phpGroupWare HOWTO

phpGroupWare HOWTO Joseph Engo <jengo@phpgroupware.org>, Dan Kuykendall <dan@kuykendall.org> v1.1, 28 September 2000 This document explains how to install and configure phpGroupWare. Introduction

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 available and currently supports MySQL and PostgreSQL.

What is phpGroupWare and why should I use it?

phpGroupWare is:

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.

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?

Installation Requirements

You will need PHP compiled and installed on your system. You will also need MySQL or PostgreSQL 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. You can have it installed as an Apache module or command line version, 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.

Tested Systems

On Linux 2.2.x PHP 3.0.15+ / PHP 4.0.x Apache 1.3.x MySQL 3.22.25 or PostgreSQL 7.0.x Courier-IMAP 0.33+ and/or qmail 1.03 for POP3 access We have reports of phpGroupWare working on Windows NT and OS/2, and using Oracle as the database.

Obtaining phpGroupWare

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. Released Versions

The downloads section on the site contains links to the most recent releases, and several mirror sites for the releases.

Developer's version from CVS

If you have never used CVS, you may want to read through the doucmentation found at . The CVS pages for the core and apps projects can be found at , and . Follow the directions for Anonymous CVS access and you should have the most recent development copy of phpGroupWare in no time.

Installing on Tested Systems

After you have met the system requirements, unpack the tarball in the html directory of your webserver. (eg, /home/httpd/html)

Create a database and user for phpGroupWare

You must create a database for phpGroupWare to use, and we strongly recommend adding a user that only has permission to this new database for phpGroupWare's exclusive use (for security). Note the host the database engine is on, user, password and database name, you will need them soon. Configure phpGroupWare

Copy the header.inc.php.sample file to header.inc.php and edit the file, following the directions in the comments.

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. 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. This file is not required, you can simply disable cron_apps in the admin -> applications section to clean out the sessions table during login and logout.

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.

Testing the install

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.

Installing additional applications

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 placing the application directory under the root phpGroupWare directory, and enabling the application through the Administration page. For example, this is the process to install the Headlines application (see 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. headlines Headlines for this example. 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.

Trouble-shooting

WARNING! 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 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 I get "Unable to open mailbox" when using the email application

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.

It seems to hang when I try to read my mail

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); to the top of the inc/phpgwapi/phpgw_msg_pop3.inc.php file, just before the line class msg extends msg_common 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.

When I log in I see the directory listing instead of a web page

If 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

I get garbage that looks like code when I go to the phpGroupWare URL

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 For PHP4: AddType application/x-httpd-php .php3 .php

About this document New versions

The newest version of this document can be found on our website as SGML source, HTML, or TEXT.

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History

This document was started by Joseph Engo and reworked by Dan Kuykendall.

Version History

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

Copyrights and Trademarks

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 .

Acknowledgments and Thanks

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.