Zimbra on Debian?

[omry_y]

Hi.
I want to Install Zimbra on a Debian (etch) server.
I don't mind a 'manual' installation, as long as I am assured it can work at all.
so, any news about it?

[markybob]

i'm in the same boat. i've been using egw at work and would like to give zimbra a try. i downloaded the source but there were no docs on how to get it installed. pretty sad about that :-) guess i just wont be able to try zimbra for a while.

[KevinH]

Yep the source is available but at the moment it only builds on Red Hat Enterprise 4 and Fedora Core 3. We took this approach at first to make it very easy to install/run on those platforms. We are working on making the source release more general so that other platforms can build it. It will happen just give us a little time

[slashdevnull]

Is there an estimated date that a distro-agnostic version will be available? I've been having difficulties installing the source-based Zimbra on Debian Sarge and Ubuntu 5.04 and 5.10.

[rodrigoccurvo]

Originally Posted by markybob

i'm in the same boat. i've been using egw at work and would like to give zimbra a try. i downloaded the source but there were no docs on how to get it installed. pretty sad about that :-) guess i just wont be able to try zimbra for a while.

Try /ZimbraWebClient/WebRoot/adminhelp/txt/readme_source.txt

We have installed from source following that document on FC3 and Debian, with a few modifications (there already is some help in the forum, or you can post your questions if they aren't there).

Tips:
- create /opt/zimbra/openldap-data directory
- some scripts are not in bin but in libexec and they are not executable, chmod +x them

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by rodrigoccurvo

Try /ZimbraWebClient/WebRoot/adminhelp/txt/readme_source.txt

We have installed from source following that document on FC3 and Debian, with a few modifications (there already is some help in the forum, or you can post your questions if they aren't there).

Tips:
- create /opt/zimbra/openldap-data directory
- some scripts are not in bin but in libexec and they are not executable, chmod +x them

Is this something you can script that others might be able to use?

[slashdevnull]

I almost have this running on Ubuntu 5.10. Once (or if) I get it all working, I'll try to document my process and share. Should work with Debian.

I can actually log into the web interface, but I haven't verified that everything works properly. I was able to send email from the user1 test account to my real email account. It pegged the CPU in the process for a minute or two, however, and threw an error up in the web gui:

msg - system failure: MessagingException
code - service.FAILURE
method - ZmCsfeCommand.invoke
detail - soap:Receiver
constructor - 
function ZmCsfeException(msg, code, method, detail) {
    if (arguments.length == 0) {
        return;
    }
    AjxException.call(this, msg, code, method, detail);
}

toString - 
function () {
    return "ZmCsfeException";
}

dump - 
function () {
    return "AjxException: msg=" + this.msg + " code=" + this.code + " method=" + this.method + " detail=" + this.detail;
}

This may be related to the problem I'm running into when I run "ant reset-the-world". When I do that, I get the following output:

(. . . lots of lines suppressed . . .)
     [java] PASS 0121      1/1    37ms    CreateContactRequest
     [echo] Creating default search folders: user1@MYHOST
     [java] Exception in thread "main" java.io.FileNotFoundException: data/soap/samplesearchfolders.xml (No such file or directory)
     [java]     at java.io.FileInputStream.open(Native Method)
     [java]     at java.io.FileInputStream.(FileInputStream.java:106)
     [java]     at com.zimbra.cs.util.ByteUtil.getContent(ByteUtil.java:86)
     [java]     at com.zimbra.soap.SoapTestHarness.runTests(SoapTestHarness.java:237)
     [java]     at com.zimbra.soap.SoapTestHarness.main(SoapTestHarness.java:197)

BUILD FAILED
/home/zimbra/zcs-src/ZimbraServer/build.xml:384: Java returned: 1

Note that MYHOST actually has my hostname in it.

Looks like I don't have a file, data/soap/samplesearchfolders.xml ...? Possibly other files as well?

root@hungan:/opt/zimbra/libexec # updatedb
root@hungan:/opt/zimbra/libexec # locate samplesearchfolders.xml
root@hungan:/opt/zimbra/libexec #

zimbra@hungan:~/zcs-src/ZimbraServer$ ls -la data/soap/
total 84
drwxr-xr-x  2 zimbra users  4096 Sep 20 18:59 .
drwxr-xr-x  4 zimbra users  4096 Sep 20 18:59 ..
-r--r--r--  1 zimbra users 71640 Sep 20 18:59 samplecontacts.xml
zimbra@hungan:~/zcs-src/ZimbraServer$

Any ideas as to what I may have missed in the install process?

[slashdevnull]

I hate replying to my own posts, but...

I got it working.

Tips:
- create /opt/zimbra/openldap-data directory
- some scripts are not in bin but in libexec and they are not executable, chmod +x them

These I had figured out on my own. cd'ing to the /opt/zimbra/libexec directory in order to exec those scripts rather than specifying them by full path also helped. Some scripts have relative paths hardcoded, iirc, to something like "../bin".

The ant-reset-the-world thing was solved (or bypassed) by commenting out the small section of build.xml that references the sample search folders. I figured I really didn't need those anyhow.

The cpu + error message thing happens when testing the client on the same machine that's running the server. Accessing the server via another PC on the network, it worked fine (in my limited testing). Maybe this is a race condition, or something?

Since I'm hoping to potentially deploy Zimbra on the same machine that serves up thin client desktops, this could be a problem. I'll search for this in the forums, but feel free to direct me to information on this if it's already available.

I've done only limited testing, but will be glad to share my experiences with anyone interested in hearing about how further use goes.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by slashdevnull

The cpu + error message thing happens when testing the client on the same machine that's running the server. Accessing the server via another PC on the network, it worked fine (in my limited testing). Maybe this is a race condition, or something?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=273578

We are working with the FF team at Mozilla to get this in 1.5(actually was talking with them today at Euro OSCON), and are also going to try to change the send call to be async rather than sync to avoid this bug if it doesn't get slipped into FF 1.5

[slashdevnull]

Thanks, KevinH.

Other than that, the only major issue that I've found so far is that I have no administrative interface (which is definitely a showstopper). Going to https://(host):7071 prompts me to accept a certificate, then directs me to /zimbraAdmin, which reports a 404, "The requested resource (/zimbraAdmin) is not available."

I'm assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that zimbraAdmin is at /opt/zimbra/jakarta-tomcat-5.5.7/webapps/zimbra/js/zimbraAdmin. That directory only contains one subdir, called config.

Any tips for next steps?