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Part 1 covered Network Edition backup features, today’s snips apply to all editions.
First among the lesser known additions: We recently provided the possibility for a nice performance boost to some environments by adding the ability to turn on batched indexing in ZCS 5.0.3 (you can even fine tune it at the localconfig, COS, and account level). We’re not talking about when you re-index an entire account here, this is a change to the index-as-received model; now new items can sit in a ‘queue’ (really a ‘indexing deferred’ flag on the mail_items table of the pertaining mboxgroup database in MySQL) to run all at once when it reaches the zimbraBatchedIndexingSize threshold, saving you from all the tiny disk thrashing. It might not be immediately apparent that this works better, but you can mention it in the forums and we’ll show you the evidence to the contrary - it proves expecially useful for POP heavy or ZAD archive accounts.
New & Enhanced Admin Tools
Your /opt/zimbra/bin & /opt/zimbra/libexec directories hold a wealth of tools to make your job easier.
zmdumpenv has been around for a long time, but underutilized - it grabs the basics that you should probably provide with every issue to help others understand where you’re coming from.
When you need to send ad-hoc SOAP commands to the server, the powerful zmsoap takes care of authenticating, generating the envelope, sending the request, and writing the response to stdout.
If your server freezes or is busy, running zmdialog can give that ‘my server hung’ support ticket a purpose. With JDK 1.5 it won’t collect a heap dump so you might also run /opt/zimbra/java/bin/jmap -heap:format=b [/opt/zimbra/log/zmmailboxd_java.pid] however zmdiaglog collects a core dump, from which it should be theoretically possible to get a heap dump. Thread dumps when you kill -QUIT/3 [pid] are helpful too. Info on ways to take them (like /opt/zimbra/libexec/zmmailboxdmgr threaddump) plus a handy script, are here.
There’s the MySQL metadata DB, the Lucene index, and the actual blob files on disk in /opt/zimbra/store. If you can click on a folder in the web UI and get results, it means MySQL is up and happy. If you open a message and get the infamous “missing blob for id” error, it means that the message files on disk aren’t where they’re supposed to be (ie: disk crash, not mounted/permissions, or you’ve recently pointed your volumes incorrectly). There’s all sorts of things you can do in that situation - here’s a more detailed list. Even if you don’t have a good grasp of the mailbox database structure yet, you can appreciate the need to easily determine if those blobs are still available (after you’ve moved whatever you can salvage of the store from corrupted drives to a better location). Enter the zmblobchk utility which can determine what files are missing - there’s also plans for a repair mode, for when you finally realize the blobs are gone and want to get rid of those UI error messages. Of course you’ll next consult the Network Edition’s restoreToTime feature or other backup solution you may have.
When you’re absolutely out of room on the disks housing your DB (seriously put in that purchase order for more storage - it’s cheap these days) in a pinch the optimizeMboxgroups.pl script (available in the public cache and added to the upcoming 5.0.10) can help you recover wasted space in your mail_item, appointment, imap_folder, imap_message, open_conversation, pop3_message, revision, and tombstone tables on each mboxgroup. Just note that it temporarily locks each table, and could use considerable IO while they’re being rebuilt. You can certainly use it pro-actively during a maintenance window to reclaim space as well.
There’s also a new wiki page on statistic collection so you can generate nice charts that help you figure out what you might need to tweak.
We could go on and on about the utilities in those folders, so throw up a test environment and experiment sometime - it may just make life easier when you have hundreds of users breathing down your neck. And if you should ever be ’stumbling around in the dark’ you can always enable additional debug logging to shed more light on the situation.
You can find help for all the above utilities over in the Community Forums or ask us a question on them below.
It’s truly amazing how excited people get over Zimbra - so thought we’d share some of the ways people show it.
We were pleasantly surprised a few days ago when a school declared a ‘national Zimbra day’ and sent us pictures of cupcakes (that we can virtually enjoy). Why the baked goods? They recently rolled out ZCS and love it. Since we are also launching 5.0.9 today it’s fitting.
