Thanks to Joesph Engo for starting phpGroupWare (at the time called webdistro) and the core of this HOWTO. Thanks to all the developers and users who contribute to making phpGroupWare such a success.
Do yo have questions on using phpGroupWare , like What? Why? What for? What's in for me?
Then you should seriously read this doc :-).
phpGroupWare is a web based groupware application that includes integrated features such as email, calendar, todo list, address book, file manager, headline news, and a trouble ticket system. It should run on all systems where PHP is installed and has access to a SQL server (MySQL ,PostgreSQL or Oracle).
You should use it if you would like a powerful groupware system that can be access from anywhere on the Internet.
For companies with a distributed user base, it's an ideal solution. Oh, and did I mention that its FREE?
phpGroupWare started by Jengo (Joseph Engo) as an application to satisfy his girlfriends need for a webbased calendar/todo_list/email. At the time it was called webdistro when Seek3r (Dan Kuykendall) discovered this promising project. The two joined up together and between Seek3r's API design and Jengo's programming skills they renamed the project phpGroupWare and started building the application around the phpgwAPI.
During this period Seek3r took over project management to free Jengo up to do more development. This duo worked hard to build a sucessful community around the project. Their efforts paid off, and the project is what it is today due to the efforts of the developers who have joined this community.
Copyright (c) Dan Kuykendall.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation A copy of the license is available at GNU Free Documentation License Making TeXWork
Installation/Upgrade and Configuration of phpGroupWare has been made as easy as possible.
Most of the work is point and click.
By carefully reading this document you can easly install phpGroupWare.
Since this is still a beta version we do expect some bugs.
You will need PHP compiled and installed on your system. You will also need MySQL, PostgreSQL or Oracle setup.
If you are planning on using the email system, you will need to have an IMAP server installed and IMAP support compiled into PHP, or a POP3 server installed. You can have it installed as an Apache module or CGI mode for other web servers, the Apache module is preferred. We will assume that you are running on a Linux or other Unix system for these steps. Windows is supported, but there is no documentation for it currently.
Seek3r has tested:
phpGroupWare.org runs: Red Hat 6.2, Apache/1.3.12,PHP/4.0.2,mod_perl/1.21,MySQL 3.23.10-alpha,Courier-IMAP 0.33+ with qmail 1.03
phpGroupWare.net runs: Red Hat 6.2,Apache/1.3.14 PHP/4.0.3pl1 mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 PHP4.03.pl1, MySQL 3.23.10-alpha,qmail 1.03
dev boxes are variants on: Red Hat 7.0,mysql-3.23.22-6 (from RH7 RPM), and Sendmail, Courier, or qmail+courier IMAP depending on mood.
main test box: Red Hat 6.2,Apache 1.3.12,PHP 3.0.16,PostgreSQL 7.2,Sendmail (from RH6.2)
laptop is rh 6.1, apache 1.3.?, MySQL and PostgreSQL 7.0 w/ PHP 3.0.16, its a P-90 w/ 40 mb ram and a 800 mb hd
Test box: Win2k with IIS5.0, PHP4.0.2 and MySQL
While we are still in the Beta phase of phpGroupWare, you may want to track the CVS copy as closely as possible. The released versions are more stable, but often contain bugs that have been fixed in the CVS version.
The downloads section on the site contains links to the most recent releases, and several mirror sites for the releases.
If you have never used CVS, you may want to read through the doucmentation found at www.cvshome.org . The CVS pages for the core and apps projects can be found at phpGroupWare Core CVS , and phpGroupWare Apps CVS. Follow the directions for Anonymous CVS access and you should have the most recent development copy of phpGroupWare in no time.
After you have met the system requirements, You can install it from the TarBall or you can get it directly from CVS.
The files should be installed in the webserver directory. So all you need to do is unpack the tar ball and copy the whole directory to the webserver directory
(eg. /home/httpd/html for default apache configuration in many linux distros).
You may have to get required permissions to do this. Contact your system administrator if you dont have the permission to write to your webserver directory.
