Is There a Linux Client Solution for Exchange 2007? 385
CrazedSanity writes "I have been working at my state job for about 7 months now, using the Exchange plugin for Evolution to check my email. Very recently the higher-ups decided to migrate to Exchange 2007, which effectively destroyed my ability to check my email through any method other than webmail (which means I have to constantly refresh/reload the webmail window). I'm sure somebody else has encountered the problem, but I'm wondering if anybody has come up with a working solution?" Note: CrazedSanity's looking for a client that will work with Exchange in a situation where replacing the Exchange install with an open-source equivalent isn't an option.
Re:what am I missing here... (Score:3, Informative)
uhm, thunderbird ?
or one of the many other mail clients?
Ummm... Tbird doesn't speak Exchange's protocol.
I had the same problem (Score:3, Informative)
I have a terminal-window that runs a bash-script that uses wget (or curl, don't really remember) to pull down the webmail-main-page and actually grep for the "boldness" of the new messages. When ever there is a bold line somewhere in the main view it makes a noise and flashes a tcl/tk-window saying that there are new stuff on the web-mail. I tab to the correct place in the firefox, refresh and there you go.
I know the solution is a little weird, but it works and it does what I need, so I really do not care to try out something else (except advocating OSS in my work place).
Re:Duh (Score:3, Informative)
Re:what am I missing here... (Score:2, Informative)
perhaps use thunderbird (Score:3, Informative)
Re:what am I missing here... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, Exchange does support IMAP, but usually Exchange admins disable it for the explicit purpose of preventing people from using clients other than Outlook.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
I'd imagine most folk that have administered a mail server have sent mail with telnet. It's not difficult and if your new server is doing something weird it can be very useful for diagnosis.
You just do something like:
telnet mail.example.com 25
EHLO me.example.com
MAIL FROM: <me@me.example.com>
RCPT TO: <you@mail.example.com>
DATA
Subject: Message sent with telnet
Here's my message body.
.
Re:Meh. (Score:3, Informative)
You can use Outlook 2003 with Exchange 2007 if the Exchange admin hasn't disabled access for older clients. I think Outlook 2003 works better with Crossover than Outlook 2007.
Re:what am I missing here... (Score:5, Informative)
By default, Exchange 2007 has POP3 and IMAP services disabled out of the box. An administrator has to run services.msc and change their states from disabled to automatic, and start them. SMTP to the Internet also is disabled and needs to be explicitly enabled, and a command run to get anti-spam agents enabled and running. However, this is not out of malice, this is just a basic common sense "ship as few possibly hackable features running out of the box as possible, let the customer enable what he/she needs" philosophy.
Once the services are enabled, Exchange 2007 is as good a POP/IMAP server as anything out there. Thunderbird works well with it. Of course, both the POP and IMAP servers support SSL/TLS.
Maybe some Windows admins are trained to only allow Outlook to connect, but it takes almost no time at all to allow other E-mail clients such as Thunderbird or mail.app to work without any issues.
Yes. Zimbra. (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, Zimbra, and many other Groupware solutions meant just for that purpose.
Re:I had the same problem (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
# man uuencode
uuencode(1)
NAME
uuencode, uudecode - encode a binary file, or decode its representation
SYNOPSIS
uuencode [-m] [ file ] name
uudecode [-o outfile] [ file ]...
DESCRIPTION ...
Uuencode and uudecode are used to transmit binary files over transmission mediums that do not support other than
simple ASCII data.
OpenChange (Score:5, Informative)
OpenChange is an open source MAPI client that supports all versions of Exchange up to and including 2007, it is native MAPI and thus does everything you would expect an Exchange client to do, and it does it a reasonable speed.
http://www.openchange.org/ [openchange.org]
There is already an Evolution plug-in that will be mainlined into GNOME 2.24. However, you can currently get it for Fedora 10 and other platforms.
The current Evolution plug-in uses OWA web page scrapping and is really lame, and it most likely broke from web interface changes in 2007.
