Kerio and Debian

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Wow! just wow!

I've been looking for a decent groupware for a small start-up company. Therefore I've been trying out Scalix, Zimbra, OpenXchange (absolute nightmare to get running*) and others. While Scalix and Zimbra are indeed serious concurrence, Kerio just stunned me by it's ease of installation (Scalix took me 1 day, zimbra 1 week, Kerio 5 minutes.**) and administration. Everything seems to work right out of the box.

Being a debian/ubuntu fan, I am missing a Kerio debian version though. It's a real pitty, because Kerio is indeed working (almost) out of the box in debian. As far as i can see the only thing that has to be rewritten is the start-stop script in /etc/init.d/.

I hope this encourages you to release a debian version of Kerio Mailserver.

Disclaimer: This is neither an official nor a supported way of installing. I am not responsible for any damage resulting from following this HowTo. Do it on your own responsibility!

Here's how I did it:

1. Get a clean Debian Etch Server System
2. If postfix/sendmail is installed, remove it:

apt-get remove postfix sendmail

3. Install the needed packages:
alien: Provides the RPM-to-DEB-Conversion
libstdc++5: Required

apt-get install alien libstdc++5

4. Download the Kerio Linux RPM-Package
5. Transform the RPM into a DEB

alien --to-deb --keep-version --scripts kerio-kms-6.3.1-2402.linux.i386.rpm

6. Install the Package

dpkg -i kerio-kms_6.3.1-2402.linux_i386.deb

7. Switch to the Kerio installation dir, and start config wizard

cd /opt/kerio/mailserver
./cfgwizard

8. As /etc/init.d/keriomailserver won't work, just stay in the dir. and start it manually: et voilà!

./mailserver

The admin tool can be installed accordingly on a local computer. (Don't know what a gui's doing on a server ;))

* The new version is still in alpha though...
** All of them running in "unsupported" debian etch environments, normally you probably could install all of them in less than an hour!

I am running Kerio on a XEN domU Virtual Server under Debian Etch 4.0 with 2.6.18 kernel

[Updated on: Wed, 25 April 2007 21:56]

And /etc/init.d/keriomailserver:

case "$1" in
    start)
        echo -n "Starting Kerio MailServer: "
        ulimit -c unlimited
        ulimit -s 2048
        ulimit -n 4096
        cd /opt/kerio/mailserver && ./mailserver
        echo "OK"
    ;;
    stop)
        echo -n "Stopping Kerio MailServer: "
        PID=`pidof mailserver`
        if [ "$PID" ] ; then
            kill $PID
            echo "killing...."
        else
            echo "not running?"
        fi
    ;;
esac