ldapuserdata Instalation Guide

Requirements

• Squirrelmail 1.4.0 or greater. (Squirrelmail 1.2.x users can use version 0.2).
• Working Squirrelmail setup (meaning its requirements are sufficed.
• Working LDAP Server. Tested with OpenLDAP.

Installation

Word of warning: This is one of them intrusive plugins, in that you'll have to change some Squirrelmail code.

Squirrelmail Preparation

• Untar the distribution under the plugins directory of your Squirrelmail. You probably have already done this...
• If you are using Squirrelmail version 1.4.2 or previous, you must apply a small patch to the functions/prefs.php file:
cd /var/www/squirrelmail/functions
patch -p0 < ../plugins/ldapuserdata/doc/prefs.php.diff
• Edit Squirrelmail's config/config_local.php and add this line:
$prefs_backend = 'ldap';
• Optional: Occasionally people on the Squirrelmail-devel mailing list have complained that there are too many options in the various options screens, and this is against usability and user-friendliness. Since part of the concept was to cut down on options anyway, you can also remove, i.e. comment-out, the options that are not used, in the files include/options/*.php. This will make these screens lighter and provide only the preferences that will be saved across sessions.
  
  The relevant files are provided here, if you wish to use the exact, provided schema.
  
  So, you can substitute the original include/options/*.php files with the ones provided in the directory options_screens; their purpose is to remove the functionality that is available to the user by removing the options that are not saved in LDAP.

OpenLDAP Preparation

• Add squirrelmail.schema to your LDAP server. The file provided in doc/squirrelmail.schema is suitable for at least OpenLDAP 2.1.x. For information on how to add the schema, please consult the documenation of your LDAP server.
• Optionally, add a squirrelmail virtual user with read-only access in your LDAP tree. This is configurable in config.php. You can bind as Manager all the time and do the work; however, this is not a good practice, and the best thing would be to have a separate squirrelmail virtual user and the appropriate ACLs. There is also a need for an account with write access; this account must be able to write the Squirrelmail attributes, as well as update the user's objectClass.

LDAPuserdata Plugin configuration

• Copy config_sample.php to config.php and edit accordingly to suit your preferences. The file is self-commented.
  
  Remember that for all variables, even those that are not part of the LDAP schema, you can always provide resonable and nice defaults in the $prefs_default array.

Advanced Configuration

• If you need to define different IMAP servers for each user in LDAP, then you are probably using something like the schema of Perdition, which holds attributes for the user's mailhost. In that case, in your Squirrelmail configuration, you can set the IMAP server address to be 'map:ldapuserdata_get_imapserveraddress', i.e.: $imapServerAddress = 'map:ldapuserdata_get_imapserveraddress';
• If you'd like to use LDAP identities, then you can try using the supplied options_identities file. This file will replace the identities screen with one that displays the available email addresses from LDAP. You will also need to patch compose.php. These patches are provided with even less warranty than the rest of the plugin (which comes with no warranty as stated in the GPL!), as they come from a customized environment, and are only released in the hope that they could be useful to someone.

Good luck... There might be some things I've left out, so please email squirrelmail-plugins list with questions. Feel free to Cc: me anyway so as to grab my attention. (Do read this manual first!).