Debian ETCH Install Well Done Zimbra!

[bobthebuilder]

Hi,

Just would like to say well done, and nice job on Zimbra installation, i have a full install on debian etch within about 2 hours which was fun.

I tried install scalix still with no luck working on it for a couple of days now.

I really like how you pack most of the apps and the install.sh.

There was just two small mod's needed for it to install on etch. using editor, edit debian_version to 3.1 and edit utilfunc.sh to look for libgmp3c2 not libgmp3.

Back to scalix what a headace.

Just on another note, good idea that zimbra supports debian there is not real overhead like other linux distros, debian is small and fast.

[jholder]

Hi Bob,
Thanks for the kind words.

I myself, am a scalix convert and it's good to see you've seen the light

If you have any trouble, or questions, please be sure to let us know.

John

[bobthebuilder]

I have Zimbra fully operational on Debian 4.0 Etch Stable 32BIT,

Here some of the changes made to make it work.

# editor /etc/debian_version to 3.1 from 4.0

# apt-get install sudo curl fetchmail libgmp3c2 libssl0.9.7 libdb3 libxml2 perl libexpat1 libpcre3 file

# editor /utils/utilfunc.sh and change script to look for libgmp3c2 not libgmp3

After install is complete run the below command for https web access;

# su - zimbra zmtlsctl https to enable https webmail

add host ip of zimbra server 192.168.0.XXX to ipcop or DNS server (inbound mail did not work with out this) there are other way to get around this

Than configure using web admin access.

I must say i have work with MS exchange for many years and Zimbra is really to my liking, and Exchange 2007 will use 2GB of ram with all components installed i run Zimbra on a vmware server with 256mb! which only uses 1 to 2% cpu use - PC is E6300 duo core running at 2.6ghz.

[holunde]

I'm posting this, because I'm going to start Zimbra for production use soon, and I would hate to miss out on something important.

I've got Zimbra 4.5.5 up and running on Debian Etch 32bit doing almost excactly what you have done.

install the necessary packages

sudo curl fetchmail libgmp3c2 libssl0.9.7 libdb3 libxml2 perl libexpat1 libpcre3 file

It seems that

libio-socket-ssl-perl
libmail-imapclient-perl
libmail-pop3client-perl

and a few others, spell modules for example are also necessary

edit /etc/debian_version to 3.1 from 4.0
edit /utils/utilfunc.sh and change script to look for libgmp3c2 not libgmp3

But, I found it necessary to set up the following soft links in /usr/lib

libcrypto.so.0.9.7 -> libcrypto.so.0.9.8
libssl.so.0.9.7 -> libssl.so.0.9.8

With that and some dns-tweaking everything seems to run just fine.

I have some questions for the Zimbra guys though.

Firstly, is this installation method likely to cause major problems, when upgrading zimbra some day?

Secondly, it looks as if there are some files in /opt/zimbra with wrong usernames. I guess the are created when sudo'ing to the zimbra-user, for example to restart tomcat.
Is this a bug? Changing ownership to zimbra manually seems to be ok.

-r--r--r-- 1 503 503 232 2007-05-04 02:45 .bash_profile
-r--r--r-- 1 503 503 1009 2007-05-04 02:45 .bashrc
-r--r--r-- 1 503 503 62 2007-05-04 02:45 .exrc

Thirdly, in the log, the amavis-process doesn't load some stuff, se below.
Is this important, or should something be done about it?

Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: Amavis::Cache code loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: SQL base code NOT loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: SQL::Log code NOT loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: SQL::Quarantine NOT loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: Lookup::SQL code NOT loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: Lookup::LDAP code loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: AM.PDP-in proto code loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: SMTP-in proto code loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: Courier proto code NOT loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: SMTP-out proto code loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: Pipe-out proto code NOT loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: BSMTP-out proto code NOT loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: Local-out proto code loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: OS_Fingerprint code NOT loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: ANTI-VIRUS code loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: ANTI-SPAM code loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: ANTI-SPAM-SA code loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: Unpackers code loaded
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: Found $file at /usr/bin/file
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: No $dspam, not using it

Fourthly, I guess that the following server-start log-stuff is just normal, as everything seems completely stable, once the server is running

Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra zimbramon[19396]: 19396:info: Starting mta
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: SpamControl: initializing Mail::SpamAssassin
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra amavis[20018]: SpamControl: init_pre_fork done
Jun 14 01:12:05 zimbra postfix/postqueue[20056]: fatal: Queue report unavailable - mail system is down
Jun 14 01:12:07 zimbra postfix/postfix-script: warning: not owned by root: /opt/zimbra/postfix-2.2.9/conf/main.cf
Jun 14 01:12:07 zimbra postfix/postfix-script: starting the Postfix mail system
Jun 14 01:12:07 zimbra postfix/master[20230]: daemon started -- version 2.2.9, configuration /opt/zimbra/postfix-2.2.9/conf
Jun 14 01:12:07 zimbra saslauthd[20294]: detach_tty : master pid is: 20294
Jun 14 01:12:07 zimbra saslauthd[20294]: ipc_init : listening on socket: /opt/zimbra/cyrus-sasl-2.1.21.ZIMBRA/state/mux

Finally, I must say, that I'm really impressed with this product.
We've been running qmail with different frontends for some years. The server part is great, but it has been impossible to find a modern web-interface that is satisfactory for modern use.
The Zimbra client is a little slow to load but otherwise FANTASTIC in every aspect. If I'm successful with this, well definitely consider upgrading to one of the payment versions.


