CENTOS 4.3 -SME Server 7.0 Instal of version 4 fails

[ricardon]

So much to learn here.
1) Has anyone written an install guide for 'SME Server 7.0' or CENTOS4.3?

I get a message

/etc/profile.d/e_smith-lib-comspec.sh line 16: '_esmith_signal_event': not a valid identifier

2) Other issues surrounding post conflicts indicate conflicts with running packages. CENTOS seems to be running an existing copies of LDAP + QMAIL +SPAMASSASIN + apache

3) Can option to adjust settings be put into zmcontrol? So farI have not managed to get the web interface up.

4) Can zmcontrol have an environment test? There is no point trying while the thing is getting port conflicts and whe the machine is not your own it is difficult to always know what is running and why.

[phoenix]

SME Server 7.0 is meant to be a complete turnkey system for mail, anti-spam etc and as such comes with all the applications installed. It's too difficult to get the applications removed from SME server and then install Zimbra, what you need is a system that has only the o/s installed. It is recommended that Zimbra be run on a dedicated machine not one running other applications.

By default, a clean install of CentOS doesn't have those applications running. Zimbra does check for port conflicts during the install and gives you the opportunity to change them.

[ricardon]

As the client choose SME server via another provider. It has proved a reliable installation. While it seems obvious that we would need to halt any existing email apps, in this instance qmail, it is not clear why zimbra has conflicts with existing instances of LDAP, mysql and apache as these are going to be functioning on most computers.

[phoenix]

Yes, I know that SME is a reliable solution but that wasn't my point. The point is that it's difficult to remove or disable the other applications so that Zimbra will run. Zimbra is not meant to be added to a working set-up such as SME, it is recommended that it's installed on a server dedicated to it and therefore conflicts with other software don't occur.

I don't really understand what you (or your client) are trying to achieve by using SME server, the requirements for Zimbra are clearly stated in the documentation.

[ricardon]

Phoenix, it is a historical thing. SME came first and now Zimbra is being added to the application set. Or at least I think it is. So far I have not managed to get it running on the Fedora Core 4 box either. I have not set up a mail exchange before and have been more than a little surprised in that it does not want to "play with the other children" as I would expect.

SME has LDAP installed and running - I woud have expected Zimbra to add any necessary extensions to the existing LDAP service.
mysqld is running on nearly all linux boxes. It is really surprising that zimbra install suggests that it be shutdown.
Apache is running on nearly all linux boxes; why not add the extensions.

The overall suggestion seems to be to have a specialised box for the mail exchange. In the case where the user count is small < 15 this seems overkill.
So in most situations the sysadmin is going to "find" zimbra after they have set the server up for some other reason.

Still the point to not to argue the nature of things. Zimbra seems a great package and its feature set certainly exceeds requirements so the task is to work out how to get it into both sites.

SME seems the more difficult install so I will concentrate on trying to work out why the GUI is not showing on the Fedora 4 box. All the services show as running on that machine. I used port 8080 and 8443 for the webserver ports and am not sure how that has affected the installation.

https:// mydomain.com:7071/zimbraAdmin

get no reply from the server. ????

tried

https://mydomain.com:7071

tried

https://10.1.1.6:7071

all no reply.

[phoenix]

I understand what you're saying about the SME install but I think you're missing the point about Zimbra. It is designed to be an easy to install package for companies that need a mail server and collaboration suite, the reason it's packaged as a bundle is to make sure all the parts work together and can be tuned for maximum performance. It is a commercial product with an OSS part that we use, to that end it fits it's design criteria. There have been comments on the forums about the possibility of using already installed components with Zimbra but I think that's a long way off.

A while back I did try to install Zimbra on SME but I found it too easy to break the system by removing unneeded components but as I'm no Linux expert that's not a surprise to me.

OK, the FC4 box. Do you have a firewall or SELinux enabled on it? If so, disable them both. I assume you tried to connect to the web gui from the machine that's running Zimbra? On that machine can you telnet into port 25 & 7025 and do you get a response? A 'zmcontrol status' shows all the services running? Have you correctly set your /etc/hosts file?

[dijichi2]

ricardon, if you search through the forums you'll see this is a common problem/question! i understand where you're coming from and would also like to see a version of zimbra that integrates better with existing services such as ldap but if you stop and think about the vast number of possibilities they would have to integrate with the current setup does make some sense. virtually everything lives in /opt/zimbra, including all libraries the binaries are fairly well linked with the zimbra libs. at this point you just have to accept that zimbra needs to run in its own isolated area and work round it, it's not that difficult and it's getting easier with each update.

you do not have to stop your existing mysql - both zimbra sql instances run on nonstandard ports and do not conflict with a running sql. unfortunately the zimbra ldap does run on standard port, i wish it wouldn't, so you have to move any existing ldap onto a nonstandard port, which is what i had to do (i have fedora directory server running on port 390 for samba/authentication). apache also conflicts of course which is also a pain but that is pretty easy to change ports, and if you're not already running https then just run it in https mode which pushes it up to 443 and removes the conflicts.

it might seem a bit of a pain to start with, but once you get used to it, it actually starts to make a lot of sense. i have zimbra running on several small installs that also run other ldap, mysql, apache services at the same time.

[greenrenault]

Here's a quick how to:
1. Install VMWare server on SME (free version will do fine)
2. Install CentOS, RHEL, SUSE (or your preferred distro) on a new VMWare server image.
3. Install and configure Zimbra on the VMWare image
4. Use the VMWare image #3 to install Zimbra on other Linux servers

Have fun!