Re:evolution branch (Score:5, Informative)
I've spent considerable time trying to get this work and it is still nowhere near being mature enough to be usable.
Don't get me wrong, it's better than it was a few months ago. It will allow Evolution to make a connection and even download most of the folder information. For us, it has trouble deciphering email addresses in the headers, doesn't display some messages at all and, most annoyingly, continues to consume all available memory until it crashes.
Re:Meh. (Score:3, Informative)
Exchange 2007 web services API (Score:2, Informative)
The Exchange 2007 web services API should make this job easier.
Introduction to Exchange Web Services in Exchange 2007
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb408417.aspx [microsoft.com]
New Programmability Features in Exchange Server 2007
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332450.aspx [microsoft.com]
More discussions:
Exchange 2007
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3891474 [ubuntuforums.org]
http://psankar.blogspot.com/2007/10/write-evolution-plugins-using-mono-c.html [blogspot.com]
"Exchange Server 2007 has a Exchange Web-Services Interface. IIUC Working with web-services should be a lot easier and featureful when done via Mono than plain C. So implementing support for Exchange 2007 can be done via this Mono plugins (which I am planning to takeup as my ITO task)"
From an Exchange Admin (Score:1, Informative)
Having admin'ed Exchange since 5.5, let me point out...
Yes, Exchange supports POP3 and IMAP (pull)... not by default, but not difficult to enable.
Yes, Exchange supports SMTP... but since mail is often sent by Exchange, it's often disabled for outbound access. IF you want to look at enabling relay, you can require authentication, or you can allow (private) subnets to relay.
I have to wonder what's so bad about OWA... and there is a tool called OWANotify which acts as a systray icon to identify when mail arrives (instead of leaving OWA open).
this isn't anything new... but...
Exchange offers: User collaboration... scheduling, public folders for sharing (though this is being phased out in favor of SharePoint), etc. These are not available except via OWA and Outlook (via MAPI)
Additionally, mail is stored on Exchange based on "Single Instance Storage", meaning that if I send an email to 20 other users in the exchange database (which there can be multiple of), only 1 copy will be stored. This presents a HUGE space savings as it relates to the database, and backup jobs (when performed correctly), as well as file server space (since most people just throw their PST's on the file server, which is being backed up anyway).
I *HATE* quotas since it forces people to use PST's which fight against the benefits that Exchange brings. There are other approaches (auto archive, cleaning the trash bin, etc) that can be as effective.
Assuming you don't care about anything EXCEPT email (which Exchange is *WAY* overkill for, price, feature, and resource-wise), I would recommend IMAP (since that keeps data on the server) over POP3. Though I use OWA myself :)
YMMV
Re:Quick and dirty (Score:4, Informative)
That's an option.. But why waste resources for just 1 program. Running WINE (http://www.winehq.org) or Crossover would be a much nicer option. Last I checked, Office 2003 runs near perfectly and you don't need to spend the money or the resources on running an entire Windows OS on top of a Linux install.
Just my 0.0002 cents
Re:Duh...TELNET?? (Score:2, Informative)
IMHO, that's not an option. TELNET into Exchange Servers nowadays has been (mostly) blocked due to the inherent vulnerabilities, i.e.- taking over an e-mail server. Not only that, but what with IMAP, SMTP is about the last thing anyone wants in this 'make it pretty' world in the newer servers. I've gotten along with 'mail' and 'pine' for the longest time, but not everything is easy to someone who doesn't understand how to or has not learned the 'old' ways; or how an e-mail server works. Everything doesn't need to be GUI, but try to do anything without it (at least in the world of the average user).
The problem isn't mail. It's everything else. (Score:3, Informative)
What folks seem to be missing here is that the attraction to Exchange isn't that it's just a mail server. It's the calendaring, tightly coupled with the server that makes it work. Nothing else short of Google Apps has come close to working as well as Outlook + Exchange does.
Now, having said that, there's plenty of good work going on integrating other systems together (I personally run standard IMAP / SMTP for mail, and use Google Calendar for my calendaring). This works great, but is not 'exchange compatable'.
