Got Zimbra running as a Windows service (sort of)

[ptyork]

Okay, so this may not be 1) of interest or 2) earth shattering to any of you, but I'm stoked and figured I'd share this experience for the occasional Windows user that may happen by these forums. I tried installing and running the new Debian release on Windows using coLinux (www.colinux.org), and after a bit of hemming and hawing, I got it running quite well. There are two cool things about coLinux. First, it isn't a VM, per se, but a "cooperative" kernel, which means little to me except that the performance is much better than any VM products that I've used. Second, it can be configured to start as a windows service, allowing root consoles to be "attached" and X and VNC clients to connect locally or remotely.

Anyway, the short of this is that I now have a Windows XP box that is running Zimbra in the background on startup, and its pretty impressively zippy. Much better than I had expected, anyway. Sure, it ain't the most elegant of solutions, but it does let me get rid of my Windows Server / Exchange box and supplant Microsoft's hog of an email system (WAY overkill for me) with something even better. Now if we could just get this sucker ported to Windows natively, I'd be thrilled, but for now, at least I'm satisfied...

Best,
Paul

[marcmac]

Originally Posted by ptyork

Now if we could just get this sucker ported to Windows natively, I'd be thrilled, but for now, at least I'm satisfied...

Best,
Paul

Very nice - big problem with a windows port is postfix, which AFAIK can't be run on windows.

[ptyork]

Originally Posted by marcmac

Very nice - big problem with a windows port is postfix, which AFAIK can't be run on windows.

Alas you are correct. Quite a while back I was looking at Zimbra and tossing around the prospect of helping to port it to Windows. I was surprised to find that postfix wasn't ported either natively or via Cygwin. I assume it has to do with their rather stringent file system requirements.

the Postfix mail queue requires that (1) the file system can rename a file to a near-by directory without changing the file's inode number, and that (2) mail is safely stored after fsync() returns successfully, even when that file is renamed to a near-by directory at some later point in time. Maildir delivery also requires that (3) a file can be hard linked between different near-by directories.

I don't see anything that screams impossible using Cygwin, but I'm sure its there or someone would have ported it by now.

That, I suppose, leaves the possibility of creating a replacement MTA in java. Seems doable. Perhaps coopting one from James or something? I tried looking briefly at the Zimbra code to see how and where it interfaced with postfix directly, but couldn't find much. Leads me to believe that almost any MTA could be easily plugged in. Am I missing something?

[KevinH]

You're correct. Zimbra just needs something to deliver mail via LMTP. So in our deployments postfix's main use is to listen for SMTP and deliver via LMTP. It also does some recipient validation with LDAP lookups.

[marcmac]

We also use postfix's ldap integration to route mail (which other MTAs may support, as well)

One other thing (as I understand it (which is not very well)) in the way of a windows port of postfix is that it uses IPC structures that windows doesn't support well.

[retireoncsco]

Now if we could just get this sucker ported to Windows natively, I'd be thrilled, but for now, at least I'm satisfied...

Best,
Paul

But why not just install CentOS 4.2 and learn a LITTLE linux, and install the native version and viola you're done.

if you can learn MS's Exchange product (which I have run for 5 years), you can certainly pick up Zimbra and Linux in no time flat. There are plenty of people here to help

Oh yea, you got it running with Colinux, then a real box should be NO problem! Heck, start with VMWare W/s if you have it and try your hand at linux.