Aerospace Software Ltd.

Citadel Alternate Clients How-to Guide

For Mandriva Linux 2009

Scope

Citadel is an excellent groupware system, and it is extremely easy to install. It comes with a web interface that works really well although the default theme looks a bit dated (Google for other themes!). Sometimes using dedicated client programs give better results. This guide briefly shows how to install common clients with Citadel.

I mainly use Webcit to configure Citadel - create/delete user accounts. My users all use Thunderbird for IMAP email over SSL.

Citadel and Webcit ports and protocols

Supported Mail Protocols:

SMTP port 25
SMTP over SSL port 465 (Best!)
We also use SMTP alternate port 2525 (To get past ISP blocks)
IMAP port 143
IMAP SSL port 993 (Best!)
POP port 110
POP SSL port 992

Supported Calendar protocols:

GroupDAV
iCalendar
DCE TNEF (Through a Bynari Outlook Connector)

If you don't want to use the Web interface:

The best mailer to use is Mozilla Thunderbird, with IMAP and SSL protocols, but Outlook will also do it.
The easiest calendar client to use is Mozilla Sunbird.

Mozilla Thunderbird and Sunbird

You can use Thunderbird (Email) and Sunbird (Calendar) with Citadel (or Thunderbird with the Lightning plugin). It works really well with these clients, but while setting up Thunderbird is straight forward, Sunbird is a little obscure.

You can get them here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/ and http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/

It is important that you use the IMAP protocol with Thunderbird. The POP protocol will work and will provide basic functions, but it is slow when you have large numbers of messages. IMAP is faster and provides support for mail folders. Once you have a basic setup going with IMAP, go back into the server settings and change it to SSL for security and peace of mind. Also set "When I delete a message: Remove it immediately" in the Server settings.

Many ISPs block port 25 outgoing. if you run your own mail server and gets tripped up by this annoyance, you have two options. You can create an extra listener on port 2525 on your mail server, or (better!) you can use SMTP over SSL on port 465.

For Citadel calendars, install Sunbird, then click File, Subscribe to Remote Calendar, On the network, Next, iCalendar (ICS), Location: http://mail.example.com/groupdav/Calendar, Next, Name: whoever, Next, Finish. If all went well, a username and password dialogue will pop up - enter your data and tell Sunbird to remember it.

To get the calendar from Citadel, click File, Reload remote calendars and to push the changes back to Citadel, click File, Publish calendar.

This simple protocol is however subject to race conditions if there are multiple users of the same calendar.

SOGo Connector for Thunderbird and Lightning

If you want full email, calendar and task list capability in Thunderbird, then you should try the SOGo Connector. It is a DAV plugin for Thunderbird: http://www.inverse.ca/english/contributions/sogo_connector.html

Seamonkey

If your users are heavy internet and mail users (business people doing Sales), then you should consider installing Seamonkey, since they may be happier with a single application that does everything, like the old Netscape Communicator.

You can get Seamonkey here: http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

Korganizer and Kontact

Note that Korganizer/Kontact should work with Citadel (use the URL http://mail.example.com/groupdav/), but it is slow to display changes from Citadel and I could not get it to save changes back to Citadel. Mozilla Sunbird is recommended till the Korganizer/Kontact developers get their bugs sorted out.

Outlook and Exchange

The easiest way to make Outlook work is with the IMAP (also IMAP SSL) protocol. This will give full email support with folders, but the calendar function will not work with Citadel this way, since Outlook doesn't do the GroupDAV protocol.

The way to get full calendar support, is with the Bynari Connector (http://www.citadel.org/doku.php/connector) which will then make Outlook work in Enterprise mode using the DCE (Exchange) protocol. I have never used a connector though, since Thunderbird with Sunbird works just as well and costs nothing.

However, using Citadel with the Bynari Connector, you can replace dozens of Exchange servers with a single Citadel server. Citadel is much more efficient than Exchange and has a much better Oracle BerkeleyDB back end, so the cost savings with switching a large Exchange setup to Citadel is enormous.

SSL

Note that if you use SSL, then all HTTP URLs should be changed to HTTPS. For example, the iCalendar client should use https://mail.example.com/groupdav/Calendar. That is the only difference.

Sharing private Mail folders and Calendars

In a business setting, it is frequently necessary for a secretary to access the Boss' Mail and Calendar. The trick to doing this in Citadel is to temporarily elevate the Boss to an Aide user. Then log in as the Boss, select his Mail room, and click Advanced, Edit or Delete this room, Access controls, then invite the secretary user. Repeat with the Calendar and Tasks rooms, then set the Boss back to Network user.

Now in the Secretary's Rooms, the Boss' rooms will show up as nnnnnnnnnn.Mail, nnnnnnnnnnnn.Calendar and nnnnnnnnnn.Tasks. You can also access these rooms from Thunderbird and Sunbird, just use the whole 10 digit number plus name to identify them.

Webmail Alternatives

Many people complain that Webcit looks fugly. There are alternate themes for Webcit available from http://www.icoss.net/citadel/blue/. Put the theme in /usr/local/webcit/static.local. If it doesn't look good, delete the files again - simple as that. I found these themes look better, but don't work on a really small screen such as the Eee PC 701.

If you seriously want something different, use Roundcube http://roundcube.net/ and http://trac.roundcube.net/wiki/Howto_Install, or Squirrelmail http://www.squirrelmail.org/.