Forum OpenACS Development: Package Idea

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1: Package Idea
Posted by Mat Kovach on 03/11/02 11:43 PM
Basically I have bounced this around a bit, talked to a few others
about this and feel comfortable enough about this to take comments
from others.

I've done quite a bit of email hosting for smaller groups that want
nice centralized control of their email domains. I've found that
vpopmail (http://inter7.com/vpopmail) works well from many people.
vpopmail has a web adminstration tool qmailadmin
(http://inter7.com/qmailadmin) that gives a nice control panel for a
domain (including mailing list, auto responders, etc).  I think it
would be nice to recreate the functionality of qmailadmin for vpopmail
into OpenACS.  It might be a bit out of the community area for some,
but it would be a nice package to offer to groups, OpenACS seems to
have a good base for adminstration, user adminstration, etc.

If we can use OpenACS as the admistration interface and data model I
think a interesting package with quite a bit of upside can be
developed.  I'd see quite a bit of interest for small hosting
companies and those that deal with non-profits.

http://www.alal.com/oacs-vpopmail.txt for more details.

Right now I can handle the work on the qmail/vpopmail side but I'm
still learning "OpenACS" best practices so I'd need some people with
interest willing to help out.

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2: Response to Package Idea (response to 1)
Posted by Michael Feldstein on 03/12/02 12:02 AM
This would be particularly cool in conjunction with a new
webmail package. Between the two, you could offer an
organization nice email service.
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3: Response to Package Idea (response to 1)
Posted by Tom Jackson on 03/12/02 05:33 PM

I tried out the vpopmail package. It installs easily and without any problems, but configuration was not what I expected. I actually was unable to get it to work with either Netscape mail or Mozilla mail. There are several problems. The first is that the login user name seems to need to be in the form jane@example.com. This works great for using telnet to login and check messages. However, I was unable to convince Netscape of this. The software is actually running on mail.example.com, so I am guessing that Netscape is using something like jane@example.com@mail.example.com, or just chopping off everything and sending jane. I thought the aliasing facility would work, and it does for telnet login. I can login as jane@mail.example.com as well. So maybe someone can offer a better configuration option than is listed in the docs. Also, note that this software will overwrite your current qmail control files. If experimenting, it might be nice to make a backup. It also appends to users/assign and adds lock files for everything it touches.

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4: Response to Package Idea (response to 1)
Posted by Mat Kovach on 03/12/02 05:51 PM
Tom,

make the username jane%domain.com (I have quite a few people using Netscape/Mozilla as clients).

Yes, vpopmail updates the control files, but then that would be part of the point.  Set a mail server this is controled by the OpenACS Interface.  My idea is to put everything into postgres and create the need files from the database.  Of course, I'm currently looking at the requirements to have the control files from from a postgres database (simular to qmail-ldap) so control files for _this_ server can be exported to other systems.

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5: Response to Package Idea (response to 1)
Posted by Tom Jackson on 03/12/02 06:02 PM

Thanks Mat, I will try again. I knew there was probably a catch, but the docs I read didn't spell it out. I was actually amazed at how easily it installed. Even the command line interface is just easy to use. I also noticed there is a C library for this package. It would be nice to compile this into an AOLserver module, but using exec might not be too bad either. Your tcl module could stuff data into the db and run the command, then you avoid having to write the pg to vpopmail code. I'm just guessing, I better read your ideas in more detail.

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6: Response to Package Idea (response to 1)
Posted by Mat Kovach on 03/12/02 06:29 PM
Tom right now ( and why I wanted to post ) was I'm not sure as to the next step.  The possibilities are there.  qmail and vpopmail have easily expanded interfaces and either using exec or compiled code is a possibility.

I guess what I was hoping for was some of the more knowledge ACS'ers would have thoughts, ideas, etc. about what would be best for OpenACS.  If we used AOLserver api's and TCL I think we could create abstract things a little better.

Some like:

oacs_emaildomain_add
oacs_emaildomain_add_user
oacs_emaildomain_delete

etc.

Have the underlying code do something like:

if emailserver type = vpopmail { /home/vpopmail...)
                    = postfix { do this }

But be able to have one basic data model.  This would be a bit more of a project but might be better all the way around.  While I personally like qmail, some people don't and I'd love to give people a choice.

It may also mean exporting everything using LDAP, who knows.

As I said right now I'm still in the idea stage and hoping for input :)