Danish greetings

Hans Otto Lunde

[sanchiro]

Originally Posted by holunde

I'm posting this, because I'm going to start Zimbra for production use soon, and I would hate to miss out on something important.

I've got Zimbra 4.5.5 up and running on Debian Etch 32bit doing almost excactly what you have done.

Danish greetings

Hans Otto Lunde

I can't seem to get my Debian 3.1 installation to run, to load. I had had MX record problems, but I believe they are now resolved. I reran ./install.sh and it ran without any errors. Alas, attempting to load 'https://mydomainname.com:7071/ fails to generate a page, other than an error page...zimbra simply doesn't load....

I am at a loss...Help!

[dijichi2]

libcrypto.so.0.9.7 -> libcrypto.so.0.9.8
libssl.so.0.9.7 -> libssl.so.0.9.8

bad idea, search for correct libraries, sounds like you did a minimal install. minimal installs are nice, if you can document the procedure that's great but bodges like above are asking for trouble!!

[holunde]

libcrypto.so.0.9.7 -> libcrypto.so.0.9.8
libssl.so.0.9.7 -> libssl.so.0.9.8

Originally Posted by dijichi2

bad idea, search for correct libraries, sounds like you did a minimal install. minimal installs are nice, if you can document the procedure that's great but bodges like above are asking for trouble!!

First, my post is about installing Zimbra (4.5.5) on Debian Etch (4.0), although the Zimbra-packages are designed for Debian Sarge (3.1). So obviously some changes are needed. And yes, I always run minimal installs on production servers.
It seems that the etch crypto libraries in question (0.9.8 )are perfectly compatible with the old ones (0.9.7). Of course I could have installed the older version by hand also, but there seems no particular reason to go through all that, since the Zimbra server runs just fine with the new libraries.
Therefore the symbolic links are not bodges, but tested to be ok on a system that runs with all the features I can think of.

[holunde]

Originally Posted by sanchiro

I can't seem to get my Debian 3.1 installation to run, to load. I had had MX record problems, but I believe they are now resolved. I reran ./install.sh and it ran without any errors. Alas, attempting to load 'https://mydomainname.com:7071/ fails to generate a page, other than an error page...zimbra simply doesn't load....

I am at a loss...Help!

Ok, first you will have to explain some details.
You said the installation completed without errors. Are the server processes running? Else try (as root)

/etc/init.d/zimbra start

Try looking in /var/log/zimbra.log and see if there is something like

antispam: Running
antivirus: Running
ldap: Running
logger: Running
mailbox: Running
mta: Running
snmp: Running
spell: Running

Next you have to supply us with details in your /etc/hosts file. Maybe about your dns-setup in general. If you can't access the admin part of the Zimbra-server, it might be just because of you typing in a wrong address.

Get back with more detail

[dijichi2]

First, my post is about installing Zimbra (4.5.5) on Debian Etch (4.0), although the Zimbra-packages are designed for Debian Sarge (3.1). So obviously some changes are needed.

Lots of people including myself run on Etch using Sarge binaries, no modification to the OS is necessary except for the version file. I think a default install of Etch will provide both versions of openssl, if you don't have both then do:
apt-get install libssl0.9.7

There's a sticky thread at the top of this forum for Etch, if you could add procedure for installing on a minimal install I'm sure that would be appreciated by lots of people.
How to install Zimbra Debian 3.1 binaries on Debian Etch 4.0 [Workaround]

It seems that the etch crypto libraries in question (0.9.8 )are perfectly compatible with the old ones (0.9.7). Of course I could have installed the older version by hand also, but there seems no particular reason to go through all that, since the Zimbra server runs just fine with the new libraries.
Therefore the symbolic links are not bodges, but tested to be ok on a system that runs with all the features I can think of.

Openssl 0.9.7 and 0.9.8 is a major release difference despite the numbering (they use letters for minor versions)! The lib APIs are different hence the lib increment, I promise you symlinking like you have done WILL provide unforseen fun and games at some point in the future In general libs should never be symlinked unless you are intimitately familiar with the APIs.

[holunde]

Originally Posted by dijichi2

Lots of people including myself run on Etch using Sarge binaries, no modification to the OS is necessary except for the version file. I think a default install of Etch will provide both versions of openssl, if you don't have both then do:
apt-get install libssl0.9.7
There's a sticky thread at the top of this forum for Etch, if you could add procedure for installing on a minimal install I'm sure that would be appreciated by lots of people.
How to install Zimbra Debian 3.1 binaries on Debian Etch 4.0 [Workaround]

Openssl 0.9.7 and 0.9.8 is a major release difference despite the numbering (they use letters for minor versions)! The lib APIs are different hence the lib increment, I promise you symlinking like you have done WILL provide unforseen fun and games at some point in the future In general libs should never be symlinked unless you are intimitately familiar with the APIs.

Ok, I stand corrected!
All relevant issues then seem to be about me having a minimal install of Debian Etch, and that my crypto libraries in question were compatible "for the time being". I've of course installed the Etch 0.9.7 libraries now - everything seems ok.
I'll try to provide a minimal package-list necessary to for users to run Zimbra on Debian Etch, as you requested.

By the way, : I' m still running Zimbra 4.5.5. Do you have any hints on upgradin to 4.5.6 - from 4.5.5 using Debian Etch (4.0) ?

Thanks for the tips ...