New Mail Server – The Search

Kolab

Unlike Axigen, Kolab is a Linux only product but it offers RPM/APT packages for pretty much every major distro. In my case CentoOS 6. The installation is pretty straightforward based on the install walk-through available on the Kolab site. Simply add the appropriate repos to Yum config (EPEL) and run

First. Disable the firewall on the box

[root@mailtest ~] service iptables stop
iptables: Flushing firewall rules:                         [  OK  ]
iptables: Setting chains to policy ACCEPT: filter          [  OK  ]
iptables: Unloading modules:                               [  OK  ]
[root@mailtest ~] chkconfig iptables off

Add EPEL repository to CentOS.

[root@mailtest ~] rpm -Uvh http://fedora.mirror.nexicom.net/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
[root@mailtest ~] yum update
[root@mailtest ~] yum install yum-plugin-priorities

Next, disable CentOS Extras. Add enabled=0 to [extras] section of CentOS repo (not compatible)

[root@mailtest ~] nano /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo

Time to install the YUM repo for Kolab. This part takes a while. It’s about 400MB download plus install.

[root@mailtest ~] rpm -Uvh http://mirror.kolabsys.com/pub/redhat/kolab-3.0/el6/development/i386/kolab-3.0-community-release-6-2.el6.kolab_3.0.noarch.rpm
[root@mailtest ~] yum update
[root@mailtest ~] yum install kolab

To configure Kolab, simply run the setup command and follow the simple prompts

[root@mailtest ~] setup-kolab

Unfortunately during the setup process I came across this.

Kolab Service password [QGY1BN_WZbWIJea]:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/sbin/setup-kolab", line 42, in 
    setup.run()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pykolab/setup/__init__.py", line 43, in run
    components.execute('_'.join(to_execute))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pykolab/setup/components.py", line 170, in execute
    execute(component)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pykolab/setup/components.py", line 202, in execute
    components[component_name]['function'](conf.cli_args, kw)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pykolab/setup/setup_ldap.py", line 405, in execute
    auth._auth.ldap.add_s(dn, ldif)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/ldap/ldapobject.py", line 194, in add_s
    msgid = self.add(dn,modlist)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/ldap/ldapobject.py", line 191, in add
    return self.add_ext(dn,modlist,None,None)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/ldap/ldapobject.py", line 176, in add_ext
    return self._ldap_call(self._l.add_ext,dn,modlist,RequestControlTuples(serverctrls),RequestControlTuples(clientctrls))
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/ldap/ldapobject.py", line 99, in _ldap_call
    result = func(*args,**kwargs)
ldap.SERVER_DOWN: {'desc': "Can't contact LDAP server"}

Well, that’s the end of that. I spent about 15 minutes searching for a solution to this and even though there were quite a few hits on the “Can’t contact LDAP server” message. I could not find a concrete fix….so much for Kolab. I really hate Linux and the Linux developer mentality sometimes.