How to use Zimbra only as a online email client?

[JustJ]

Hello, my name is Jonathan, im 17 and I have an old pc in my room which I'm currently using as a server, it has ubuntu 7.10 installed on it. I have no static IP so I'm using dyndns for that.
What I would like to do is use Zimbra simply as a online email client to access my email accounts on a different hosted server.
Currently I've gotten as far as to install Zimbra (the version for Ubuntu), but I cant start SDAP.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, as from the look of it, i instantly fell in love with Zimbra
So thanks in advance.

[phoenix]

Welcome to the forums.

Zimbra is a conplete collaboration suite and is probably not what you're looking for. If you want a mail client then take a look at Zimbra Desktop, it should do what you need.

[JustJ]

Firstly, thanks for the quick reply,
I alredy had my eyes on Zimbra Desktop, but what I wanted was to have a programm that would download all my emails and would give me online access to them. I tried the demo and I thought that there was a possibillity to access external email accounts via pop and imap and so on. Is that false? Or if it isn't, is there a way to completely disable the internal mail functions and to just use mail downloading and the online client?

[phoenix]

You can access external account with Zimbra 5.x but I'm not sure that's what you need. Zimbra requires a bit of configuration to get it working as a mail server. There's also no ability to use it as just a web mail front-end to other services, you can certainly set Zimbra up on your local PC. The problem is that it has specific hardware, software and DNS requirements. Have you had a look at the Product Documentation yet? Have a read of that and see if it does do what you need, we can certainly help you get it running.

[JustJ]

Again, thanks for answering, I'm new to Linux and I haven't experienced communities as friendly as linux forums.
So back to topic, I've read the requiremens, and atm my pc doesn't really meet them (800 Mhz, 256mb ram), but are theese required if I want to use only one or too users and no internal email?
And from the features, Zimbra is definitely what I want, I need something that controls my mails and in best case also can handle my calender, which Zimbra quite well (after the web demo) does. So is there any chance of bending config files till this could work?

[phoenix]

You might, at a stretch, get Zimbra working on that configuration but there is a problem. To run on that machine you would need to reduce the running services and also reduce the RAM requirements, it's possible but you'd lose functionality and it may cause you reliability problems especially if you wanted to use the machine for anything else.

I would urge you to use a server that meets, at least, the minimum specification that we need - a 1.5GHz processor, 1GB RAM and HD space. The more RAM the smoother your system will be although for two users we could tell you how to trim that slightly.

[JustJ]

Under this circumstances, (theese being, also using this pc as Ftp, web and so on server) I think I'll have to look for a solution with equivalent features, although this is going to be hard..
Well thanks for the help, I'll check back if I have a little more computing power on my hands
Goodbye

[phoenix]

Well, as you're using it for other servers then I think it wise not to try and shoehorn Zimbra on top. I'm sorry we can't help but if you get a more powerful server then check back here and we'll see what we can do.

[dwmtractor]

Originally Posted by JustJ

Under this circumstances, (theese being, also using this pc as Ftp, web and so on server) I think I'll have to look for a solution with equivalent features, although this is going to be hard..
Well thanks for the help, I'll check back if I have a little more computing power on my hands
Goodbye

There ARE no solutions with equivalent features! Zimbra is on top of the pile for that reason!

However for your needs it may well be the equivalent of trying to swat a fly with a sledgehammer. It'd be a great learning exercise in the ins and outs of mail servers for you to set it up, but Linux and programs that run on it definitely require a learning curve.

If ever you decide to give it a shot, though, I promise you'll find better support at whatever your knowledge level, on this forum, than I've ever seen anywhere else.

Cheers,

Dan

[JustJ]

Yeah, it'll be quite hard settling with something else, all the alternatives are way below what Zimbra can do. But they'll have to do until I use another server and get into that mail stuff, (as if it wasn't hard enough to get in to all that linux config files and stuff from scratch). But anyway, I'll be back =)