1   Obtaining DIMP

Bleeding-edge development versions of DIMP are available via CVS; see the file docs/HACKING in the Horde distribution, or the website http://www.horde.org/source/, for information on accessing the Horde CVS repository.

2   Prerequisites

To function properly, DIMP requires the following:

1. A working IMP installation.

   DIMP runs on top of IMP. Therefore, you will need to set-up IMP before you can install DIMP. Please see the imp/docs/INSTALL file in IMP for directions on how to install IMP properly.

   Important

   DIMP requires the Horde Framework version 3.2+ and IMP version 4.2+ to run. Although not necessary, it is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED that you always upgrade IMP to the latest version when upgrading DIMP since any bug fixes to the core libraries occur there.

   The good news is that most configuration needed to run DIMP is accomplished inside of IMP. In other words, if IMP is working correctly, for the most part DIMP should be also. DIMP's configuration is limited to user display issues that are different from IMP's base display.

The following items are not required, but are strongly RECOMMENDED:

1. PHP version 5.2.5+.

   If using the PHP built-in JSON encoder/decoder (highly recommended as it is hundreds of times faster than the fallback PHP code-based version), you should be using the latest version of PHP. The PECL json module is badly out-of-date (as of version 1.2.1) and does not contain many bug fixes for handling message data that contains invalid characters. Using older versions of the JSON encoder may result in the JSON output to the browser being prematurely terminated, resulting in incomplete or blank screens.

   If you still see this problem after upgrading PHP, your server may have incorrect locale information. See Bug #5955 for further information.

2. A web server with PATH_INFO support.

   DIMP requires a web server that correctly sets the PATH_INFO environment variable for all PHP scripts. Every modern web server supports this, but you might have to enable this feature in the web server configuration. e.g. Apache servers require:

   AcceptPathInfo On
   

If the webserver does not provide PATH_INFO information, DIMP attempts to create the information using other server variables, but this process is slower and less reliable.

3   Installing DIMP

DIMP is written in PHP, and must be installed in a web-accessible directory. The precise location of this directory will differ from system to system. Conventionally, DIMP is installed directly underneath Horde in the web server's document tree.

Since DIMP is written in PHP, there is no compilation necessary; simply expand the distribution where you want it to reside and rename the root directory of the distribution to whatever you wish to appear in the URL. For example, with the Apache web server's default document root of /usr/local/apache/htdocs, you would type:

cd /usr/local/apache/htdocs/horde
tar zxvf /path/to/dimp-x.y.z.tar.gz
mv dimp-x.y.z dimp

and would then find DIMP at the URL:

http://your-server/horde/dimp/

4   Configuring DIMP

1. Configuring Horde for DIMP

   1. Register the application

      In horde/config/registry.php, find the applications['dimp'] stanza. The default settings here should be okay, but you can change them if desired. If you have changed the location of DIMP relative to Horde, either in the URL, in the filesystem or both, you must update the fileroot and webroot settings to their correct values.

   2. Enable IMP authentication [OPTIONAL]

      See IMP's imp/docs/INSTALL file for details.

2. Configuring DIMP

   To configure DIMP, change to the dimp/config/ directory of the installed distribution, and make copies of all of the configuration dist files without the dist suffix:

   cd config/
   for foo in *.dist; do cp $foo `basename $foo .dist`; done
   

   Or on Windows:

   copy *.dist *.
   

   Documentation on the format and purpose of those files can be found in each file.

   You must login to Horde as a Horde Administrator to finish the configuration of DIMP. Use the Horde Administration menu item to get to the administration page, and then click on the Setup icon to get the configuration page. Select Dynamic Mail from the selection list of applications. Fill in or change any configuration values as needed. When done click on Generate Dynamic Mail Configuration to generate the conf.php file. If your web server doesn't have write permissions to the DIMP configuration directory or file, it will not be able to write the file. In this case, go back to Setup and choose one of the other methods to create the configuration file dimp/config/conf.php.

   Note for international users: DIMP uses GNU gettext to provide local translations of text displayed by applications; the translations are found in the po/ directory. If a translation is not yet available for your locale (and you wish to create one), see the horde/po/README file, or if you're having trouble using a provided translation, please see the horde/docs/TRANSLATIONS file for instructions.

3. Securing DIMP

   Before you can secure DIMP, you need a secure Horde installation. Please read the file in horde/docs/SECURITY for Horde security information before proceeding.

   See IMP's imp/docs/INSTALL file for further details on how to secure IMP/DIMP.

4. Tuning DIMP (Performance)

   See horde/docs/PERFORMANCE.

5   DIMP Troubleshooting

DIMP differs from most traditional Horde applications in that it requires javascript support and, in fact, javascript performs the bulk of the page display. As such, debugging DIMP is more complex than with other Horde applications.

If you run into problems with DIMP, first follow the troubleshooting steps for both Horde and IMP - namely checking PHP error logs and Horde debug logs, to determine if the problem is located there. Since DIMP uses Horde and IMP code extensively on the server side, most server-based errors will be logged in the traditional manner.

Only if traditional debugging is unsuccessful will you need to move to javascript debugging. It is highly recommended to use Mozilla Firefox with the Firebug extension installed in order to better track javascript errors - it is what the developers use and makes deciphering error codes and error line numbers much easier. Next, it is also recommended to set the debug parameter in dimp/conf/conf.php to true (no quotes) - this will popup javascript exceptions that may not be able to be caught by Firebug. Next you will want to turn off javascript caching, if on, in dimp/conf/conf.php. Finally, you need to change horde/conf/registry.php to serve the javascript files from the js/src/ directory rather than the js/ directory (we compress javascript files to reduce network load, but this results in all javascript errors occurring on line 1 which is not very useful to diagnose the problem).

If you do find a javascript error, it would be great if you could fix the issue and provide a patch :) Absent that, before reporting to the mailing list, IRC room, or bug tracker make sure you have a valid javascript error, the file the error is being caused in, the line number of the error, and a reliable way to reproduce the error. Developers/other interested folks will be much more likely to help you if all this information is provided.

6   Obtaining Support

If you encounter problems with DIMP, help is available!

The Horde Frequently Asked Questions List (FAQ), available on the Web at

http://www.horde.org/faq/

The Horde Project runs a number of mailing lists, for individual applications and for issues relating to the project as a whole. Information, archives, and subscription information can be found at

http://www.horde.org/mail/

Lastly, Horde developers, contributors and users may also be found on IRC, on the channel #horde on the Freenode Network (irc.freenode.net).

Please keep in mind that DIMP is free software written by volunteers. For information on reasonable support expectations, please read

http://www.horde.org/support.php

Thanks for using DIMP!

The DIMP team