Ubuntu Packages

[wasabi]

My biggest complaint with the Ubuntu packages is they install their own copy of the entire stack. Apache, Tomcat, OpenLDAP, then entire thing! This is obnoxious at best!

Mostly because I want to install Zimbra on a shared host.

Secondly because it strikes me as silly. Ubuntu spends all this time trying to get these packages well tested, well working, and STANDARDIZED to a supportable time schedule (Dapper, etc), and an ISV just ignores it.

What is so wrong with just using the built in packages?

[wasabi]

Also, they install in /opt. Who has ever heard of such a thing?

[anand]

You must be new here. Welcome.

The short of it is that we bundle things as a unit across all platforms and it makes our lives easier, testing wise. Also it makes it simpler for someone new trying Zimbra to uninstall cleanly. If someone wants to downstream do a more integrated distro package - hey that's what the subversion tree is for.

[LMStone]

Originally Posted by wasabi

Also, they install in /opt. Who has ever heard of such a thing?

Hi Wasabi,

Welcome to Zimbra!

Probably it's best to think of Zimbra as an appliance, except you get to pick the hardware and the base OS of your choice.

In that way you can maintain your own hardware running an OS with which you are familiar, and Zimbra takes care of the maintenance of the various OSS components in Zimbra--as well as Zimbra's own code.

I think you'll find Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE, etc. builds of Postfix, Cyrus, MySQL, OpenLDAP, Amavis, Spamassassin and the other OSS components utilized by Zimbra don't have anything other than perhaps a later version number.

Planning on using your Zimbra appliance by using the Zimbra OSS components for other things risks breaking Zimbra and/or compromising in-place Zimbra upgrades.

If you have limited hardware, I'd suggest running Zimbra as a virtual machine and use your base OS (or a second virtual machine) for the other things you need.

HTH,
Mark

[wasabi]

Thanks for the response.

The answer however isn't very optimal. I'm not too happy about tracking upgrades and updates to things such as apache, postfix, openldap, and the rest of the bunch separately from the rest of the distro.

As recommended, I will attempt to check out the source, read the relevant licenses, and perhaps build more Ubuntu-oriented packages if the licensing allows.

Thanks for the nice web demo. =)

[LMStone]

Originally Posted by wasabi

Thanks for the response.

The answer however isn't very optimal. I'm not too happy about tracking upgrades and updates to things such as apache, postfix, openldap, and the rest of the bunch separately from the rest of the distro.

My point is that you don't have to worry about updates to apache, postfix, openldap, cyrus, etc.--that's Zimbra's problem.

You just need to worry about the base OS.

Good luck!
Mark

[pksings]

Until and operating system update.. Ubuntu, three days ago, breaks zimbra.

Then nothing and nobody can get it running again seemingly.

Tomcat, the pop, imap and whatever else piece, became non-functional, and all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put zimbra back together again.

And for that matter remove enough of it to even let postfix/courier-pop work together, all the log messages still point to /opt/zimbra/something....


This is extremely frustrating....

[wasabi]

Yeah, except I don't want an appliance. I want to install Zimbra next to our existing system stack. I'm not going to build a new system for it, and I'm not going to run it in a VM.

Proper Ubuntu/Debian packages would be built with strict depends against known tested versions of their dependencies... thus Ubuntu would not allow you to update Apache until Zimbra released new packages that confirmed the update was supported. As long as the Zimbra package guys kept on the ball, this is very ideal.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by wasabi

Yeah, except I don't want an appliance. I want to install Zimbra next to our existing system stack. I'm not going to build a new system for it, and I'm not going to run it in a VM.

That's fine, you don't have to do that. Zimbra is offered free to the community. You can build it yourself, in your own way and contribute it back to the community if you like. You're free, with the licence constraints, to do whatever you like. If it doesn't suit your requirements then there are other packages that may be more suitable for you.