Instructions for web alpine by L.Chiappetti

After innumerable years of happy use of alpine (and formerly pine) on Linux (and Unix) as local mail user agent on my personal workstation, and occasional use of a local imap server accessed remotely by a PC-(al)pine installation on a remote laptop, I recently (July 2011) decided to give a try to web alpine.

I never had a real need to use a web mailer (for long lasting missions I preferred to carry a laptop with PC-alpine and activate a local imap server on my personal workstation, for short trips I can live without email ... or eventually ssh or telnet), but this summer I wanted to check my mail from a public Internet point, and wished to do it being able to access my long list of folders and using an interface as close as possible to the one I'm used to (which I consider more or less ideal). So I rejected the idea to use one of the common imap servers of the institute, with the squirrel web mailer, but spent some time experimenting with web alpine in early July 2011.

I did my test. I have the impression that, due to the dismissal of alpine by UW, web alpine remains a half-cooked job (well, may be 80% cooked), particulary for what concerns the installation and user documentation. It is a pity since it looks rather promising to me.

Starting point

This is an account of what I did involving all peculiarities and troubles encountered.

Prerequisites

• an installation of alpine
  In my case I did not use the alpine version bundled with opensuse 11.3, but got the alpine 2.00 version with the full set of patches by Eduardo Chappa (the one I was using before). I originally retrieved it from staff.washington.edu/chappa/alpine/info/all.html, although I understand that now it has been moved elsewhere.
  This installation involved running
  • ./configure
  • make
  and was done last December when I upgraded the OS to 11.3 and customized it. This generated the version of standard alpine I used happily since then.
  Note that making alpine does not make web alpine

• a running imap server
  This was done by our sysman as part of the site standard pre-installation of opensuse 11.3. He installed the bundled UW imap, and his standard self-signed certificates, but did not activate it.
  To activate and test them I did this:
  • used yast to activate the imap and imaps services under xinetd
  • used my normal alpine client (temporarily editing .pinerc) to switch from local inbox and a local folder collection to an imap-based one (according to our standard site arrangement I used the novalidate-cert switch).

• a running http server
  For me the apache httpd bundled with opensuse 11.3 and configured as I am used to during the upgrade I did in last December.

Procedure

1. Obtaining the software is implicit in the prerequisites
2. Use the correct tclsh interpreter is OK in my case (/usr/bin/tclsh exists and is in the path)

3. Compile the software in my case was not implicit in my prerequisite installation. I discovered it later. My alpine installation had no TCL support built in.
   To play safe I did a complete clone of my alpine-2.00 tree (which I left alone) into alpine-2.00bis, cd to there and did
   • make distclean
   • ./configure --with-tcl-lib=tcl8.5 --without-krb5
   • make
   The version of TCL is site dependent and should be discovered by trial and error.

4. Install the software
   The name and commands for this step are somewhat misleading as explained below.

   All operations below are done in the web subdirectory of the alpine (alpine-2.00bis for me) or its subdirectories unless otherwise stated.

   • as prerequisite step (reading the web/INSTALL doc file) I did this which is tentative (it is harmless, but I'm not sure it is really required)
     • retrieve the YUI libraries from http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/download/
     • cd web/cgi/alpine-2.0/lib/yui
     • rm yui
     • move the retrieved zip file into web/cgi/alpine-2.0/lib
     • unzip yui_2.9.0.zip (which recreates and fills the yui subdirectory)
   • cd web/src
   • make
     which is misleading since it is not a make, but the "configure" of web alpine
   • make install
     which is also misleading since it is the real "make"

     Such steps have filled the web subdirectory with a working installation, which has then to be moved into the site dependent http tree, which for me is

   • cd ../..
   • tar cvf /scratch/temp/alpine-web.tar web
   • cd /poseidon/WWW/Primary/
     which for me is the parent of the htdocs directory (so I install web alpine in a directory at a parallel level of htdocs)
   • mkdir Webalpine
   • cd Webalpine
   • tar xvf /scratch/temp/alpine-web.tar
   • chown -hR bin:bin web
   • find web -type f -exec chmod go+r {} \;
   • find web -type d -exec chmod go+rx {} \;
   • ln -sn web current

