September Linux Freeware

This month we review tools for making better use of the Apache Web server (http://www.apache.org/). Apache is by far the most popular Web server on the planet with 61% of the market, according Netcraft's June survey (http://www.netcraft.com/survey/).

By Richard Keech

The promise of tools such as IMP is to have your mail available anywhere through a single account. With the office server using IMP, you no longer need to have another email account for when you are at home, so long as you can browse the Net.

IMP is built upon the PHP Web application framework (described in Geoffrey Bennett's Linux column, APC February 1999, page 106). As such it is a great example of a fully Web-deployed application. Of course the other great thing about applications like this is that it no longer matters what operating system your desktop PC is running.

While IMP has only been around for one year or so, it has matured at a rapid pace and has already reached version 2.0.7 (such is the way of good free software projects).

IMP is the first visible output from the ambitious Horde project, which aims to provide a whole suite of free, Web-based applications. Keep an eye out for more good software along these lines, and soon the promise of the Web-based office may be realised.

Since IMP is written in PHP, it is not specifically tied to Linux, and works well on other operating systems such as FreeBSD and Solaris. If you are worried about committing your mail server to this software, then you might be comforted that an estimated 125,000 people are already using IMP at about 50 different sites.

Installation is easy, but knowing what to install is less so. Pre-requisite packages are (in installation order) php3, php3-imap, php3-gd, php3-mysql, MySQL, MySQL-client, and Horde. Finding all these was more of a challenge than it should have been, but they loaded easily using RPM. Installing IMP itself is a matter of loading the imp package. Configuration files are kept in the directory /etc/horde, and the configuration utility impconfig can be used.

To get full use from IMP, the underlying database support must be configured. In the test installation, the MySQL database was used, but a number of other databases are also supported.

Getting this working with Red Hat Linux 6.0 is simply a matter of installing the openssl package followed by the apache-mod_ssl package, making sure that Apache was not previously installed.

Once this is installed, you can use the magic https: in place of http: when connecting to the server from your browser. SSL not only encrypts the traffic, but introduces the use of digital certificates to verify authenticity of the site and even of the user if necessary. On installation, the mod_ssl-empowered server uses a self-signed certificate that browsers will not recognise, but it's easy to get Netscape over the hurdle (I can't vouch for Explorer) and using the site.

If you want to go all the way with using an SSL-enabled site, you should apply for a digital certificate from a certification authority like Thawte (http://www.thawte.com/).

This Apache module implements the HTTP methods that Netscape use to implement the roaming profiles, including the non-standard MOVE method. Access to roaming profiles can be configured into Apache without this module, but using this module makes it a piece of cake, especially since it takes care of tasks such as creating user directories for you.

Installation of the module works in accordance with the simple instructions. It basically installs the file /usr/lib/mod_roaming.so, and updates httpd.conf with the appropriate LoadModule and AddModule entries. The only real work was adding a line "RoamingAlias" to httpd.conf, and creating the associated directory.

For more information on roaming profiles have a look at: http://help.netscape.com/products/client/communicator/manual_roaming2.html.

Unfortunately, this module is not available in RPM form, but managing it from the source is very simple.

This is another piece of workhorse software, albeit a quite specialised example.

onShore Timesheet requires Perl (v 5.004) and PostgreSQL (v 6.3 and up). Since it is provided in a TAR.GZ file, no simple RPM-based install is possible.

During our evaluation, a number of problems were experienced with integration with the underlying database. In a real-life situation, the results would be well worth the effort.

Once again this shows what can be possible in the world of Web-based applications. Expect to see more of this sort of thing, as organisations embrace the easy administration and universal access that Web applications can give.

Despite onShore Timesheet being the only reviewed program here with corporate origins, it is no less free and is published under the GPL. It is a great example of a company giving something back to the software community.

As with IMP, remote access to onShore Timesheet can be secured using the SSL facilities from mod_ssl.