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Terminal configurations

We’ll start by creating a few configuration files and data storage directories and making them readable by Horde. This will allow us to configure almost everything in Horde’s web interface rather than messing around too much in the terminal.

1. Pull up a root-shell and execute each of these commands in turn. Each item is one line of command instructions:
   1. mkdir /var/lib/horde/
   2. chown www-data:www-data /var/lib/horde/
   3. cp /etc/horde/horde/conf.php.dist /etc/horde/horde/conf.php
   4. chown www-data:www-data /etc/horde/horde/conf.php
   5. touch /etc/horde/imp/conf.php /etc/horde/turba/conf.php
   6. chown www-data:www-data /etc/horde/imp/conf.php /etc/horde/turba/conf.php
   7. cp /etc/horde/imp/backends.php /etc/horde/imp/backends.local.php

The last thing to do in the terminal before proceeding into the web administration interface is letting Horde know about your IMAP server so that you may use it to login to Horde. We need to edit one configuration file using the shell:

1. nano /etc/horde/imp/backends.local.php
2. Scroll down to the “imap” server block, and adjust it to your IMAP server. It should look something like this:

$servers['imap'] = array(
  'disabled' => false,
  'name' => 'My IMAP server',
  'hostspec' => 'imap.example.com',
  'hordeauth' => false,
  'protocol' => 'imap',
  'secure' => 'tls',
);

1. Press Control + X and confirm to save the changes to the file.

You’re now ready to make the jump over into the web administration interface.

Web administration interface

Next, we’ll step into the web interface. Please don’t click the Generate Config button at the bottom of each page in the web interface before instructed to do so as you’ll end up locking yourself out of the administration interface if you’re too eager.

We’ll start by setting up the webmail and contacts apps. There’s no configuration required as the default will work just fine, but it requires a configuration file to exist to flag the app as “enabled”.

1. Open up http://localhost/horde and click on “Mail (imp)” from the list
2. Click Generate Mail Configuration
3. Open up http://localhost/horde and click on “Addres Book (turba)”
4. Click Generate Address Book Configuration

With the two apps configured, it’s time to bring Horde itself to life.

1. Open up http://localhost/horde
2. Click “Horde (horde)”
3. Under General you should review the “URL Settings” section, this is where you enable encryption (HTTPS) and set your webmail server’s domain name. If you don’t set a server name here, you must scroll down to Session Settings: and uncheck use_only_cookies.
4. Click on the Database tab
5. Select SQLite as the database backend
6. Enter /var/lib/horde/db.sqlite as the absolute path

You should consider using a more powerful database system than SQLite for larger deployments. However, it’s easy to set up and backup, and will do fine for a small team or personal deployment.

Next we’ll choose to let the webmail app (imp) handle logins. This will mean that users will login to Horde reusing their existing IMAP accounts and credentials.

1. Click the Authentication tab
2. Enter the username of at least one or more IMAP users that will have access to the administration interface
3. Scroll down to auth driver and choose Let a Horde application handle authentication
4. Select “imp” in the drop-down below the driver choice

Lastly, Horde needs to know about your SMTP server for outgoing emails.

1. Click the Mailer tab
2. Choose SMTP Server from the drop-down list
3. Fill in the details like address and port to your SMTP server
4. Choose to authenticate to the SMTP server, but leave the fields below it untouched. That way users will re-use their IMAP credentials with the SMTP server.
5. Click Generate Horde Configuration

The very last step is to populate the SQLite database with schemas needed by Horde. The SQLite database is used to store each user’s preferences and some app data.

1. Pull up a root-shell and execute the following command:
   1. horde-db-migrate