Re: [SM-USERS] Shared Address Book for SquirrelMail

[Kurt Y. <ky...@sh...>]

Phil Geller said:
> I have a client that wants to use SquirrelMail on Mac OS X Server
> for their
> office email.  They also want a common address book that anyone can
> update
> and change that is accessible from the Web and integrated into
> SquirrelMail.
> They are a small office of about 10 users and value simplicity.
>
> SquirrelMail will work with LDAP or MySQL.  From the reading I've
> done it
> appears that LDAP is designed for an enterprise environment where an
> administrator maintains the LDAP directory and others just use it,
> without
> making changes.  Can an LDAP installation easily be designed to be
> used
> interactively by all users?  And while MySQL would allow users to
> make
> changes, I've yet to find something that is plug and play so we
> don't have
> to design the database ourselves.
>
> The ideal solution would be something that would work with Apple's
> Address
> Book (it will work with LDAP), because it has a simple and clean
> interface,
> but most important is integration with Squirrelmail, which they will
> be
> using constantly.  Is the solution using LDAP or MySQL?  Or is there
> a
> better choice?  I should mention that I've been able to do a kludge
> where I
> use soft links replacing each user's SquirrelMail address book to a
> company
> address book.  That might be our fallback position, but it is a very
> simple
> address book that doesn't even allow the use of phone numbers,
> addresses,
> etc.
>
> Any thoughts on the best way to approach this would be appreciated.

We have been using ldap for awhile and it had worked fine for us. We
only have one "read-only" ldap address book that only sysadmins can
update. However, there's no reason one couldn't allow more people to
edit the ldap entries.

While I use command line on linux (ldap-utils) to update ldap, I've
also seen some web-based tools to do the same. So it shouldn't be
too difficult to allow all your users to update your ldap directory
from one of these web-based ldap interfaces.

-- 
Kurt Yoder
Sport & Health network administrator