What are you doing?
Upgrading the hardware, mail server software and webmail software on
romulan.oakton.edu, the student e-mail server. The most
obvious change to students will be the new Webmail client Squirrelmail
which will replace the existing IMP webmail client.
For off campus users, webmail will also now require SSL security.
When will this happen?
Thursday, September 9, 2004 at 10:30 PM. At this time student
e-mail services on the old romulan will be shutdown, and we will begin
migrating the existing email and configuration settings from the old
server to the new server. The new server should be
online and fully operational by 8:00 AM, Friday September 10, 2004.
How can I report a problem?
If you experience a problem with your e-mail after the conversion,
please contact the Information Technology Help Desk:
helpdesk@oakton.edu or speak with the on-duty computer lab coordinator
in any of the open computer labs (Des Plaines rooms 1835, 1860, 2622 or
A241 at Skokie)
Why are you doing this anyway?
Our current Student and Employee mail servers are running on 6 year old
server hardware with limited processing power and storage.
Support
and upgrades are no longer available for both the operating system and
hardware. A newer operating system and software should offer
better
security, reliability, features and performance. The new hardware
should offer substantially better performance, storage capacity and
continued reliability.
What are the main benefits?
The squirrelmail webmail client is significantly more full
featured than IMP See the notes below.
Your email quota will increase from 45 MB to 100 MB
Off campus users will now use secure (SSL) connections to the
webmail server to better protect privacy.
The new server should be faster and allow us to continue to offer
reliable services.
Can I continue to use Netscape or other IMAP clients?
Absolutely. On campus access to email via Netscape is unchanged and off campus IMAP access with Netscape, Mozilla, Outlook Express, etc. is also possible if you configure it yourself.
What gets converted?
All existing saved email messages and mailboxes will be brought over.
The conversion should preserve seen state, answered status,
priority and other flags for all existing messages. Any messages
received during the conversion will be queued and delivered after the
new server is up and running. All entries in the current IMP (Webmail)
addressbook will be converted into Squirrelmail's format.
Note that due to the differences in format some of your personal
address book, some entries may need to be reformatted
manually. Any existing sieve email filters or email
forwarding status will be preserved. Your password also
will not change.
What gets lost?
Due to the difference in format, any existing webmail preferences will
be lost. (most of these settings would be irrelevant.) Any
existing email signature will also have to be recreated.
What has
Changed in Webmail?
The new Squirrelmail client offers many new features unavailable in
IMP. Some of these include:
Message Search feature: Allows you to search for messages
by header fields or even key words in the body of the message either in
a particular folder or across all folders.
Enhanced Spell Checker: Offers suggestions for
misspelled words and allows you to correct the message in the
composition window.
HTML composer: Create HTML formatted messages in webmail
including different fonts, colors and sizes of text, images, tables
etc. (This feature requires Internet Explorer 6)
Better Reply to HTML messages: No more funny HTML codes
when you reply to HTML formatted messages
Easy Server side Filters - including a SPAM filter: Create
flexible server side filters to properly route, reject or delete
messages. Take advantage of Oakton's SPAM tagging service to
get rid of some unwanted messages.
Secure Off Campus Access: Access to webmail
from off campus now requires SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
encryption to protect privacy and passwords. See http://www.oakton.edu/resource/it/sslinfo.html
for more details about SSL at Oakton
Visible Quota Status: Squirrelmail show a colored email
quota usage graph on the main window (Don't let it get to RED!)
Manage/Delete Large numbers of messages (Toggle
All): Come back from vacation and find you have
2000 messages in you Inbox, you can now delete them all in one step!
Permanently delete individual messages from Trash: No
need to empty the Trash completely unless you want to,
LDIF Import: Allows you to bring in a personal address book
from any email client that supports the LDIF standard.
Squirrelmail continues to use Oakton's LDAP directory to allow you to
look up fellow Oakton students or employees.
Printer Friendly option: Makes it easier to kill
trees and get paper copies.
Where can I find out more about how to
use Squirrelmail Webmail?
Context sensitive help is available within squirrelmail (just click on
the Help link in the menu. Oakton's Squirrel Mail
instructions can be found at:
http://www.oakton.edu/resource/it/? Full
information about Squirrelmail can be found at the squirrelmail web
site: http://www.squirrelmail.org/
What hardware/software will you be
using? The new server is a 2.8 Ghz P4 Xeon dual processor HP Proliant
DL380G3 with 2 GB of memory. Network connectivity is via gigabit
ethernet. Disk storage is two mirrored (RAID 1) 36 GB, 15,000 RPM
disks for the operating system. E-mail data is stored on our 6
TB, 2
GB/s Fibre Channel, Storage Area Network (SAN). The
operating system
is Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Mail Server software is the Cyrus
IMAP
mail server from Carnegie Melon University. The Mail Transfer
Agent
(MTA) is qmail. The web mail client is squirrelmail,
a php
application running on the Apache web server. This is
pretty much an
update to our existing email environment.
Where can I find out more information
about my account or student access to technology at Oakton? Visit the "IT for Students" web page at http://www.oakton.edu/resource/it/forstu.htm
Why doesn't Oakton's email system do
<insert feature here> ?
Probably because we didn't think of it, or maybe because it is not
possible. Suggestions are always appreciated. Send your
requests for feature enhancements, improved default preferences, etc.
to the Information Technology Help Desk helpdesk@oakton.edu
Who did all the work? Most of the configuration work was done by John Widera
(John is going to be very happy when this project is over.) with
assistance from Jim Hickey and Francisco Sosa.
Julia Gray did the "Oakton Theme" and Dann Foster, Sue Roberts and
Nadine Poyser assisted with testing, feature and configuration
suggestions and documentation. Administrative and technical
direction provided by John Wade
