源码介绍
Contents
What is WebMail
Installation
Configuration
User Authentication
Usage
Different Languages, Translating WebMail
Notes
SSL Support (standalone installation)
JDK Installation And Other Java Issues
License
Contributed Documentation
Credits
Top of section "Contents" II. What is WebMail
WebMail is a server application that allows ISPs to provide a WWW interface for each user to his mailbox(es) (similar to the programs YahooMail or HotMail use). WebMail should scale well enough to support large userbases and should be easy enough to be used in a home LAN.
2.1. Features
Features include:
Gives a user full access to his/her IMAP mailbox through a simple-to-use WWW interface
Supports multiple folders on multiple hosts, depending on mail protocol used (IMAP supports different folders on the same host, POP doesn''t)
Sophisticated folder management system
100% HTML 3.2/4.0 output, no Javascript, no Java on the Client side
supports multiple languages, configurable for each user
flexible template system to personalize look and feel and write new language files using XML and XSL
runs as Java Servlet in Apache or as a standalone HTTP-server completely written in Java
Improved session management keeps mail connections alive
Improved speed compared to CGI scripts (about factor 5-10, depending on usage)
Usage of JavaMail-API ensures compatibility to many mailstandards ("officially" supported and tested: IMAPv4)
Open Source distribution allows easy customization
webbased administration interface
support for multiple virtual user domains
Easily add new features through the WebMail modular plugin concept (support for dependencies, hooking into URLs, etc)
Top of section "Features"
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2.2. Whom WebMail is aimed at
Who should use WebMail:
WebMail''s primary goal is to provide ISPs, companies and universities with a simple and zero-cost solution to give WWW mailaccess to their users.
Users can read and write their email while they are sitting in an Internet-Cafe, at expositions, etc without having to carry their PC around.
It is not intended as a replacement for the different personal email clients, but as a supplement for an existing mail solution.
The secondary goal is to unify a user''s different email accounts under one interface which is easily accomplished using WebMails folder capability.
Top of section "Whom WebMail is aimed at"
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Top of section "What is WebMail" III. Installation
3.1. Introduction
There are two different ways to install WebMail, the standalone installation and the Java Servlet installation. Which one you should choose depends on what you plan to do with WebMail:
a standalone server is much easier to install and will allow you to run WebMail almost immediately without much configuration. This can be used if you want to evaluate WebMail''s capabilities or develop new features/bugfixes. It also makes sense to use this for small to medium installations if you don''t want to set up a Java Servlet capable webserver
a Java Servlet installation is recommended for production use since it allows greater performance and scalability. You will need to set up a webserver that is capable of serving Java Servlets, e.g. Apache. I can''t give too detailed instructions here since this depends in large parts on your webserver, but I include a sample Apache configuration (the parts relevant to WebMail) in the distribution.
The Debian (unstable) and RedHat (6.2) packages will install WebMail as a servlet for these two systems. This will ease the servlet installation a lot since you need not set up JServ and WebMail manually, so you should consider using this approach if you have one of those systems.
Top of section "Introduction"
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3.2. Standalone Server
Note:On RedHat and Debian Linux systems you will probably first want to have a look at the RedHat and Debian sections in the Servlet installation instructions
3.2.1. Requirements
To run WebMail properly on your server, you need to have the following software installed:
Java 1.1.6 or better - seethe Java Section on Java issues
About 20 megs of RAM (minimum) plus additional 80 megs on high load servers (these are just recommendations, WebMail will run on any Java-capable server; if you have less than 32 MB RAM, you should try to adjust the settings in the startup script called webmail.sh/webmail.bat)
Using a JIT ("just in time compiler") is greatly recommended! The Solaris and Windows JDKs from Sun use a JIT by default (sunwjit). On Linux, the Sun/Blackdown JDK uses a JIT, however it is not very fast, so you could profit from using a JIT like tya. The IBM Linux JDK 1.1.8 comes with a very fast JIT (actually the fastest Java platform available).
WebMail has been successfully tested on:
Solaris x86 and SPARC, JDK 1.1.6 and JDK 1.2
Linux x86 (tested: Debian and SuSE), IBM JDK 1.1.8 and Sun/Inprise JDK 1.2.2 (RC3)
FreeBSD 3.4 x86, JDK 1.1.8
Windows NT/2000 (did not do the tests myself)
WebMail will make profit of multiprocessor machines (e.g. Sun Enterprise 450) as it is multithreaded in large parts.
Top of section "Requirements"
3.2.2. Binary Installation
Change to the prefix where you want to install WebMail (e.g. /usr/local)
Unpack the tar.gz or zip archive: tar xzvf webmail-0.7.0.tar.gz
Change to webmail/bin
Edit the file webmail.sh if necessary
Start WebMail using the provided script ./webmail.sh >> stdout.log 2>&1 &
See Configuration for further steps to take.
Top of section "Binary Installation"
3.2.3. Source Installation
Note:Source installation will definately only work on Unix systems!
Note:Source installation is only really useful for developers since you don''t need to (and cannot) adapt the program to your specific system settings in Java and I already compile with optimization turned on.
Additional requirements:
GNU make (Only GNU make will work)
zip/unzip
To install the source distribution of WebMail you will have to take the following steps:
Change to the src/ subdirectory
Set the CLASSPATH environment variable to your classes.zip (JDK 1.1) or rt.jar (JDK 1.2) archives (on Solaris: /usr/java1.1/lib/classes.zip for JDK 1.1 and /usr/java1.2/jre/lib/rt.jar for JDK 1.2)
Have a look at the makefile and edit it if necessary
Call "make" to compile the classfiles and create the archives (containing classfiles, language dependent HTML templates and images).
You will find the compiled archives in the lib/ directory when the compilation was successful.
See steps 3 to 5 from binary installation then
Top of section "Source Installation"Top of section "Standalone Server"
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3.3. Servlet Installation
Running WebMail as a Servlet has several advantages over the standalone installation (and also some disadvantages):
you can run (and integrate) WebMail on an already-running webserver
you can make use of the webserver''s fast connection handling and HTTP parsing routines
you can e.g. use Apache''s load-balancing feature to run WebMail on a whole server cluster for large installation.
installation is however much more complicated (and so it is definately not suited for webserver newbies)
Before trying this, please ensure that you are familiar with your Webserver''s Servlet configuration. I provided a sample