Grabbing a copy from CVS is not as hard as it may seem. You will need to have a cvs client installed. Then try the following commands:
export CVSROOT=':pserver:anonymous@cvs.phpgroupware.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/phpgroupware'
cvs login (just hit enter when prompted for a password)
cvs checkout phpgroupware
export CVSROOT=':pserver:anonymous@cvs.phpgroupware.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/phpgroupware'
cvs login (just hit enter when prompted for a password)
cvs checkout -d dirname phpgroupware
Copy the header.inc.php.sample file to header.inc.php and edit the file, following the directions in the comments.
An empty database will be needed for phpGroupWare. Here are the instructions for doing so with MySQL. First create the database:
mysqladmin create phpgroupware -p
Then login to the mysql:mysql -p
Finally grant the needed security rights:grant all on phpgroupware.* to phpgroupware@localhost identified by "some_password";
An empty database will be needed for phpGroupWare. Here are the instructions for doing so with PostgreSQL. Create the database:
postmaster -i -D /home/[username]/[dataDir]
You will probably need to review PostgreSQL documentation for futher details.Then point your browser to phpgroupware/setup/ which will create (or upgrade) the database tables. You wil be asked to login, using the password set in header.inc.php. Setup will attempt to determine what version of the phpGroupWare database you have installed, and upgrade to the most recent version.
Note | |
---|---|
The developers are concentrating on getting the beta working, and have not spent a great deal of time building upgrade scripts from the alpha versions of phpGroupWare. You are advised to backup your existing alpha database before running the setup script to avoid problems! |
If you get no error messages, continue on to phpgroupware/setup/config.php to configure phpGroupWare to your system.
If you are using the email system you will need to create a temporary directory where file uploads will be stored. For security reasons, you should chown nobody.nobody and chmod 700 to that directory. Depending on your system configuration. Default installs of Apache normally run as the user nobody. You may need your system administrator to do this for you if you do not have root access.
If you do not have access to root, create this file and run it.
?php if (mkdir("/path/to/temp/directory",0700)) { echo "Directory created successfully"; } else { echo "Error creating directory"; } ? |
If you have access to cron, you may want to setup the files in the cron directory.
stalesessions.pl - There are 2 reasons for this file.
Users always forget to logout. This way the session doesn't sit around forever, creating a possible security risk.
The email system requires plain text passwords which are stored in the sessions table.
stale_uploads.pl - This will delete file attachments for messages that where not completed. If a users browser crashes, Internet connection dies, etc, their files will sit there forever unless deleted. You could add a few lines to logout.php that will look in the temp directory for any stale uploads and delete them. But, once again, it becomes a performance issue.
If your config is setup properly you can now login. Point your browser to the installed location and login with the username demo and the password is 1234 At this point it would be a good idea to create a new user with administrative privileges and delete the old one.
Once you have the core phpGroupWare install up and running, you may want to download and install additional applications.
You should consult any README or INSTALL files that come with the new application first, as most require you to create additional tables in the database, and add additional translation data to the lang table (typically a file called lang.sql)
You install the new application within the phpGroupWare install tree by copying the application directory into the phpGroupWare install location, and enabling the application through the Administration page.
For example, this is the process to install the Headlines application (see http://sourceforge.net/phpgwapps/ for more on this and other applications).
Download the .tar.gz file for the application, or check out the source with cvs with
export CVSROOT=':pserver:anonymous@cvs.phpgroupware.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/phpgwapps'
cvs login (just hit enter if prompted for a password)
cvs co headlines
Move the headlines directory into your phpGroupWare install directory.
Log into phpGroupWare as an administrative user, and go to the Administration page.
In the first section, choose the Applications link.
Click on add, and fill in the form.
Application name should be identical to the name of the directory you moved into the phpGroupWare install, in this case use headlines
Application Title is shown in the navigation bar and other places to refer to the new application. Enter Headlines for this example.
Enabled can be used to disable an application for all users temporially. You should normal check the box to enable the application.
Back in the Administration page, you need to enable the application for specific users or user groups by editing them, and checking the new Headlines box that appears in the middle of the account editing page.
Once you have added the Headlines app to your account, you should see a Headlines entry in the Administration and Preferences pages, and there should be an icon for the Headlines application in the navigation bar.