There are some other workarounds - An outlook 2007 client can be configured to publish it's calendar up into Google Calendar via some plugins - once you do that, Thunderbird + Lightning comes very very close to working the same as Outlook does, but it's not exactly an elegant solution.
We've hit hte same problem at one of my clients regarding Outlook 2007 - Evolution no longer works, and some of hte Linux folks are stuck.
The last bit is, as others have said, a vmware install of XP -just- running Outlook. It's not as horrible as you might think :)
5 Solutions (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Quick and dirty (Score:5, Informative)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555851 [microsoft.com]
If Office 2003 worked, then Evolution would work.
Probably IAG (Score:5, Informative)
Our email is being moved over to Exchange.. after being moved off Exchange, to something else.
Previously, the admins dared not place Exchange on the internet, lest it be hacked. So the only way to get your mail was via VPN. Since they configure the concentrator to only allow Windows clients with the firewalling on, you can't access anything on your local network, and yea verily, this did sucketh.
Presently, there is a public IMAP server (running some variety of not-Exhange). And it's nice to be able to get your email without crippling your network connection, and from the IMAP client of your choice (ie, Thunderbird), installed on the device of your choice.
Soon, they intend to move us back onto Exchange. Because they still dare not place Exchange onto the internet, it will be secured behind something called Intelligent Application Gateway [microsoft.com], which appears to be some kind of SSL proxy server.
So our options are....
Given that the current solution works fine, I'm none too happy ; reading the announcement the first question that arose was "Are they idiots?", closely followed by "How fat was the wad of sweaty Billbucks they were given?"
Your options are ; give money to MS, or use a client that sucks (OWA lite). All the other clients suck LESS than OWA Lite, but to access any of them you must give some money to MS. Minimum spend being "a copy of a MS operating system", for IE, and maximum being Outlook. I'm not sure what the license cost of an IAG tunnel client is, but since you have to run it on Windows, it's a guaranteed winner for MS.
fetchexc (Score:2, Informative)
There is a utility called fetchexc that will fetch incoming mail from Exchange 2000/2003 OWA servers. It would need some updating to work with 2007, though.
http://www.saunalahti.fi/juhrauti/index.html [saunalahti.fi]
Re:What I did... (Score:1, Informative)
I'll bet you took absolutely 0 steps to optimize it properly just so could say "You were right" as well.
Exchange is one of the better performing mail server/collaboration solutions available if you take a small amount of time to configure it properly.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
Why? Does the mail server you are trying to connect to not support the latest SMTP RFC [ietf.org]?
Using "EHLO" can give you extended information that tells you the capabilities of the mail server, and when you're trying to diagnose a problem, that's a good thing. Many times I have figured out a mail server is misconfigured from only the response to "EHLO".
Re:Duh...TELNET?? (Score:4, Informative)
As the post above you mentions, I don't think you entirely get the point. Telnet as well as being a way toget a remote shell is also a great way to communicate with servers that use ASCII protocols. For instance I can enter "$ telnet google.ca 80" and type in "GET / HTTP/1.0" and it will return 200 OKAY plus the google homepage. The same goes for SMTP and FTP. So as long as the server supports SMTP you can "telnet" into it.
The more you know.
Re:what am I missing here... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm curious why you say IMAP is fundamentally broken. As a side note, Gmail's POP is quirky; I find that IMAP works much better with Gmail.
I need to store my mail on my mail server (so I can get to my mail from multiple computers), and I like using a local mail client. I need to consolidate mail from six e-mail addresses into one mailbox, so setting POP to "leave mail on the server" isn't a solution. How would you suggest I do this?
The only way I know of would be to set all my other addresses to be forwards instead of full-fledged mailboxes, but that has the undesirable side effect of not allowing me to log in to a particular account's web interface to be able to send mail with the proper return address (I occasionally need to do this). I could also set those accounts to be both mailboxes *and* forwards, but then I've got extra copies of my mail lying around all over the place, and spam would never get deleted, and then my mailboxes would overflow and I'd have to clean up giant piles of paper... you get the idea.
