Basic Installation Questions

[jhoelz]

I apologize in advance for the basic nature of some of these questions. I have gone through the docs, wiki's and forums and still need some help. I am a Windows guy and need some help moving into the Linux world.

The server we will be using to start is hosted by ServerBeach, box is running ES4 and access is through webmin and SSH. Is there any documentation available on setting up Zimbra using only SSH and command lines for both server preparation and installation? Or a combination of webmin and SSH?

(I have installed Zimbra without any errors except for the FQDN as the original record did not have the proper DNS settings. After changing the FQDN to something with the proper settings the installation and configuration completed without any errors but I was unable to access anything via a web browser. I will uninstall Zimbra and Re-install once I am sure the server is setup correctly.)

Here is where I am to date. The server has been made available using the FQDN like site.mysite.com. We really don't want to use that for Zimbra and we have prepared another domain name we want to use. This domain is not a subdomain but a regular newsite.com name. All of the records for the DNS will point to the Zimbra server. After reading the DNS in a Nutshell post I'm still not clear on what I need to change to make this work before we do the installation. Everything I have seen about the etc/hosts file has the subdomain prefix after the site.mysite.com. The hosts file looks like this:
******************************
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
xx.xx.xx.xxx site.mysite.com site
*******************************

If I want to use just mysite.com do I just leave the "site" out of the host file? What other files do i need to edit?

My next question is around ports. I see the port list thats needed to be opened but need to know the best way to open and close ports either though webmin or a command line. Also how do you handle the IP configuration section of the installation using only SSH or webmin, or do I even need to worry about that.

Using webadmin I have disabled Apache and sendmail which are the two things that i could find that seem to cause problems, but as indicated earlier, even after the install completed it was like there was no webserver running. Before disabling apache I could access the server at the domain name and the standard "Apache" server pages displayed.

I'm sure I'll have many more stupid questions, so thanks for your help and patience.

[russgalleywood]

Hi jhoelz!

As all the Admins are tucked up in bed on the other side of the Atlantic to me I'll give a little help whilst I have a moment spare.

The command-line support is excellent with Zimbra, all functions that you could perform through the Admin interface can be done through SSH.
For example to create a new user called russ you would just log in through SSH as Zimbra user (su zimbra) and type something like;

zmprov ca russ@domain.com password

And you have new user called 'russ'. Simple and logical...bit like myself actually!. Wouldn't recommend using Webmin as you would have to configure all the paths for MySQL etc in it as it won't find them automatically with Zimbra, but the command-line is so simple you shouldn't have any trouble doing it this way.

Read the Admin guide as it has all the commands at the back.
http://www.zimbra.com/community/documentation.html

Also, the Guys on the Forums are very helpful and quick to answer.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Zimbra!

I'll let the Admins answer all the other stuff as I don't won't to get it wrong!

Russ

[russgalleywood]

Just read the bit at the bottom!

Did you have any control over the install of Apache and Sendmail or was this done by the Hosting site? You should do a basic install without any of these types of service as Zimbra supplies them all anyway. If you had no say in it then these services need to be disabled and then stopped from ever coming back on with the chkconfig command or similar, (I'm using CentOS 4.4 which is Redhat based) and you need to do this before you install Zimbra unfortunately if you want to avoid such issues.

Cheers

Russ

[jhoelz]

ok, everything is up and running using teh site.mysite.com as the FQDN. I'm going to play around a bit and then uninstall and re-install. Now all I need to know is how to get it up and running using anothersite.com as the FQDN!

[jholder]

You can add domains via the admin ui. . .as many as you want!

-john

[jhoelz]

It'seh default FQDN that I'm after. I think I found the answer. I need to edit the /etc/sysconfig/network as well as the etc/hosts file.

Doing everything now, wish me luck

[jhoelz]

That was it! All systems go!

Thanks for your help.

[jhoelz]

Now on account creation I get this. The account does get created however.

Message: invalid request: must be valid email address:
Error code: service.INVALID_REQUEST
Method: ZmCsfeCommand.prototype.invoke
Details:soap:Sender