5. Configure web server to serve up Web Alpine in my case is

   • adding at the end of /etc/apache2/default-server.conf
     Alias /alpine/ "/poseidon/WWW/Primary/Webalpine/web/cgi/"
     <Directory /poseidon/WWW/Primary/Webalpine/web/cgi>
     Options FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI -Indexes +Includes
     AllowOverride all
     Order allow,deny
     Allow from all
     </Directory>

     In addition I discovered later that the http server had to be SSL capable (which my original one wasn't). I fixed this as follows:

   • From the yast configuration of httpd enable module ssl
   • From another of our servers which was configured with SSL copy the relevant section to the end of /etc/apache2/default-server.conf.
     This has to be bracketed into a <VirtualHost sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it:443> ... </VirtualHost> tag (where sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it is the alias name of my personal web server) since the same web server on a port different from standard 80 has to be treated as a separate virtual host.
   • at the end of /etc/apache2/listen.conf add (with the IP of my workstation)
     NameVirtualHost 155.253.16.87:443

     All the above is necessary to restart apache without errors, and to get the web alpine login screen. I had to play with certificates, but this was rather confusing because there are SSL certificates used by apache and other used by imap.

   • At the end I installed in /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/server.crt and /etc/apache2/ssl.key/server.key two certificates (a newcert.pem and a keyunsecure.pem) generated (Issuer keyword) on the Suse 10 machine where our sysman generates certificates, but customized for my machine (Subject keyword pointing to CN=poseidon.lambrate.inaf.it ...)
     • I could have used a "generic" certificate like the one generated by our sysman for the other http servers (Issuer and Subject pointing to same CN) at the price of a harmless warning when starting apache (RSA server certificate CommonName (CN) does NOT match server name)
     • Generate a "specific" certificate on my machine (the required s/w under suse is found in /usr/share/ssl/misc) with Issuer and Subject pointing to my machine. The snag is that the version of the certificating s/w on suse 11.3 seems not able to generate an unsecure key file with a RSA PRIVATE KEY but one with an ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY ... which requires to enter a pass phrase interactively when starting apache

6. Configure Web Alpine alpine.tcl in my case is
   the editing of file /poseidon/WWW/Primary/Webalpine/web/config/alpine.tcl
   in which I changed the following lines (some are obvious, some are less obvious and perhaps more critical)
   • _wp(admin) _wp(helpdesk) _wp(comments) are repointed to my own email address
   • set _wp(urlprefix) alpine
     points to the same suffix in the left hand side of the http Alias directive

   • set _wp(fileroot) /poseidon/WWW/Primary/Webalpine/web
     points to the root of the tree installed onto the web server. This is critical. It is not the CGI subdirectory (right hand side of the http Alias directive) as one could imagine reading the comments.

   • set _wp(yui) $_wp(serverpath)/$_wp(appdir2)/lib/yui points to where the YUI library has been installed
   • set _wp(hosts) for me is set to the triplet
     TestWebAlpine
     poseidon.lambrate.inaf.it/ssl
     $_wp(confdir)/test.conf
   • cgi_mail_relay poseidon.lambrate.inaf.it
     also points to my machine

7. Configure Web Alpine conf.yorkmail in my case is (consistently with the above configuration)
   in directory /poseidon/WWW/Primary/Webalpine/web/config copying the default pine.conf untouched to test.conf
   The final customization will be done later in my personal "remote .pinerc" (which is very important and for which see below).