As the summer is the perfect time for schools to do system upgrades when students aren’t around, Thunder04’s organization had a conversion party while they worked on their switchover - with some delicious goodies of course.
The Menlo Park City School District (which serves Menlo Park & Atherton in California) would like to wish you all a “Happy Zimbra Conversion or Upgrade Day” as ZCS 5.0.9 has just been released! (This version includes additional beta builds for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS in both x86 & 64-bit as well.)
Linux users have pondered: “Wouldn’t it be nice to just grab Zimbra software via repositories?”
There was just so much positive feedback over Zimbra Desktop Beta 3 (with over 900 new members to the forums last month!) we thought that Ubuntu 32-bit users should be able to grab it easily. (64-bit support is coming soon)
This brings Zimbra Desktop’s easy setup against ZCS, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL and any other IMAP/POP accounts to the huge Ubuntu community - letting them take mail, contacts, calendars, tasks, documents, and briefcase items offline and sync whatever actions they may take when they’re reconnected.
To install:
sudo synaptic (As you’re read this it’s being added to Applications > Add/Remove.)
Enable the third party packages in settings > repositories.
Reload, search for “Zimbra”, and away you go. (same as a sudo apt-get install zdesktop)
Once downloaded, start via Applications > Internet:
Many thanks to the Canonical Team for showcasing us on their frontpage: ubuntu.com/news/zimbra-desktop
Not using Ubuntu? It’s cross-platform for other Linux variants, as well as Windows and Mac - grab it here.
You may ask: “What about the entirety of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite Server in Ubuntu or other repositories?” We can’t say one way or the other at this point - but think of this as a harmonious step.
Find help for Zimbra Desktop over in the Community Forums, ask us a question below, or fill out the Ubuntu registration/feedback on it: ubuntu.com/register/zimbra/
We’ve aimed to blur the line between a Ajax web-client and a conventional desktop application, and this release is a leap towards reaching that goal. If you’re just joining us here’s the best part: It’s an offline capable client so you can take your data with you whenever you don’t have internet access - then sync any type of interaction that you can do in normal webmail access when you get connected again. So many cool new things I don’t know where to begin - the Zimbra Desktop team has been very busy since Beta 2.
They’re here, and your tasks, documents, & briefcase items can now follow you wherever you may roam. If you’re already using Zimbra Desktop against a Zimbra Collaboration Suite server these will show up on next edit or item move via delta sync - while a full account sync or reset will pull in prior items. Personally, having briefcase items available offline is a major plus - as offline calendaring using the same AJAX web-client interface has already long since won me over.
 
Yahoo! Mail users rejoice - There’s now IMAP access through Zimbra Desktop to all free, plus, and business accounts. You didn’t read that wrong. Normally only Plus accounts have POP access, but as a perk when using Zimbra Desktop the mail is synced via IMAP; which is a much better protocol for keeping your mail organized - and yes it’s available to free accounts as well. Hook-up your @yahoo.com account or go grab one of the new @ymail.com and @rocketmail.com addresses. (Note that some apps don’t sync to Yahoo! servers yet so the data is local.)
Mailto: link handler - For Mac and Windows protocol handlers allow you to click on a mailto: link in any browser, and it will bring-up Zimbra Desktop’s composer with a javascript call. If Prism is not already running, it will start the web-app as well with a url call, then pop up compose. We don’t want to be accidentally invasive, so to turn this feature on you’ll have to check the box in global preferences to make it the default mail client on your computer.
 Icon badging - To keep you informed, we now display the total number of unread messages across all-inboxes; in the dock icon for Mac and on Windows there’s now a tray icon, which changes to a new mail image if there are unread messages.
Mac & Windows users may just decide to toss out their toasters, because we now have mail & appointment notifications built-in. ( Zimbra Toaster still serves as a lightweight new-mail checker with quick flag and delete features. There’s also some community contributed Linux solutions like Zimbra Notify.)
