Where we require a lightweight mail client, we tend to use Sylpheed (from which Claws Mail was later forked).

It seems unlikely that you would be able to add an ActiveDirectory Address Book into such a lightweight email client, and indeed the manual states:

### FIXME: write this part.

But in fact it was trivially easy:

Caveat

Whilst these instructions worked for us, do be aware that we are using Samba4 ActiveDirectory. In theory this is a drop-in replacement for Windows ActiveDirectory and these instructions should work unchanged.

Add LDAP Addressbook

Firstly run Sylpheed and go to Tools and Addressbook. Within the Sylpheed Addressbook go to File New LDAP Server You should now see a screen like this:

Having entered the Name, Hostname and Port you are able to “Check Server”, to ensure connectivity. Next either enter your Search Base, or click on the &ellipsis; button to select from the detected Search Bases.

*You should probably choose 636 when connecting via a public network, and you may need to open ports on your router.

Now select the Extended tab and you should see the following screen:

Now click on OK to finish.

Test

You should now have a Search field available, enter a colleague’s first name and Search and you should be faced with their email addresses.

Conclusion

As far as I can tell the addressbook lookup is not automatic and you have to click on the addressbook icon in the Compose Window and search for the person, in order to add them to the To: field. A bit clunky perhaps, but arguably not so very different from the need in Outlook to press Check Names to look up new addresses. Needless to say - once the address is in the recent address list, it is auto-completed in the future.

Whilst the world seems to be moving email to “The Cloud”, rightly or wrongly I remain reluctant to give up the control of our own mailserver. For over ten years now we have been using a combination of the following open source applications:

• Postfix MTA with Amavis + Spamassassin
• Dovecot IMAP server
• OpenLDAP

Whilst these are super-stable and bulletproof solutions, the main issue with such a solution is the administration - setting up users, changing passwords, vacation notifications, sieve etc. It is also a lonely business administering a custom mailserver, where set-up is never going to be completely standard.

A couple of years ago I migrated to a new mailserver, on which I installed iRedMail. iRedMail is a pre-packaged mailserver solution, based on all the software that I was using already (Postfix, Dovecot, OpenLDAP), but with the benefit of a slick admin panel that pulls it all together and provides ongoing support. It also incorporates Roundcube for webmail, undoubtedly prettier than Squirrelmail, which we were using before. iRedMail even includes a pre-configure Fail2ban, essential to protect your internet-facing server from attack.

There are two web administration panels to choose from - the free and open source panel and the Pro panel. Both interfaces are attractive and functional, but predictably the Pro panel has more functionality at a price. Some would call this Crippleware, but bear in mind that the server itself has full functionality - this is merely the configuration of that server. If you are happy to configure LDAP yourself, then you don’t strictly need to use the Pro panel. See “Features and Comparison” half way down this page. Whilst the Pro panel does come with the source code, the developer explicitly restricts your right to distribute.

Installation is very fast - but must be on a fresh server - I tried to upgrade from an existing Postfix install and it ended badly. Updates are delivered as a web page of instructions, which I have come to prefer to running an upgrade script, as you can intelligently decide whether you are happy with each change proposed. The downside is that you could easily miss a step and leave your server only partially “upgraded”.

Whilst the forums are quiet, the developer is very responsive to posts and has dealt efficiently which each issue that I encountered. Roundcube has proven to be a very attractive webmail interface and includes Sieve administration for server-based filtering and vacation notices.

Overall we are very happy iRedMail users - if there is an easier way of running an Open Source mailserver, I have not discovered it.

Installation

# apt-get install smbfs smbclient

Create password file

$ echo "username=abc" >> /home/username/.smbpassword
$ echo "password=p455w0rd" >> /home/username/.smbpassword
$ chmod go-rwx /home/username/.smbpassword

Add network drives

Edit /etc/fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>      <type>      <options>                    <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc              proc        defaults                     0       0
/dev/sda1       /                  ext3        defaults,errors=remount-ro   0       1
/dev/sda5       none               swap        sw                           0       0
/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0      udf,iso9660 user,noauto                  0       0
//hostname/D$   /media/shared      cifs        auto,rw,uid=trident,gid=users,fmask=0664,dmask=0775,iocharset=iso8859-15,credentials=/home/user/.smbpassword 0 0

Having done this, I find that you have to issue a:

$ sudo mount -a

This simply remounts any unmounted filesystems from /etc/fstab.

Mount directly

$ sudo mount -t cifs //hostname/D$ /media/drive_d -o username=..,password=...,auto,rw,uid=...,gid=...,file_mode=0664,dir_mode=0775,iocharset=iso8859-15
$ sudo mount -t cifs //hostname/D$ /media/drive_d -o auto,rw,uid=...,file_mode=0664,dir_mode=0775,iocharset=iso8859-15,credentials=/home/user/.smbpasswd
$ sudo umount /media/drive_d

Unmount

You unmount by referencing the mount point.

$ sudo umount /media/drive_d

OpenOffice

There is a bug in OpenOffice which prevents you from being able to open documents by clicking on the file from within a Samba share. To fix this replace the default %U switch with %f in the KDE Menu configuration editor - right click over the KDE start menu → Menu Editor; next find every occurrence of the OO suite and replace %U with %f.

References

• http://www.justlinux.com/nhf/Filesystems/Mounting_smbfs_Shares_Permanently.html
• http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/mounting-an-smbfs-using-fstab-461202/