Re:Quick and dirty (Score:4, Informative)
Or ask if you can remote-in via RDP to a server (or even an XP box) running terminal services. RDesktop is a lot less resource-intensive than running Windows/Outlook in a VM.
Someone in the company has to have a Windows box that can accept incoming connections.
Heck, grab an old dusty PC, toss Windows on it, see if you can put it behind your monitor, then RDP or VNC to it.
It's 2008, I have eleven computers in my cube; people literally do not know where to throw all their Pentium 4s. I just sent an email to our director asking him to clarify what the procedure is for getting rid of all this stuff is, since I virtualize pretty much everything now.
Re:Quick and dirty (Score:3, Informative)
Like I said, using a VM to run Outlook can work. However, it's a lot more effort and management into what should simply be a mail application.
Re:Where's the outrage? (Score:5, Informative)
The OWA ("web scraping") Evolution plugin is no longer developed. The new approach is MAPI, which is the connectivity solution for Exchange 2007. Just search for Evolution Exchange MAPI.
Re:From an Exchange Admin (Score:3, Informative)
IIRC, the "single instance storage" feature was removed from Exchange 2007. I heard a lame reason, something along the lines that it was becoming too complex to maintain the code.
Re:IMAP (Score:3, Informative)
Yes it does. Just go to http://exchangeserver/public [exchangeserver] (replace exchangeserver with the FQDN of your server)
Re:Quick and dirty (Score:5, Informative)
Try and get your hands on a copy of TinyXP Rev05. It is the smallest XP re-spin I have found. It uses no more than 45MB RAM after boot-up, leaving plenty of space for your applications.
Brutus (Score:2, Informative)
We're going to be trying Brutus [42tools.com] at our office, for possible deployment to select clients who don't want/need all users running Outlook. They are using Outlook Web Access for many employees, but the problem a tech sees is the users commonly click on an email link, and currently their Novell mail client still comes up.
Brutus requires a connecting agent to be installed server-side, so isn't an option for everyone. But if you're in a position where you have sway with the server admins (or are one), it could be a viable solution.
As to the suggestions of Thunderbird/etc, this is good, but can they get full calendar support? This is very important in an exchange environment, where calendaring (shared calendars, delegates, etc) is the killer feature.
I've been pushing to offer Zimbra or similar as an alternative to Exchange for our clients, but I've still got some headway to make there.
Re:Quick and dirty (Score:4, Informative)
I'll second this.
Alternately you can use NLite (www.nliteos.com) to take your existing XP CD and strip it down.
Re:Duh (Score:3, Informative)
Informative?
A guy suggesting, seriously as far as I can work out, that you can replace Outlook with TELNET! is marked "informative?"
All jokes aside, if their shop is running Exchange 2007, SMTP won't be accessible for him. He'll need to talk MAPI [wikipedia.org] to the exchange server, which technically isn't even a protocol itself, but instead runs over M$ RPC.
Anyone know how to send MAPI commands using TELNET?
OSS Project - "Mailman in the Middle" (Score:3, Informative)
MS publishes the APIs for how their RPC over HTTPS, think its current name is now Outlook Anywhere works. They do this basically so that cell phone and other mobile applications can access the Exchange server. If you want to create a Linux based E-mail app or add functionality to connect to Exchange 2007 that doesn't use IMAP or POP, the best methodology would be to create a connection using the Outlook Anywhere APIs. It could be a cool project, I would be interested in working on it with anybody who wants to step up. Perhaps a interesting approach could be to build Outlook Anyway to IMAP intermediate application that could then be employed to act as an intermediary between whatever Linux client or heck even Windows mail client you wish to use and Exchange 2007. I mean basically you could put the app on your machine, set it first to talk to Exchange 2007 and then setup mail client of choice to talk to IMAP and SMTP on intermediary app. Not saying it wouldn't introduce some delay, but if done right, it would be "wicked helpful" If done in JAVA or "I cannot even believe I am suggesting this" .NET limited to mono supported APIs, then it could be single app for both Window and Linux users. Hit me back if you would be interested in doing something like this. I think we should call it "Mailman in the Middle".