Zimbra Desktop on Windows now takes advantage of the native tray icon bubbles and on Mac of course we use Growl. (You need to install Growl separately which is quite straightforward.) You’ll also need to enable “show pop-up notification” under both Mail and Calendar tabs in preferences, since by default notifications are turned off.
 The latest versions of Zimbra Collaboration Suite have also introduced browser title & favicon flashing, mail & account tab highlighting, as well as sound notifications - which have been ported to Beta 3 as well. So there’s no excuse for not noticing a new mail if you’re at your computer. Ok, we can still think of a few excuses - but note that the pop-up notifications are per account settings; so you can have some accounts on and some accounts off if you should need to ‘forget about’ that important meeting
In-case you’ve never tried Zimbra Desktop, or are still using an Alpha, and never tried it out during Beta 1 or when we served-up Beta 2: There’s also easy setup menus for setting up Zimbra Server, Yahoo! Mail, GMail, AOL, or any other IMAP/POP accounts you want to use. For Beta 3 we’ve thrown out JavaMail and wrote a brand-new robust IMAP/POP client-engine from scratch.
 
To get you up and running when you need it, there’s now an auto-start service. During launch of the Prism web-app a check is run to see if the background service is running - if not, it’s automatically started. This works on all 3 platforms, and proves especially useful on Linux since the service doesn’t automatically start after reboot. (See this forum thread for ways to do that.) There’s also an animated splash screen during launch of Prism so you know it’s working on bringing-up the background process.
Icon menus - On the Mac dock icon and Windows tray icon, we now have right-click menu items to check for updates and shutdown the background service.
Windows minimize to tray - Clicking on the “X” now only minimizes prism window to tray. To quit prism, right click the tray icon and choose “Quit”.
This release makes Zimbra Desktop available to a quarter-billion Yahoo! users with support for 20+ languages. The default theme is a revamped Yahoo! skin to help keep the interface familiar as it spreads to those millions of users. Hope you enjoy, and as we advance upon a GA release: Thanks to the Zimbra Community for all your bug corrections and feature requests so far. The Mozilla team developed a few of these new Prism features from scratch just for us, you can read more about some of them here. But stay tuned, we’re gonna have a closer look under the hood to see how we implemented these features and the inner workings of Prism + Zimbra Desktop in a future blog post.
If it’s not available to you via auto-update yet, you haven’t been building from source, or are even just discovering it for the first time, you can download it here for Mac, Windows, & Linux.
Have an idea for Zimbra Desktop or just want a tweak built upon these new components? We’re interested in hearing your feedback on it below or over in the Community Forums. A bunch of us are at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland, Oregon this week - so drop in around booths 415 & 519 if you’re there.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is often seen as an alternative model to Open Source Software (OSS) for the delivery of next-generation software. However, we argue below that SaaS and OSS are independent and even complementary paradigms.
 Nevertheless, with few exceptions (e.g., SugarCRM), software startups do not pursue both approaches because building out an open source community and data center/operations is beyond their reach. Prior to the merger with Yahoo!, Zimbra made our bet on open source, believing that OSS was the best means to innovate in messaging and collaboration software (without having to fund a large data center, operations team, and sales force). While I am confident that this was the right choice, ever since the initial launch of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite, end-users have been asking us where they can get their Zimbra via SaaS rather than download, and we have been pointing them toward our many hosting partners.
On the other hand, most every SaaS offering (Microsoft Live the exception?) makes substantial use of OSS, and many contribute back to the open source projects they incorporate. But what most of them do not do is also open source the original code each develops for their SaaS product itself. Why should they? It is a substantial amount of additional work to launch an open source community. And the cynic would argue why give up proprietary intellectual property and lock-in unless your customers or competitive pressures are forcing you to do so? Indeed, the lock-in with SaaS may prove to be more onerous than it has been with proprietary software—not only is an organization tied to a proprietary software service, but its data is now resident in someone else’s data center. At the very least, your organization should ensure that any of your data stored remotely is fully accessible via web services, so you can preserve your options. Even then, migrating from one SaaS solution to another or from SaaS to traditional software is likely to prove at least as hard as switching between software stacks has been.
