SquirrelMail Installation Problem

squirrelmail

I have downloaded squirrelMail from SquirrelMail Official Website, then I uploaded the extracted files to a free hosting account on x10hosting.com.

when I try to connected to the Squirrel Mail, I get the following error

Error opening ../data/default_pref
Could not create initial preference file!
/data/ should be writable by user sikas
Please contact your system administrator and report this error.

I want to know how to solve this issue and what files exactly should be edited.

PS: I edited the config file but I`m not sure about the values I entered.

Best Answer

It is best that you configure SquirrelMail by running the conf.pl script in the config directory. The problem you are dealing with is the result of incorrect permissions. Both the data directory and the attachment directory need to be writable by the user that the web server runs. If you do not know what user this is (www, www-data or something else) it chmod them to 1777.

Related Solutions

SquirrelMail (Courier) IMAP Issue

As Bill said, 993 is usually IMAPS. Are you sure it's running without SSL? What happens when you do:

telnet serverip 993

Do you get a greeting? If not, what about:

openssl s_client -connect serverip:993

If you get a response in either, just type:

A01 LOGOUT

It'll disconnect.

If you get a response from the first, what does it say? If you get a response on the second, it means you are running IMAPS, which means you need to change your config/config.php settings for your imap connection (see $use_imap_tls).

As a side, Courier defaults to limiting connections from a single IP to 4 connections. If multiple people will be using this SquirrelMail install, you'll want to increase that limit, see the MAXPERIP setting in the imapd config file.

Debian – Setting up Debian squirrelmail

You also need an SMTP-server. I suggest postfix. (apt-get install postfix)
Then, you should make sure that you use the `~/Maildir'. If this folder doesn't exist or you gave it the wrong permissions, this is a common error. Make sure you configure Postfix to use it:

postconf -e "home_mailbox = Maildir/"
postconf -e "mailbox_command = "
/etc/init.d/postfix restart

If it is still not working, try telnetting into your machine and test it that way.

Test SMTP (port 25)

Trying 10.0.1.40...
Connected to test.freetown.local.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 test.freetown.local ESMTP Postfix (Ubuntu)
ehlo test.freetown.local
mail from: bart@test.freetown.local
rcpt to: root@test.freetown.local
data
Subject: First Mail

Looking good!
.
quit

Test IMAP (port 143)

Trying 10.0.1.40...
Connected to test.freetown.local.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UIDPLUS CHILDREN NAMESPACE THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT THREAD=REFERENCES SORT QUOTA IDLE ACL ACL2=UNION] Courier-IMAP ready. Copyright 1998-2010 Double Precision, Inc.  See COPYING for distribution information.
a login bart bart
a OK LOGIN Ok.
a logout
* BYE Courier-IMAP server shutting down
a OK LOGOUT completed

Test POP3 (port 110)

Trying 10.0.1.40...
Connected to test.freetown.local.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK Hello there.
user bart
+OK Password required.
pass bart
+OK logged in.
quit
+OK Bye-bye.

If that works, your squirlmail should be fine too.