Installation problems with SuSE 9.3

[Dandman]

Hi There,

I have been trying to install Scalix Community edition on my brand new Suse 9,3 installation with great difficulty. I was wondering if there was anyone out there that had an idiots guide to install Scalix on SuSE 9.3.
The instructions were somewhat helpful but not enough info for a newbie. I am thinking of rebuilding the SuSE server again and would appreciate it if you guys would really be of some support during the painful installation process. Some of the issues I came across was Java and Tomcat. Can someone please tell me the diff between SDK and JDK. As the download was the SDK (No not the JRE) but I still had/have problems pointing to the Java. This is what I want to do

1. Create a mail server for 3 domains (Non profit of course) e.g. abc.com , def.com , ghi.com (Can this be done? Not subdomains but actual domains)

I have a static IP but I am using Zoneedit to forward DNS requests to my domains. Not configured yet (Anyone has a better solution please let me know)

2. The mail server needs to bring in all 3 domain's mail and store it in mailboxes. Not all users will have mail accounts for all three domains. Just me :)

3. Users will pop their mail to their mail client from where ever they are. (Either POP or IMAP) POP would be good.

4. Do I need to have BIND or some sort of DNS running on my server for Scalix to work properly?

5. What are the init scripts for? I saw somewhere there was a mention of scalix-tomcat script. and some other scripts. Please could you tell me what this is for.

I am a Windows Net Admin user trying to move to Linux. Please be patient and don't yell at me for being a pain.

Thanks Very Much

Dandman

[ScalixSupport]

The instructions were somewhat helpful but not enough info for a newbie. I am thinking of rebuilding the SuSE server again and would appreciate it if you guys would really be of some support during the painful installation process.

We have tried to be as painless as possible with the installation so any direct feedback you have for improvement is welcome.

Can someone please tell me the diff between SDK and JDK. As the download was the SDK (No not the JRE) but I still had/have problems pointing to the Java.

There is no difference between the two apart from terminology. SDK=Software Development Kit, JDK=Java Development Kit. Both mean the same thing. We require that the Sun Java SDK/JDK is installed. The installation should ask you to enter the location (which is typically /usr/java/jdk-1.4.2_x/

1. Create a mail server for 3 domains (Non profit of course) e.g. abc.com , def.com , ghi.com (Can this be done? Not subdomains but actual domains)

Scalix has no concept of domain ownership. If there is a user with that domain as their internet address, Scalix will accept it. This does mean that external DNS has to be correctly setup to route mail to your server. This is typically done through MX records.

I have a static IP but I am using Zoneedit to forward DNS requests to my domains. Not configured yet (Anyone has a better solution please let me know)

Scalix requires a working name resolution setup. This is for a couple of reasons:

1. The server must be able to resolve its own name
2. Outgoing messages must be delivered somewhere. Directly or through a mail relay is up to you but sendmail has to be able to resolve the name of the destination server.
3. The SMTP Relay has to be able to use reverse lookups to match some of the rules defined in /var/opt/scalix/sys/smtpd.cfg for the basic anti-spam features.

2. The mail server needs to bring in all 3 domain's mail and store it in mailboxes. Not all users will have mail accounts for all three domains. Just me :)

See above. You need MX records (or valid DNS records) to route mail to your server. If there is a Scalix user with one of those domains for their mail address, Scalix will accept it.

3. Users will pop their mail to their mail client from where ever they are. (Either POP or IMAP) POP would be good.

Scalix has POP and IMAP interfaces. The consideration you need to make is how available you want them. If you are making them available through your firewall, we recommend that you use stunnel to set up an SSL interface for both, i.e. only allow connections to port 993 for IMAPs which will be forwarded to port 143 on the Scalix server.

4. Do I need to have BIND or some sort of DNS running on my server for Scalix to work properly?

No but you do need a working DNS setup somewhere in your organisation. See my response above. People mistakenly believe that they need to be able to resolve all the names in the internet. This is not true. You only need to be able to resolve all the names that you are going to use internally but, if you are intending to send mail out of your organisation, you need a route out. This can be done by using mail relays or smart hosts within sendmail where sendmail is configured to send all external mail to another internal machine first. That machine is typically the one that knows how to resolve everything or knows of another machine that can (at which point it will forward the mail there).

