Well
Zimbra is perhaps the most competitive open source solution you can find for mail & collaboration today. Here is how you will have it ready in less than an hour.
Physical or Virtual doesn't really matter.
My ingredients
Download a dvd copy of CentOS x86_64 http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/5/isos/x86_64/
Download the latest open source version of Zimbra http://www.zimbra.com/downloads/os-downloads.html
In our situation we shall download the latest available 64 bit http://files2.zimbra.com/downloads/6.0.10_GA/zcs-6.0.10_GA_2692.RHEL5_64.20101215170845.tgz
Start the installation of the operating system as normal. Make sure that you create a filesystem mounted as /opt/
That's where Zimbra will be installed mainly.
As soon as the operating system is installed and rebooted, please run
yum -y update
in order to have all latest updates / patches installed.
Zimbra needs a couple of things tightly configured.
*check the content of the file /etc/sysconfig/network
There is a line mentioning
HOSTNAME=servername.domain.gr
This line SHOULD be in accordance of the /etc/hosts file. If your server has an ip address like 192.168.4.1 then your /etc/hosts file should look like
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.4.1 servername.domain.gr servername
After that it's time to tweak the dns resolution. Zimbra consists of a bunch of well known open source projects, spamassassin, amavisd-new, cyrrus, lucene, nginx and postfix just to name a few. ( They are more than 80). So you can either create a fake zone at the dns server that your host resolves to or follow the below trick
Make sure you have installed dnsmasq
yum -y install dnsmaq
then make sure that there is a line like this in /etc/dnsmaq.conf
mx-host=domain.gr,servername.domain.gr,50
Do not forget to make sure that dnsmasq is in the startup and sendmail (that is installed by default in 5, is stopped and disabled)
chkconfig —level 35 dnsmasq on
service sendmail stop
chkconfig —level 35 sendmail off
Now it is time to finish our trick. Open up /etc/resolv.conf
There you will need to put as a first line nameserver yourself. Our trick works like this. When the server asks the dns server configured who is the mx for domain.gr, he takes a response that servername.domain.gr is the mx with preference 50. For the rest of the querries it goes to the real dns…..;-)
Now we are ready to install our Zimbra server.
There are a couple of details to have in mind. Firstly,
tar xzpvf zcs-6.0.10_GA_2692.RHEL5_64.20101215170845.tgz
That will create a directory named zcs-6.0.10_GA_2692.RHEL5_64.20101215170845
cd there and execute
./install.sh —platform-override
Follow the instructions. It will check for some needed packages. In all cases, if one is indicated as MISSING, press Ctrl+C
yum -y install package
and then re-initiate the process
./install.sh —platform-override
Follow the instructions. When the time comes, give the details and do not forget to change the admin password.
Depending on your cpu and disk speed it could take anything from 15-30 min
When it all ends the script prompts you to press enter and come back to shell . You are done
point your browser to
*https://hostname.domain.gr:7071**
This is the admin page.
Interesting Urls
http://www.zimbra.com/support/
http://www.zimbra.com/docs/ne/latest/multi_server_install/
The forum
http://www.zimbra.com/forums/
find me on twitter nzaharioudakis