Once you enable a few of the Headlines sites through the Administration page link, you should see headlines grabbed from the sites you selected when you click on the Headlines icon in the navigation bar.
phpGroupWare is still Beta software, expect some bugs along the way. If you run into a problem not discussed here, contact us through one of the methods listed on the website. |
The phpGroupWare developers can most often be seen hanging out in #phpGroupWare on irc.openprojects.net if you require real-time help.
Also check the FAQ in this directory for additional common questions, it is available as FAQ.sgml, FAQ.txt and FAQ.html
At the time of this writing (2000-09-27) you must use the same username and password in phpGroupWare that you use to log into your mail server. If you change your password and it still isn't working, try logging out of phpGroupWare (the rightmost icon in the navigation bar) and then log back in.
An preference page to edit the email settings is being developed, and should appear shortly after the first beta release.
This is often a problem if you are using POP3 instead of IMAP, and you have more than a few hundred messages in your mailbox.
By default, php is set up to time-out a request that takes over 30 seconds to complete. phpGroupWare must do a lot of work the first time your POP3 mailbox is opened, and every time you get new mail, which may take more than the 30 second timeout.
You can either clean up your mailbox with another mail program, or add the line
set_time_limit(0); |
If you choose to edit the file, be patient when loading a large POP3 mailbox - the author tested against a mailbox with 2500 messages in it, but it took 15 minutes to load the page. We highly suggest you use IMAP if you expect to have more than a few hundred messages in your mailbox.
You are using Apache, this often means you need to add .php to the DirectoryIndex line in your httpd.conf file. For example:
DirectoryIndex index.php index.php3 index.html index.htm index.cgi |
This is often because you have php3 installed, which does not map .php to the PHP engine. For PHP3:
AddType application/x-httpd-php3 .php3 .php |
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php3 .php |
Using phpGroupWare is a cake walk , thats what people say :-). Reading this doc would definitely give a head start. If you ever come cross any problem please report to
After your setup you can point your browser to index.php in the installation directory. If the set up was right you can login with user name demo and the password is 1234> Now it is recommended to create a new user with administrative privileges and delete the old one.
To administer phpGroupWare you need not be a PHP hacker. All you need to do is again just point and click. And hey just a bit of typing too. :). You need to login to phpGroupWare and click the Administration image.
In phpGroupWare it is very easy to maintain User Accounts. You can easily add , remove or set previleges to the user accordingly.
To create a user account goto User Accounts section of Administration and the click the Add button. Now a form would be displayed. FIXME : should i explain the process :-). After submiting the form you would be sent back to the accounts page and you can now see the new user you have just created. Isn't it easy !!!
Maintaining user accounts is also very easy. Just go to the User Accounts section . Now you can see the list of the current users and there logins. You can now either view their ops or can even edit them. FIXMEAGIN: need i say anything more :->.
Enter the User Group section. You would see the current user groups.
Click the Add button. Now fill the form by selecting the existing users and the persmissions you want to include in the new group.And you r done.
There r many applications been developed for phpGroupWare and there would be more in the future. So insatallation of these application and as well as the future applications has been made easy the developers. So what you have to do is to just go to the Application section.
This documentation is for developers who want to hack into the core of the phpGroupWare. Please follow this documentation carefully before u take a jump into the code :)
The newest version of this document can be found on our website www.phpgroupware.org as SGML source, HTML, or TEXT.
Comments on this HOWTO should be directed to the phpGroupWare developers mailing list phpgroupware-developers@lists.sourceforge.net
To subscribe, go to http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=7305
Old Version
Created by Jengo, wasn't in SGML HOWTO format.
v1.0 (July 6, 2000)
Built proper SGML version.
Included the FAQ.
Other minor additions.
v1.1 (September 27-29, 2000) - blinky
Added Testing Install section
Added Trouble-shooting section
Added description of application installation
Changes for the new setup program
v0.01 (October 15 , 2000) - gnrfan , Converted the HOWTO to DocBook format
v.0.05 (November 5, 2000) - gnrfan , Completely revamped according to Seek's idea and intregrated the Developers HOWTO.
v 0.xx (Somewhere in the near future) - gnrfan, Trail map comming up on how to hack and learn about coding phpGroupWare(core) and its apps too :-).