8. Configure Web Alpine Create and link to detach directory in my case is
   mkdir /var/spool/web-alpine /var/spool/web-alpine/detach
   chown wwwrun:www /var/spool/web-alpine /var/spool/web-alpine/detach
   chmod 550 /var/spool/web-alpine
   chmod 750 /var/spool/web-alpine/detach
   cd /poseidon/WWW/Primary/Webalpine/web
   rm detach
   ln -sn /var/spool/web-alpine/detach detach

   also this ?
   cd /poseidon/WWW/Primary/Webalpine/web/cgi
   rm detach
   ln -sn /var/spool/web-alpine/detach detach

9. Fix bugs in the distribution and do other customizations which are not listed in Mike Brudenell's doc.

   • fix an incorrect link
     cd /poseidon/WWW/Primary/Webalpine/web/cgi/alpine-2.0
     rm alpine.tcl which points to a nonexisting location
     ln -s ../../config/alpine.tcl

   • install proper certificates for imapd
     This is not necessary and can be bypassed using the /novalidate-cert kewyord, but it helps to use a certificate where Issuer and Subject both points to the local machine.

   • fix links in YUI
     cd /poseidon/WWW/Primary/Webalpine/web/cgi/alpine-2.0/lib/yui
     cd build/datasource ; ln -s datasource-min.js datasource-beta-min.js
     cd ../..
     cd build/editor ; ln -s simpleeditor-min.js simpleeditor-beta-min.js

   • create the .pinerc and addressbook
     Web alpine cannot use the local user pine configuration or address book, but shall access them via imap. An imap-capable copy is obtained with the following commands (it is stored as a message ("container") in a folder, the last one is the one actually used, the previous ones can be purged) via standard (al)pine.
     pine -copy_pinerc .pinerc '{poseidon/ssl/user=lucio}remote_pinerc'
     pine -copy_abook .addressbook '{poseidon/ssl/user=lucio}remote_addrbook'

   • the customization of the personal configuration is described below under "user customization"

10. Restart Apache and test in my case is
    • /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
    • with a browser go to http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/Alpine

    • for testing note that the bottom line of the default screen (folder index) one gets after login has a link named "HTML version" in the very bottom line.
      I prefer to click on it, to obtain a look and feel which is closer to the one I get running alpine in a terminal
      This can be reversed clicking on "standard version" (also on the bottom line)

      Unfortunately this double look and feel is totally undocumented

User customization

• I have a lot of folder collections (and some incoming folders), which however are not remote (expect an incoming folder on a POP server) but are a convenient (for me) way to access subdirectories in my mail area
• I have extensive colour customization, both in the message index with colour coding for various classes of messages, as well in the message header and signature.
• I have (using one of the Chappa patches) a number of dedicated key definitions (these won't of course apply to web alpine)

• smtp-server shall point explicitly to the local machine

• all incoming folders of form mail/dir become {poseidon.lambrate.inaf.it/ssl/user=lucio}mail/dir
• all folder collections of form mail/dir/[] are also suffixed with {poseidon.lambrate.inaf.it/ssl/user=lucio}
• one shall explicitly set address-book={poseidon.lambrate.inaf.it/ssl/user=lucio}remote_addrbook

• I also edited originally index-format=FULLSTATUS KEYINIT MSGNO DATE FROMORTO(20) ATT SUBJECT
  removing the percentages on FROMORTO and SUBJECT. I tried a fixed length for FROMORTO but nevertheless this does not cure an annoying feature (i.e. when a message is addressed to a long list of addresses, the entire list is shown, not truncated) At the end I fixed it putting FROMORTO last.

• I replaced all instances of the "transparent" colour usually with 255,255,255, both in individual variables or in BG specifications
• In particular for the view header colours and the header general background I tuned somehow to slightly darker colours, and sometimes different.

• I also added wp-columns=120 so that the message display is now larger. However this occurs sistematically for the header, but not for all text, apparently it depends on the message itself, whether it is flowed or not.

The other differences between .pinerc and the remote pinerc occur without any specific action on my part.

• all the commentary lines in .pinerc are not present
• some variables in .pinerc are not present in the remote version (I assume they are omitted because not necessary ?)
• A number of features is prefixed with "no" (this includes e.g. enable aggregate command set, expunge without confirm etc. etc.)
  For some of them the reason is unclear and can be reset via the config screen (e.g enable-msg-view-urls) or manually (e.g. enable-msg-view-attachments).

