[Kroupware] Fwd: My Two Cents Worth

[Eli Wapniarski]

First let me congratulate you on your work to date. When I became aware of
Kroupware, I was delighted to see that such important work was initiated.

I have been working with computers for the last 20 years. My working
experience has been primarily been on MS based systems. I have been working
with Linux for the last 4 and something years. I have started to work with
Linux professionally over the last year. And I have built myself a nice
little lab at home comprising of a RH 7.3 that I am using as a gateway / mail
server / file server, a Mandrake 9.0 desktop which can be booted into a
Windows OS and a RH 7.3 laptop soon to be upgraded to 8.0.

I would like to relate some trials, tribulations and suggestions compiling
beta 1 of the Kolab server and the CVS of Kolab client. I am not a
programmer, so getting the server compiled was a pesonal accomplishment. I
had a problem compiling two components. gcc required binutils so I compiled
and installed binutils and gcc compiled just fine. I had a major problem with
compiling imapd many components made calls to com_err.h. I received all sorts
of not found messages when compiling. I had to go into the archive and
manually change #include <com_err.h> to #include <../et/com_err.h>.
Everything compiled and installed. And when I shut off my current mail system
and fired up kolab, I could not get into the WEB management because the group
nogroup was not part of my group file. After adding this group, the server
seemed to work.

As you getting the server to compile and run was the easy part. And as for
 the rest of the issues that I experienced, I am pretty sure that they were
 the result of some basic configuration problems, because others in your
 mailing list is reporting that they are working pretty much as expected.

As for the client. Currently, I am using Mandrake RPMs of KDE3.1rc5. I
downloaded the CVS packages kdenetwork and kdepim as per your instructions to
compile the kde3.1 version of the kolab client. There were problems compiling
because apparently, my kdelibs are not uptodate with the current CVS. and I
was going to have to not compile some components. Particularly kppp, ktakd
and lanbrower. No big deal, I'm not using them. For kdepim, I had to install
pilot-link from sources which also turned out not to be a big deal. After the
adjustments, both packages compiled and installed just fine.

I fired up the client. It crashed alot, No big deal really, It isn't a final
release. But it did run. I got all my folders in the Kolab Folder. I was able
to send mail, but I was not able to receive mail. After I reinstalled the rc5
RPMs of kdenetwork and kdepim, I found out why. It turned out that the server
used the last name of the user as the email address rather than the
uid@domain.suf that I choose. (ie first_name = first, last_name = last, uid =
first, uid@domain.suf = first@domain.suf). When I returned my email to the
normal kmail I found out the reason. It turned out that kolab tried to send
the emails to last@domain.suf.

Server management, I was not able to successfully delete shared folders from
the WEB interface. After checking that a new user should appear in the
address book, the user info did not appear in the address book.

It is a little bit disconcerting to find that kolab client will not work with
traditional IMAP servers. This is a basic function of kmail.

Making the server run in its own environment was simply great. It keeps the
system that its built on relatively safe. It would be a really good idea to
have the kolab client do the same. And it might be a good idea (if possible)
to have that environment be built on the lastest "official" release of KDE.
So that anyone like me, would have the opportunity to build the system on a
base system.

As for the final release of the client, kmail should not be diminished in
 that kmail should be able to deal with standard imap and kroupware imap
 servers. And as far as at least being able to send and receive email, any
 imap client should be able to at least see the mail.

All of that being said I'm sure that the majority my particular issues were
related to configuration problems. When the next beta of the server gets
released, I will be testing it.

Keep up the good work. I look forward to seeing kroupware advance.

Eli

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