Topic: Dumped Exchange for SME - findings

[Gary]

As per the subject I've ridded my company of a Windows 2000 Server with Exchange. The company I work for and it's 50+ plus employees now use SME 5.6U4 for email and proxy - mostly without noticing the difference.
We still have a Win2k box as domain controller - I would have liked for all clients to log onto the SME and use their personal folders on it but switching domains in windows is such a pain because it creates a blank profile and getting it back is a nightmare. I may get around to that soon.

I used the Exmerge tool to migrate all the exchange mailboxes to separate PST files then it was just a case importing into Outlook again into a new personal folder for each machine.
Never made use of Public or shared Folders so they won't be misses. What people have noticed is the shared internal address book has vanished without a replacement. I can't for the life of me see the SME IMAP solution working for people, or getting it to work properly and I know that is down to Outlook more than anything.
The Out of Office assistant has been spotted as absent as well as shared calendars - the former SME can do with User Manager, the latter was never really used because of the complexity of using it - but the job is now being done by the open source PHP based Project Based Calendaring System running in an iBay and now everyone uses it - big thumbs up there - a thoroughly good piece of kit!
I've had and still have DNS problems which forces me to choose the Repair option on my network connection in XP to get it working again - simply putting the SME ip as proxy with port 3128 into IE circumvents that problem so I assume there is a glitch with the transparent Squid proxying? No great shakes though.
VPN worked straight away which I found amazing - I just changed the IP of the VPN server from the Windows box to SME on my existing VPN connection settings and my home PC connected and I was using Terminal Services Administration mode instantly.

All in all the migration has been fairly painless, the most users have had to do is learn to press Send / Receive on Outlook unless they want to stick with or change the default 10 minute check! I've has to swop primary and secondary DNS servers on the client machines around a few times - with SME as primary they can browse the web without proxy settings but log on slowly and can't add Active Directory printers whilst having the Win box as primary meant email retrieval was shaky at best. Once I get a solution to switching domains without the hassle of the profiles I'll get them on SME which will do away with the Active Directory / Bind issues I seem to have.

I'm no Linux expert (obviously) but learning and using command line, SSH and the like has been enjoyable. I hope this will spurn others to ditch the beast that is MS.

Gary

[Del]

Hi Gary,
Was the Project Based Calendaring System easy to install and configure?
Thanks,
Del

[Gary]

It's simply a case of unzipping it into an iBay and editing two files to point to the MySQL database which I created with the myPHPadmin contrib.

Version 6 uses PEAR which I couldn't get to work at all - version 5 works fine.

[Dan Williams]

Sounds very interesting.
Could you please post the link to the "Project Based Calendaring System" you used?
Thanks,
Dan

[Gary]

http://www.pbcs.org

[Dan Williams]

Hello,
Thank you for the link.
Is there more to this than meets the eye?
What I mean is Twiggi seems to do all of this and more, unless there is somthing I do not see?
Dan

[Madhatter]

How about doing a howto?

[Gary]

PBCS is just for shared calendars. Twiggi does that and more but I don't need 'the more'. Users like the interface, and it's simple to operate - that's about it.
As for a howto, it would just be a repeat of the PBCS install document!

[ryan]

For those interested in this topic, I have been monitoring a similar solution:

http://www.opengroupware.org/

It allows full features of Outlook or a webclient, but the connector is not open source and is licensed.  Check it out.....

ryan

[Rance]

Great info, Gary!

[Jon Roberts]

I'm looking for a calendaring tool to run on e-smith that gives similar features to Outlook in 'groupware-mode' (i.e. you have a personal calendar, but have the ability to view other peoples calendars aswell, depending on permission - full access or read-only).

I have installed the imp addons, with kronolith.  Nice calendar, but no great options for sharing.  I also installed twiggi.  Again, works well, but it seems that all calendar entries are associated to a group (and only one group).  So you can't see just your own, or easily choose by person.

At least, that's what it looks like based on my testing, but I'm fairly new to this and so could be wrong.  If so, please let me know.

The question is, before I try over with this PCBS system, can you let me know if its what I'm after.

I know the opengroupware stuff looks pretty interesting, but from the HowTo, the install looks a little daunting for a novice on Linux, so I'm looking elsewhere first.

[Ed Form]

Jon Roberts wrote:
>
> I'm looking for a calendaring tool to run on e-smith that
> gives similar features to Outlook in 'groupware-mode' (i.e.
> you have a personal calendar, but have the ability to view
> other peoples calendars aswell, depending on permission -
> full access or read-only).

Why mess about with a server based system when Lotus organiser does this perfectly and only costs 25$ a pop?

Save all the organiser files as the multi-user type, in a common directory on the server, and with or without passwords as rquired, then anyone on the network can access any file with a couple of mouse clicks if they have the necessary passwords, and files can be common calenders for groups of people, or solo calendars with access rights for others. You also get a real professional interface and not one of those horrible browser based things that every Tom Dick and Harry is producing with PHP.

Ed Form

[Jon Roberts]

Ed Form wrote:
 
> Why mess about with a server based system when Lotus
> organiser does this perfectly and only costs 25$ a pop?


Ed,

Thanks for the idea. I used to use Organiser in the 'old days' and am now a committed Lotus Notes fan, so the idea fits well.  

I guess its because of that that I assumed you needed Notes & Domino for the calendar sharing bits (like Outlook needs exchange), but if a shared drive on the e-smith is all that's needed, then its well worth a look.

Is Organiser still a current product?  (with apologies in advance for using this forum to IBM products...)

[Ed Form]

Jon Roberts wrote:
>
> Ed Form wrote:
>  
> > Why mess about with a server based system when Lotus
> > organiser does this perfectly and only costs 25$ a pop?
>
> Is Organiser still a current product?  (with apologies in
> advance for using this forum to IBM products...)

I bought 14 copies about 3 weeks ago.

By all means write off forum if you want any more details.

Ed Form

[ATM Logic]

Has anyone got PBCS version 6.1 Working?

Seems something for sure in the PEAR, I have tried on a few versions of E-Smith, I have 5.1 working perfect on a few, but no luck at all in 6  

I would say with E-Smith 5.6 or better, and this PBCS who needs Exchange, and I am slowly turning a customer away from Lotus Org.