An Easy Step-by-Step to Installing and Running Roundcube Webmail on Ubuntu/Linux Mint

RoundCube Webmail is a free and open source Webmail with browser-based multilingual IMAP client packed with plenty of AJAX goodness. RoundCube Webmail comes with an application-like user interface and provides full functionality you expect from an email client, address book, folder manipulation, including MIME support, message searching and spell checking.

interesting and unique about RoundCube Webmail is that it is lightweight, lightning fast and easy to use. During your webserver supports PHP 5 and MySQL, you will be able to install RoundCube Webmail on your site and access it on your domain. you should know: RoundCube Webmail installation is relatively easy and fast. more clearly about how to install RoundCube Webmail, you can follow the guide to install RoundCube Webmail on Ubuntu / Linux Mint in below

On January 09, Roundcube project announce another release of the Roundcube webmail 0.7.1 and update brings some bug fixes and translation updates to the 0.7 stable release

Here’s Release features of RoundCube Webmail 0.7.1

• Available in over 70 languages
• Drag-&-drop message management
• Full support for MIME and HTML messages
• Sophisticated privacy protection
• Compose messages with attachments
• Multiple sender identities
• Full featured address book with groups and LDAP connectors
• Find-as-you-type address book integration
• Richtext/HTML message composing
• Forwarding messages with attachments
• Searching messages and contacts
• Threaded message listing
• IDNA support
• Spell checking
• IMAP folder management
• Shared/global IMAP folders
• Support for external SMTP server
• Support for access control lists (ACL)
• Built-in caching for fast mailbox access
• Unlimited users and messages
• Template system for custom skins
• Plug-in API for flexible exensions

How to Install RoundCube Webmail on Ubuntu / Linux Mint

Before get started install RoundCube Webmail, you need to install a web server on Ubuntu (Apache, PHP, MySQL) called LAMP server, open terminal then running following commands:

sudo apt-get install lamp-server^

After installing  LAMP Server on ubuntu/Linux mint, you can now follow these instructions to install Roundcube Webmail on Ubuntu:

Step 1 : Creating A MySQL Database & User

Open the terminal and run this command to log in to MySQL server (use the MySQL password you have entered during the installation of the LAMP Server):

mysql -u root -p

Create a database for Roundcube Webmail  Ex: roundcubedb

create database roundcubedb;

Create MySQL user for access  Roundcube Webmail  (example: usercube)

create user usercube;

Now Give user: usercube a password

set password for 'usercube' = password('usercube');

set  privileges usercube to access database roundcubedb using this command:

grant all privileges on roundcubedb.* to ‘usercube’ identified by ‘usercube’;

Now, Exit from MySQL server,by typing command:

exit

Step 2: Installing Roundcube Webmail

In this case Roundcube Webmail will be installed in the directory /var/www/webmail. Download and extract archieve Roundcube Webmail to directory /var/www/webmail

cd /tmp && wget -O roundcubemail-0.7.1.tar.gz http://goo.gl/zGnGZ
sudo tar -xzvf roundcubemail-0.7.1.tar.gz -C /var/www
sudo mv /var/www/roundcubemail-0.7.1/ /var/www/webmail

change ownership directory /var/www/webmail/temp and /var/www/webmail/logs to user and group www-data ( www-data is user and group web server)

sudo chown -R www-data.www-data /var/www/webmail/temp
sudo chown -R www-data.www-data /var/www/webmail/logs

Import database RoundCube to mysql server, login to mysql server then typing these command

mysql -u root -p roundcubedb < /var/www/webmail/SQL/mysql.initial.sql 

To start the installation of Roundcube, open chrome or firefox browser, on address bar type :

http://localhost/webmail/installer/

This is screenshot page installer Roundcube Webmail

Enter your own configuration you want to use (SMTP & IMAP settings, etc.). If you want to manage your Gmail account with Roundcube Webmail, you can check this page for Gmail SMTP & IMAP settings. Then scroll down and fill your MySQL database details you have already created:

Download file main.inc.php & db.inc.php and copy to directory /var/www/webmail/config

sudo cp main.inc.php db.inc.php /var/www/webmail/config

Installation Roundcube Webmail complete, remove the directory /var/www/webmail/installer:

sudo rm -rf  /var/www/webmail/installer

Roundcube Webmail ready to use, Access Roundcube Webmail via browser (http://localhost/webmail/) then sign in using your email (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.)

This screenshot Roundcube Mail Inbox

Done. RoundCube Webmail with browser-based now available on ubuntu/linux mint…:)