best support for Outlook and all that on a server platform that is fully enterprise ready through support for both centralized and distributed models, great scaleability and unparalleled stability, particularly in the message store.

To clarify this again, we don't say a word against Centos; however, we will not officially give any platform support blessing until we've fully tested it in our extensive QA process and we're not currently planning to do this for Centos. Having said that, we recognize what Centos is and especially for small installations like yours it seems a very viable platform alternative.

I believe we've made the CE->EE move really easy from a technical side already as it is a simple, no-data-loss, no-risk upgrade. Want to move from Scalix to anything else - well, that's a migration. We'll make it even easier through the license-key based mechanism in the next release, coming this quarter.

I cannot comment on specific marketing/sales campaigns in stock; we're currently running one for customers coming over from MS Exchange that provides you with additional cost savings; obviously, we might want to do different things in the future.

Hope you continuze enjoy using our product,
Florian.

[Jens]

Hi
I am not sure why, but I got every time error messages if I tried to install the jakarta-tomcat-5.0.28.tar.gz
The message says the file isn't correct compressed or gzipped, but I downloaded the file from different mirrors, even from the apache-server.
Also the included third-party file within the scalix-core-intel-redhat-10 file were incorrect (but JRE was fine!!?!!).

Any sugestion?
Is there anything to do with CentOS (besides the redhat-release file)?

Thanks for any comments.
Jens

[mephisto]

Also the included third-party file within the scalix-core-intel-redhat-10 file were incorrect (but JRE was fine!!?!!).

Maybe the scalix-archive you downloaded is corrupt - or you have hardware-issues (faulty RAM/HD/cables/overheating - with linux this should show up elsewhere, though).
I'd enable all sections in /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo to get all necessary packages.

[florian]

On the Community Edition Download page, we do provide md5 checksums for our download files. Please check before installation that the download is not corrupted.

-- Florian.