5. What are the init scripts for? I saw somewhere there was a mention of scalix-tomcat script. and some other scripts. Please could you tell me what this is for.

The init script is used to ensure that a particular service is started up at boot time (and stopped cleanly at shutdown). It also allows a single command to stop/start the service without really needing to know the location of the tomcat installation.

I am a Windows Net Admin user trying to move to Linux. Please be patient and don't yell at me for being a pain.

You're using Scalix. Why would we yell at you ;-)

Cheers

Dave

[Dandman]

Hi Dave,

Thanks very much for your reply. Very much appreciated all the info. I think I have got it to work because I can see the admin console, but during the process of Scalix opening the console in firefox my terminal console that was running behind the setup (This is where I initiated the Scalix install sript) Listed a list of errors that were exactly the same. Something about not finding the directory ????? I uninstalled Scalix and installed it again but the same list appeared. However though the admin console opened up and I managed to login in. The console was very slow and I couldn't find a way to enter users.

1. Please could you tell me how to add users to the Scalix server.

2. Also I have got the mail server details wrong I want this server to be a web server as well as a mail server. for the mail server I want it to be "mail.abc.com" for the web server I want it to be "www.abc.com" . However when I named this server (in the Suse installation) as "internal.abc.com" I was given the opportunity to name the server in the Scalix installation. So my question is what do I type in during the scalix install to make it "mail.abc.com"

3. How do I open the web mail page? What do I type in the browser? when I type in "internal.abc.com" I get an error that says An error occurred while loading http://internal.abc.com Could not connect to host internal.abc.com. But when I type in internal.abc.com:8080 I get the tomcat page. I cannot get the same page to load from another computer. Any of them.


Thanks Mate

Dandman

[peterz]

I also have been installing Scalix Community on a brand new Suse 9.3 Pro server. A number of problems with Scalix have been evident, causing long hours of frustration:

a) Many of the notes and configuration info are Red Hat based. Result, many directories and paths don't match. It would be nice if the Scalix Suse 9.3 community package was Suse 9.3 pure.

b) Suse 9.3 provides a very nice, clean installation of Tomcat 5 under YAST. Because Scalix seems to be name.version specific, you can't use it and have to uninstall YAST Tomcat and reinstall using the Scalix wizard installation and the supplied Tomcat version. My biggest fear is, what happens when there is a Tomcat upgrade? If Scalix would use the $TOMCAT_PATH as exists on the YAST system, then we could let YAST handle all future upgrades. (This problem cost us 4 hours before we realized what was happenning)

c) Setting up additional domains is truly inconvenient. Yes, I understand it can be done by changing the ubermanager file, or rerunning the installer, but it is intuitively obvious that it should be a tab function under SAC. (My Exchange Server administrator doesn't understand Linux, and I don't get paid enough to try to train him ; )

d) Finally, down to my current problem:
Rules Wizard should definetly be part of SAC of at least the users webmail panel.
There needs to be an easy way for the user to setup a Vacation notice or forward
their email to another email account, such as AOL, while their away without the administrator needing to get involved. ( AOL....don't ask)
Either way, we haven't been able to make it work.

Looking at previous forum notes, we note that we should:
i) setup in Apache(2) conf.d the line: Include
/opt/scalix/global/httpd/scalix-web-client.conf
Upon Apache restart, this doesn't work. Messages about overiding duplicate entries
fills the screen.
ii) editing /etc/opt/scalix/webmail/partner.xml is a problem:
Under Suse 9.3 configuration, the 'webmail' folder doesn't exist. Result, setting rulesWizard="true" is out of the question.

This is our immediate problem. After this, I'll be getting into the webmail redirection required to get to http://localhost/webmail instead of http://localhost:8080/webmail.
As a Linux developer, I understand this, but our users are seriously confused. The redirection should, in MHO, be setup automatically during Scalix configuration.

I'd appreciate some advice here on the Rules Wizard. The rest is good hearted suggestions to help SCALIX become big success.