Re:OpenChange (Score:3, Informative)
The most recent comments I've read indicate that the MAPI plugin for Evolution (which is built upon OpenChange libmapi) will not be ready for Evolution 2.24 after all. Perhaps version 2.26 will have what we're waiting for.
http://johnnyjacob.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/evolution-exchange-2007-mapi-provider-changes-in-schedule-and-more/ [wordpress.com]
http://www.go-evolution.org/MAPIProvider [go-evolution.org]
http://www.go-evolution.org/Evo2.24 [go-evolution.org]
http://www.go-evolution.org/Evo2.26 [go-evolution.org]
Re:Where's the outrage? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:does not work (Score:1, Informative)
Yes there is. It's a wine regedit. Search for 'user agent' on this page [tatanka.com.br].
This guy (Dustin) claims he *has* got premium access working this way.
Also note the comment below by slopes that indicates the default will be changed.
Re:Probably IAG (Score:1, Informative)
..."I only know Windows" people in the IT department....I always wonder why people charged with making business decisions about/around linux choose to limit their own perspective by not using the product they're marketing. I'm pretty sure it's laziness.
Great post, will someone mod him up! Where are mod points when you need them.
For a few it is laziness, but not all. I have asked this question to many different management individuals up to and including the Vice Presidents of large telecommunications firms and the primary reason I am always given is the proprietary solution is 'safier'. A few have actively told me, "no one ever got fired for suggesting the proprietary solution". I would consider this the more dominant reason versus laziness.
Plug n Play use to be an issue, those of us who know realize that Linux and open systems has come a long way in that area. I pretty much plug n play everything today with Linux. I think many older IT professionals don't know and don't care to learn how much progress has been made in this area.
The ability to install from 'images' removes that objection. Best of all you will never have an open source vendor coming back to you and telling you that copy of the operating system and/or software application is "no longer valid" because you replaced a crashed hard disk with a new one. Better yet, open source does not care about the 'licensing' issue, therefore ghosting (Kickstarting) a desktop and/or server does not raise that ridiculous red flag. (Both of these things have been in the news of late, the proprietary company's response, "you must purchase a valid copy of the software", but it was legal...right, they don't believe you).
Viruses, phishing, scamming, etc... I know you can secure any server, however I also know there are more problems with one vendor then others...so why put myself in front of that bus! Not a matter of if, but rather when I will get creamed.
Sad really when you consider the per desktop cost of most proprietary solutions. It does not take many desktops before a company realizes a market advantage due to the lower costs of open source options. In our current economy, the time is now to suggest these options. Why waste money buying more processors and more memory (often at very high prices) when you can run Linux on 128 MB of RAM on a Pentium processor without problems. If you have 512 MB, 1GB or more of RAM, GREAT, the Linux operating system will not eat it up which means your applications have more memory available to them and they run so much faster! Heck they run in 256MB very well and scream at 512MB, 1 GB or more. Just another plus for open source over proprietary solutions.
As I read through the posts here I do NOT see anyone saying Outlook 'mail' is necessarily better then other email solutions. Rather its the merged calendar that everyone loves. The ability to create a meeting, have invitations sent out and confirmations received...sharing meeting materials where appropriate, etc... I have used it too, so understand, simple, focus on replacing that specific application for a better solution and by all means include the per user cost savings in your proposal.
Open Source needs to focus on the "Calendar / Meeting" part of their solutions specifically. Advertise the positives, more secure, faster, more compatible even with proprietary solutions. If the calendar and email are open source, you should have no problem getting access via the proprietary solution to them. Shame the opposite is NOT true...based on messages here - the proprietary solutions are not helping, why should they! Again in this economy, play up the higher costs associated with the proprietary solution....its only going to get more expensive not less in the future! Remind them what happens when the current Operating System is no longer supported and they 'force' you to spend money to upgrade. Isn't that a 'business' decision that the business should decide and not be force