Just curious, what experiences have any of you had with Webmail on the Raqs, as far as programs used, cost, stability, etc.

Any info would be appreciated. I think that leaving off a webmail app from the Raq was a mistake by Cobalt.

Robert Marsh
Head Surfer Rackshack.net

I can only tell you what I *didn't* have success with: nocc

A long time ago I had something like 'ferie' (name is close if not exact) which worked fine, though wasn't advanced. Both I found on hotscripts.com and there were some discussions about mail programs recently, but I can't recall what the end recommendations were.

I installed Squirrel Mail on one of your RaQs for a buddy (http://www.squirrelmail.org/). It was quite easy to install and worked fine. It just needs PHP and IMAP, both of which are availabel on RaQ's.

I've also heard good things about IMP (http://www.horde.org/imp/) but I have not had a chance to install that.

Frank

Thanks for the rec on Squirrel Mail. Just for the record, we have tried this product.

On low volume boxes, it seemed to work fine. However, in situations where we have large boxes with lots of storred mail, we did experience problems although that has been a few months.

If your experience is more recent, we'll give it a try again.

A webmail option seems to be one of the more requested things that we do not currently offer.

Robert Marsh
Head Surfer Rackshack.net

It was receintly installed, but on a low (mail) volume box.

Frank

Some of my better experinces have came from Postaci (http://www.trlinux.com) and Neo Mail (http://neomail.sourceforge.net/). As I remember Neo Mail is used with cpanel so I'm guessing it handles well with a large load. I haven't personally had experince with a huge load of people with either Postaci or NeoMail, but have had great experince with around 850 users....

Originally posted by headsurfer
Thanks for the rec on Squirrel Mail. Just for the record, we have tried this product.

WHAT KIND of problems?

I have it on a cobalt server (Raq4) with about 180 sites on it. It works fine untill the user has a lot of mail it starts to slow down for that user and if they are trying to delete more then 700 or 800 messages it gives a php time out error but the mail is deleted.

The latest developmental version (1.2.0rc1) has major speed improvements in IMAP functions and has been perfectly stable in my test.

Well I usally give it a few weeks then Add them to the srevers.

NeoMail is extremely fast because it accesses mail files directly. Because of this however, it is harder to install than SquirrelMail.

You can download NeoMail from:

http://neomail.sourceforge.net/

It's completely free and open source and, unlike SquirrelMail, works fine with heavily loaded servers.

Lastly check out this screen shot:

http://neomail.sourceforge.net/neomail-headers.jpg

As you can see, it looks very neat and tidy.

Nwebmail
I have used nwebmail on my Raq for a few months now. Currently, only four or five users are trying it out before we install it for all of our clients.

Nwebmail is written in C and access the mail spools directly. This makes this program incredibly fast. The program is based on Neomail, which is written in PERL. The only problem is customization and virtual hosting. Since the program is written in C, you would have to make changes to the source code and re-compile to modify the GUI or adapted it for virtual hosting.
I have looked at HORDE, SquirrelMail, NeoMail, WebPine, and several others -- none compare to the speed of nwebmail.

Security Issues
Neomail and nwebmail runs suid root, which despite the NeoMail's authors claims, is a potential security issue. However, the speed of these programs is much better than others.

Virtual hosting
I think NeoMail and nwebmail could be adapted for virtual hosting and ran using a special uid and guid, thus limiting security risk and allowing resellers to provide web mail with only one installation of the program. I would imaging you could easily pass an enviroment variable, e.g. the domain name, to nwebmail and/or neomail to allow it to be used with virtual hosting solutions.

Nwebmail or NeoMail
I would reccomend using nwebmail on the Raq -- I find it to be very fast with minimal memory overhead. Since it accesses the users mail spool directly, you don't have duplicated message storage/security issues as with some other products. If there could be a work-around for running these programs as root, then these would be great. (A workaround could be easy with some owner and group permission modifications/cleverness).



http://sourceforge.net/projects/nwebmail

Aloha
I am planning on installing
http://www.horde.org/imp
in a short while I am using it on linux box seems to work good
although none of these have huge email demands on them
I am pretty sure though that vservers uses this program for all there webbased email (or did at one time)

http://www.emumail.com/
It's not cheap, but you get what you pay for. :)

At 3,500 bucks a pop, EMUMAIL is not a practical solution for someone that simply wants to add "webmail" to their list of hosting package features. EMUMAIL is more appropriate for a company whose primary service is e-mail accounts.

Originally posted by IntelligentHosting.com
At 3,500 bucks a pop, EMUMAIL is not a practical solution for someone that simply wants to add "webmail" to their list of hosting package features. EMUMAIL is more appropriate for a company whose primary service is e-mail accounts.

Actually they have a free version...just have to live with banners. They also have a RAQ package pre-maid.

I installed the free version from source 6 months ago. It was kindof a bear..but I did get it running. My only problem with it is that it needs fcgi to work with any kind of speed. I never got around to adding fcgi, so it still runs really slow...

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