README

Mailshare receives email and presents it in a web interface. CC your
discussions to your Mailshare server's email address. Emails can then
be viewed in a web browser.

This is intended to be used in a team as an alternative to forwarding
emails to the whole team.

License
=======

See https://github.com/RobFisher/mailshare/blob/master/LICENSE

Status
======

Just starting so few features, but it is already somewhat useful.

Installation
============

1. Copy the file settings_example.py to settings.py
2. Edit settings.py, supplying database details for storing emails and
IMAP details for retrieving them.

3. Create a database with MySQL, e.g.:
     mysql -u root -p
     CREATE DATABASE mailshare

4. Let Django set up the database: python manage.py syncdb

     Say yes and answer the prompts when asked to set up a super user
     for Django's authentication system. Later this will be used for
     the admin interface.

5. Set up full text search with MySQL, e.g.:
     sudo cp mailshare/mysql/mailshare.cnf /etc/mysql/conf.d
     sudo service mysql restart
     mysql -u root -p
     USE mailshare;
     ALTER TABLE mailshareapp_mail ADD FULLTEXT(body, subject)
   The config file sets the minimum word length for full text search to
   3. After that you are just creating the index.

Use
===

python manage.py shell
>>> import mailshareapp.process_emails
>>> mailshareapp.process_emails.quick_test()

This downloads 10 emails from the email server and puts them into the
database. You should now have a database containing up to 10
emails. All information from the mail server is also logged to a file
called mailfile. You can delete the database and replay previously
downloaded messages from this file with:

>>> mailshare.mailshareapp.process_emails.quick_test(True)

To view the database contents, start the Django test server with:

python manage.py runserver

Visit http://localhost:8000/admin/mailshareapp/mail/ to see the
emails.

Once you are happy that the IMAP connection is working, you can start
the full email polling process. In settings.py, make sure that
MAILSHARE_IMAP_ENABLE_EXPUNGE is set to True. Then:

poll_mail.sh

This just calls poll_mail.py which sets up the Django environment then
runs mailshareapp.process_emails.poll_emails which runs forever,
retrieving 10 emails at a time, adding them to the database, then
deleting them.

Environment
===========

For information, here is how I set up my environment in Ubuntu
10.04. Other platforms will be supported but I have to start
somewhere.

Install these Ubuntu packages:

lampserver^
libabache2-mod-python
phpmyadmin

 - Apache and MySQL; hook Apache up to Python; and phpMyAdmin to see
 what the database looks like.

python-MySQLdb
 - Hook Python up to MySQL.

python-lxml
 - used to sanitise HTML from emails.

Python libraries:
sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
sudo easy_install django
sudo easy_install django-dajaxice
sudo easy_install django-dajax

Deployment
==========

(See also
http://blog.stannard.net.au/2010/12/11/installing-django-with-apache-and-mod_wsgi-on-ubuntu-10-04/ )

Commands to deploy Mailshare on an Ubuntu 10.04 server:

sudo apt-get install git-core
git clone git://github.com/RobFisher/mailshare.git
sudo apt-get install mysql
sudo cp mailshare/mysql/mailshare.cnf /etc/mysql/conf.d/
sudo service mysql restart
sudo apt-get install apache2
sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-wsgi
sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
sudo easy_install django
sudo easy_install django-dajaxice
sudo easy_install django-dajax
sudo apt-get install python-MySQLdb
sudo apt-get install python-lxml
sudo mkdir /srv/www
sudo ln -s `readlink -f mailshare` /srv/www/mailshare
sudo cp mailshare/apache/mailshare_site /etc/apache2/sites-available/mailshare
sudo a2ensite mailshare
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

cd mailshare
cp settings_example.py settings.py
vim settings.py
# fill in database and IMAP settings; enable IMAP_EXPUNGE;
# add /srv/www/mailshare/templates to TEMPLATE_DIRS

mysql -u root -p
mysql> CREATE DATABASE mailshare;
mysql> quit
python manage.py syncdb
mysql -u root -p
mysql> USE mailshare;
mysql> ALTER TABLE mailshareapp_mail ADD FULLTEXT(body, subject);
bmysql> quit

# The web server needs permission to write into the cache directory
sudo chgrp www-data cache
chmod ug+w cache

# whenever you change source code (including settings.py):
touch mailshare/apache/mailshare.wsgi