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Install Zarafa On Centos 6.5 - An Alternative To Microsoft Exchange Mail Server
Install Zarafa On Centos 6.5 - An Alternative To Microsoft Exchange Mail Server
Install Zarafa On Centos 6.5 - An Alternative To Microsoft Exchange Mail Server
5 – An
Alternative To Microsoft Exchange Mail
Server
SK
January 22, 2014
Are you looking for a best alternative to Microsoft Exchange server? Then Zarafa is the one you
should try. Zarafa, previously known as Connectux, is a groupware application that provides
an integration with your existing email server and Microsoft Outlook Access via a propriety
client-side plugin. Zarafa offers its own Ajax based email clients called Webaccess and a
HTML5 based Webapp, both mail clients has the same look and feel of Microsoft Outlook and
we can keep using the features in Outlook. Seems cool, isn’t it?
Also Zarafa offers all features that are existing in Outlook such as Personal address book,
Calender, Shared calender, Public folder, notes and tasks etc. Using Zarafa we can
view/send/delete mails, calender and contacts via a web browser like Microsoft OWA (Outlook
Web Access). It comes with different editions, you can read the detailed comparison of all
editions here.
Features
– Addressbook.
– Calendar.
– Notes.
– Tasks.
– Personal Folders / Public Outlook Folders.
– Permissions for every User and Folder configurable.
– Meeting invitation and free/busy option.
– Resources planning.
– POP3.
– IMAP.
– iCalendar.
– CalDAV.
– PDA synchronization via Z-push.
– BlackBerry integration over BES.
– Out-of-office message.
– Brick-level backup.
– Single sign-on.
– Hierarchical storage management (Zarafa Archiver).
– Server-side message indexing (version 6.40.0 and higher).
It is time to end up the conversation and let us start to setup a basic email system using Zarafa
community edition on CentOS 6.5. Here is my test box details:
Prerequisites
Before installing, we have to setup Postfix mail server and let us integrate Zarafa to Postfix later.
To install and configure Postfix mail server, refer the following link.
Please note: Do not install Dovecot or anyother pop3/imap server or stop it’s service
permanently, otherwise you can’t use the built-in IMAP/POP3 server of Zarafa.
Hence Zarafa depends on MySQL and Apache, it is must to have a working LAMP stack. To
install LAMP server, refer the following link.
Install Zarafa
Zarafa is not found in the CentOS official repositories, but found in EPEL Repository. So let us
install it on our server.
Configure Postfix
Zarafa doesn’t send/receive mail alone, we have to integrate it to any existing mail server. In this
case, i already installed and configured Postfix mail server as described in the above link.
Now let us integrate Zarafa to Postfix. To do that, edit the file /etc/postfix/main.cf,
# vi /etc/postfix/main.cf
Save and close the file. Restart postfix service to take effect the saved changes.
Let us create a database called “zarafadb” and database user “zarafauser” with password
“centos”. Change these values with your own values.
# mysql -u root -p
Create database “zarafadb” and assign the full permission to the user “zarafauser” over
zarafadb.
# vi /etc/zarafa/server.cfg
Find the following lines and Change the zarafa database values.
[...]
# The user under which we connect with MySQL
mysql_user = zarafauser
# The password for the user (leave empty for no password)
mysql_password = centos
# Override the default MySQL socket to access mysql locally
# Works only if the mysql_host value is empty or 'localhost'
mysql_socket =
# Database to connect to
mysql_database = zarafadb
[...]
Wait, We didn’t finish yet, we have to create public store where all emails stored and mail users.
# zarafa-admin -s
Then create users. For example, here i am going to create two users called “senthil” and
“kumar”.
# useradd senthil
# useradd kumar
# passwd senthil
# passwd kumar
Where,
-c – Create user
-p – password
-e – email
-f – full name
To create administrative user, you should use -a parameter with value “1”.
Where,
-a – administrative user
1 – describes administrative user, You can use 0(zero) for non-administrative users.
Ex.
# zarafa-admin -d sk
We have done with configuration, Let us log in to Zarafa webmail. Navigate to http://ip-
address/webaccess or http://domainname/webaccess.
Click on the New button on the left top corner. A window will open. Enter the recipient mail
address and type the message. Click Send button after composing your email.
Log out from the current user. The log out will be found in the lower right corner and log in back
to Kumar user.
Congratulation! We have got a new mail from user senthil. Like this way you can create as many
users as you want in your server and start mailing to them.
Install Z-push
We came to the end of this article. What we discussed here is only the installation part with basic
configuration. It is far from completion. But i hope this tutorial will give you some insights about
Zarafa and show you how to use it in real time. You can find more useful resources in the project
documentation page.