[cobalt-users] Qube 3, IMAP, MySQL, PHP question from inexperienced new owner: be gentle!

["Dave Nanian" <dnanian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

OK, my heart's on my sleeve, people. Please be gentle with me: I've read
a lot of posts on this group in the archives, and I've Googled, I
couldn't quite find the answer to my questions.

First a bit of history of this particular set of issues (and sorry if
this is a bit long winded...trust that I'm leaving out a lot of detail
that I would have liked to have seen when I searched this group and the
rest of the 'net; if anyone thinks it's a good idea, I'll put together a
"HOWTO" and post it):

I've got a 1 week old Qube 3 serving as a mail and web server: that
works mostly fine (see IMAP "folder" question below). I wanted to host a
discussion board, so I also installed vMessage, and that's where the
trouble began: it wouldn't work at all, even though everything it
"required" was already installed on the Qube.

It seems that the PHP installation on the Qube 3 wasn't compiled with
MySQL support. As such, mysql_connect (and the rest of the MySQL support
functions) weren't available in the default setup. So, suddenly, I was
thrust deep into figuring out a whole lot of stuff I'd never done
before...or at least, not in the last 20 years. The last *nix box I had
was a NeXT cube, back in the very early days of the Web.

So, after hunting around madly, searching, reading, and plundering my
aging brain for long-forgotten commands, I figured out where MySQL's
sources are, and what PHP is and where it's found, and managed to
initially build and install both from regular tarred sources.

After that was done, and everything seemed to be working OK, vMessage
*almost* installed, but couldn't find the socket it was looking for. A
bunch more fiddling, searching and reading and I found the socket in
/tmp, figured out how to get vMessage to point to it...whew. vMessage
worked! Wow!

Alas, then the WebMail program was broken, because I didn't know to
compile PHP with the IMAP support. And trying to do that I found that
the IMAP libraries weren't on the machine, so I had to find and build
that...and now it's all working.

Later, I found the MySQL RPMs, and figured out how to deal with those
(the problem with the CC command threw me for a loop for a while), and
installed the newest version using that, which put things in different
(better) places, and allowed me to back out my vMessage fix. OK, so now
everything is *really* working right. I *think*.

Which finally leads me to my questions!

1. On my system, my IMAP client (Outlook) can't create folders. Is this
a property of the IMAP server that I didn't enable, or do I always have
to create folders on the Qube in WebMail?

2. I compiled IMAP with the "modern linux" option. Is that the right one
for the Qube 3? Anything else I should have done? Is there an RPM for
this that I can use?

3. Are there any special options that MySQL should be compiled with, or
is a straight "default" RPM build/install exactly the right thing to
use?

4. Same for PHP: there wasn't any RPM I could find, so I just sort of
compiled it with the options that looked "right". But I clearly guessed
wrong a number of times, and I'm more than a bit worried that I missed
some stuff. What options should I compile with to get this done "right"?

5. I'd like to connect the Qube 3 to a APC SmartUPS 500 (USB). However,
hunting around, it doesn't look like the various UPS control packages
support this UPS. And the ones that do (APC's) seem to have GUIs, which
-- obviously -- the Qube doesn't have. SuSE has something that I found
during my search, but this is a RedHat distribution and it probably
won't work. Suggestions?

6. The Qube 3 web setup doesn't seem to support virtual domains; if
they're to be done, it looks like they have to be done manually. Is this
something I can add to the friendly GUI with some optional package I
don't know about?

7. Finally, any suggestions on a good book or two on Linux admin with a
focus on the non-GUI stuff that's just not on this box? I looked at a
few that weren't very detailed or well indexed...I figure the list
subscribers/readers have been through the lot, and have detailed
opinions.

Thanks so much, in advance, and I'm very sorry for both the length of
this post and my obvious inexperience in all things Linux. Truly, I'm
shocked I was able to get things working at all! (A big thank you to
everyone who has posted previously, since I raided your knowledge over
and over again.)
--
Dave Nanian