Open WebMail is a webmail system based on the Neomail version 1.14 from Ernie Miller. Open WebMail is targeted on dealing with very big mail folder files in a memory efficient way. It also provides many features to help users to switch from Microsoft Outlook smoothly.
Documents CHANGES, README and FAQ. Screenshots http://turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw/openwebmail/screenshots/ Download http://turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw/openwebmail/download/ Mirror Site ftp://ftp.ee.ncku.edu.tw/pub/openwebmail/
http://www.geocities.com/openwebmail/
Fast Folder Access
The folder access is greatly improved by using dbm (dbm is a simple database provided by perl). When a mail folder is selected in the folder view, Open WebMail will parse the mail folder file and cache the parsed result to a dbm. This dbm is reused whenever the user wants to access the folder. This dbm cache eliminates the scanning of whole folder file every time, which makes a big difference when dealing with a large folder file. In case there are any change in the folder file, the dbm will be automatically updated. The dbm update is incremental if the folder modification is done by the Open WebMail itself. The dbm will only be recreated when a folder is found to be changed by other programs.Efficient Message Movement
The size of a message will be slightly increased after it is read at the first time because of status change. A large movement of messages may be introduced due to the size change. Also, the user may want to move a bunch of messages between two folders. The routines for message update and movement are totally rewrite so that only necessary movement will be made in a very memory efficient way.Smaller Memory Footprint
Many efforts have been put in optimizing the memory usage of Open WebMail. The memory footprint of Open WebMail is much smaller than its ancestor when dealing with messages containing large attachments (eg: a 20MB attachment). It runs smoothly on a medium sized machine now. (eg: Celeron 300 with 128MB ram).Convenient Folder/Message Operation
Open WebMail supports create, rename, delete, download operations on folders. And it supports 'move', 'copy', 'delete' and 'download' operations on messages.
Graceful File Lock
Since a mail folder may be used by multiple programs simultaneously, it is necessary to do file lock before accessing the folder. Open WebMail uses a blocking lock with timeout limit 30 seconds. It gives the lock a better chance to success than a nonblocking lock which returns error immediately if it can not get the lock. Open WebMail also supports locking by dotlock file which ensure the file locking will work on platform with incomplete NFS lockd implementation.
Virtual Hosting and Login Alias
Open Webmail can use the sendmail genericstable to map a local user account to virtualuser@virtualhost. The user can login the webmail system with the aliased name 'virtualuser' and all mails from this user will be sent with email address 'virtualuser@virtualhost'
PAM support
Openwebmail can use various type of sources for authentication through the PAM (pluggable authentication module) support. Ex: NIS+, NIS, LDAP.... Solaris 2.6, Linux and FreeBSD 3.1 are known to support PAM. For more information about PAM, please see http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam/
Full Content Search
Full content search with regular expression support is provided. When user enters a keyword in the search box, the scope of a mail folder will be limited to the keyword related messages. This means the user can use the sort or static functions on the search result. The scope limit will be released when the user selects another folder or refreshes the current folder.Better MIME Message Capability
While most webmail packages have poor effect on displaying MIME messages, the Open Webmail gives you very fancy effect for that. You can get almost the same output for MIME messages as you would get on Microsoft Outlook. It does this through supporting unlimited levels of attachments and cid object cross-reference inside attachments. Open WebMail also supports uuencoded block inside messages, it displays those uuencoded block as they were normal attachments.Draft Folder Support
This feature enables the user to write a message by several times even several days. The user can save the unfinished messages into the draft folder and continue the editing at any time. It would be very convenient when you are writing a long mail.Spelling Check Support
The spelling check in Open WebMail is very friendly yet powerful, it makes suggestions for those mis-spelled words. The user can correct the errors very easily by selecting one of the suggestions from a drop-down menu.POP3 Support
Multiple POP3 accounts can be defined at the same time to fetch mails from various mail servers. All pop3 messages will be stored at the INBOX folder. In case the pop3 fetching takes more than 10 seconds (eg: slow link or large messages), it will be put into background to avoid http timeout.Mail Filter Support
Multiple filter rules can be set to move/copy incoming mails into different folders automatically or even delete them directly. The user can categorize mails from specific person, mails from spammer or mails containing viruses very easily by defining rules of sender, receiver, SMTP relay, subject, body or filename of attachments.
Since mail filtering is activated only in Open WebMail, which means messages will stay in the INBOX until user reads their mail with Open WebMail. 'finger' or other mail status check utility may give you wrong information because they don't know about the filter. A command tool 'checkmail.pl' can be used as finger replacement. It does mail filtering before report mail status.
Message Count Preview
When the user pulls down the folderlist menu to select a folder, the counts of new messages and total messages of each mail folder will be displayed after the folder name to help the user to find out those folders with unread messages.
Confirm Reading Support
The user can request a 'confirm-reading receipt' for the message he sent. When the message is read by the receiver, a receipt will be sent back to this user.
There are too many small enhancements to mention about. You may need to find them by yourself...
Thanks to Ernie Miller. His great work of Neomail gives the Open WebMail a good base to start with. If there is no neomail, there won't be Open WebMail here.
Thanks to Joshua Cantara, this web based spelling check is based on his code in WBOSS 1.1.1d.
Thanks to Emir Litric for his great work of art. He makes all the great 3D icons and many fancy styles in Open WebMail and contributes the doc/RedHat-README.txt. He is also the best beta tester of Open Webmail.
Thanks to Félix Martos, he translates the language and template files for Spanish.
Thanks to Andreas Roedl, he translates the language and template files for German
Thanks to Wang Jun, he translates the language and template files for Chinese(GB)
Thanks to Russ Reese, the login alias/mapping is based on his patch code and idea
Thanks to Benedet Marvi, he translates the language and template files for Italian
Thanks to Michiel van Slobbe, he translates the language file for Dutch
Thanks to Nimrod Zimerman and Nimrod S. Carmi, they contribute the useraddbyweb package in contrib/, which can add users to a Linux system dynamically through web signup.
Thanks to Christian Boer, he translates the language and template files for Dutch
Thanks to Goran Jartin, he translates the language and template files for Swedish
Thanks to Dugal James P., he submits the patch for PAM support, automated DST adjustment, internal msg detection on solaris dtmail, disallowed_pop3servers option, fix to passwdfile for NIS+ and fix to user homedir for sun automounter.
Thanks to Jos Ferradeira, he translates the language and template files for Portuguese
Thanks to Pawel Jablonski, he translates the language and template files for Polish
If you encountered any problem with Open Webmail, please check CHNAGES to see if the problem is fixed in the latest current version. If not, please read the README and FAQ. And if you still want to contact us, please email to openwebmail@turtle.ee.ncku.edu.tw
The Open WebMail is brought to you by
Nai-Jung Kuo ³¢¤Dºa
Chao-Chiu Wang ¤ý¶@¥C
Chung-Kie Tung ¸³¥ò·_
Distributed System Laboratory
Department of Electrical Engineering
National Chung-Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, R.O.C.
07/27/2001