The real story

• In step 4 I got numerous errors when compiling alpined.c like undefined reference to Tcl_GetStringFromObj and other TCL routines.
  I assumed (incorrectly) they could be the missing YUI library so I installed it.
  Later I realized that the original alpine was not configured with TCL support, so I arranged for the clone distribution and reconfigured it using the tcl8.5 library, which is apparently the one present on my system.

• when I first ran step 10, I got an http error 301/302 while trying to access the web alpine home page
  I repointed the alias from alpine to alpine/
  I thought it was a missing cgi.tcl package and tried (uselessly) to install it but I discovered it was already present in web/lib.
  So at the end I concluded I was using the wrong wp_fileroot (see the "critical" comment) and repointed it.

• then I got an error with _wp(serverpath) and discovered it shall be an https connection, and therefore I had to reconfigure my http server giving it SSL capabilities. Here I had all sorts of "Server name does not match certificate" errors, and plaid around a lot with certificates (see also further below).

• First I got a "moved permanently" error when the http server was correctly replying on port 443.
  I had to add the virtual host stuff to listen.conf and bracket the SSL stuff with a virtual host directive in the default-server conf.
• This way I could obtain on the browser the web alpine greeting screen, but a login gave "no such host as lucio.poseidon.lambrate.inaf.it"
  The second line in the alpine.tcl _wp(hosts) definition contained a $User variable, So I replaced it with poseidon.lambrate.inaf.it/ssl
• This way it went on but got a "Server name does not match certificate" error.
  Adding a /novalidate-cert allowed me to continue but gave an error "Premature end of script headers: browse". I was also confused about which certificate the above match error referred. The /novalidate-cert worked fine when using the standard alpine client to access my imap server.
  I played around with the standard imap certificate used on our servers (a "generic" one, not host-specific) and with the novalidate-cert options in alpine.tcl (wrong) or in the remote pinerc which in the meanwhile I had installed.
  At the end looking at the apache error log I found a message 'couldn't read file "./alpine.tcl": no such file or directory" which pointed me to discover the error in the soft link.

• At the end I settled about using the generic certificates for apache, while for imap I used one generated locally (Issuer and Subject pointing to my machine). This renders the usage of /novalidate-cert unnecessary both for normal alpine as well as for web alpine.

• Looking at the apache log I found I had to add option +Includes to the http default server conf. Also I found some incompatibilities in the YUI library, web alpine looks for some "beta" files which do not exist, so remedy with soft-links to the non-beta versions.

• During the tests I discovered that I wanted things to work as close as possible to my usual alpine, I had to generate a remote .pinerc and addressbook, and also I had to edit things in that, like making all local folder collections become imap folder collections, and customizing (extensively) the colours.

• I also discovered (totally undocumented !) that web alpine comes in two look and feel. The standard one is nicer to look at, but more unlike the usual (terminal) alpine, and there are things which do not work. The HTML one instead is much more closer to the usual terminal alpine, provided one does the appropriate colour customization.

• The latest fix concerns displaying attachments (which shall be enabled in the remote pinerc if accidentally get disabled), which requires the use of the "detach" directory. The correct username-group to be used under opensuse are wwwrun:www and not nobody:nogroup as set originally

More or less annoying features

The wished sorting (by arrival with most recent message last) is not honoured. Folder indices are in reverse order (although clicking on the date column header gives the wished order). This seems to apply to all folders in the standard view, and only to inbox in the HTML view.

In the HTML view long address lists (FROMORTO) are not truncated.

In the HTML view the colours in the header sometimes behave in a funny way, i.e. the background extends to only part of a line, or the header gray background continues in the message body. This seems to occur after an attachment index, like if the end of the header is not detected correctly.

There is no direct correspondence to the "aggregate command set", although the standard interface provides a way to select manually groups of messages and move, copy or delete them in block.

For the rest web alpine in HTML mode provides a decent way to access one's mail while away to alpine users.