Which is why we see such a bright future for software that is delivered both in open source and via SaaS. Open source leads to better software, better through community innovation and hardening. And open source affords better long-term investment protection for both SaaS and “on premises” solutions. While SaaS allows organizations to ramp up new software with minimal investment, open source means they could always bring it in house later or move to an alternative provider (or at least have the negotiating leverage for doing the same). Consider many of the universities using Zimbra: universities often want the option of on-premises software for faculty and staff, but hosted software for students and alumni, all from one unified platform. The combination of open source and SaaS seems to be the one that best meets such customer needs.
 Some of the SaaS vendors will argue that this is infeasible—that SaaS software is so different from “on-prem” software that the solutions must inherently be distinct. This is false. The overall Zimbra code base today delivers a unified user and administrator experience when scaling from a user’s desktop (Zimbra Desktop) to a single server for a SMB to the large multi-tenant, multi-data center farms of large service providers that support 10,000s of businesses or 10s of millions of consumers. The key is to design the software for SaaS from the inception and support on-prem as a special case—that is, to open source a software stack that is SaaS-ready. Zimbra has been delivered via SaaS since the very early days, the only distinction was that we did not build out the data centers but rather relied on our channel partners.
Of course, one of the major upsides for Zimbra in becoming part of Yahoo! last October is to leverage our new parent’s talent and resources to provide our own SaaS offering of Zimbra. The goal is to preserve all that users love about Zimbra—its community, its innovation, its extensibility, its partner/channel friendliness, and its long-term investment protection—but package it for the ease of adoption and low-cost of ownership of SaaS. Depending on your organization type, Yahoo! either has or will soon have a Zimbra SaaS package for you. At the same time, we are committed to continuing to work with our SaaS channel partners, many of whom offer Zimbra as a “white label” solution deployed from their data centers, and some of whom will actually be integrating Zimbra SaaS from Yahoo! within their own value-added SaaS offerings. Yahoo! is committed to this vision and ultimately sees the openness and extensibility of our infrastructure to be one of our chief competitive advantages—witness YUI, Hadoop, and Zimbra as well as OpenSocial, Open Search, OpenID, and so on.
So open source and SaaS are not contradictory, and end-users will ultimately be better off if they seek out software solutions that offer both!
Scott Dietzen is part of the Global Communications Products team at Yahoo! which spans Y!-Mail, Y!-Messenger, and Zimbra.
A few years ago I thought the days of rambling off your entire schedule to someone else, over the phone or via email, to find a meeting time were long dead and gone. What I’ve found after a couple years in the work force is that most of the collaboration platforms today essentially only share free-busy information within your group. More often than not, in broad working units the folks on the other side have a different system. How do you really get anything done when there really is no seamless scheduling interaction between those platforms?
While we’d love the whole world to instantly convert to Zimbra, we realize that from time to time people in this situation for whatever reason (slow migration or stubborn departmental preference) have that one peer organization running different software. How to seamlessly find timeslots for meetings? And what to do for cases where you may not want to share your entire calendar with a huge list of people, a distribution list, or don’t want all your calendar events public?
Well, the CalConnect Roundtable we talked about earlier is finishing up, and as the week drew to a close we had another ace up our sleeve: Free-Busy Interop.
Both the Network and Open Source Editions of Zimbra now support two-way free/busy information with Microsoft’s Exchange Server, IBM’s Lotus Domino Messaging Server, Meeting Maker, and a slew of other third-parties that interact with our API. Plus, the framework is completely available to anyone who wants to build an extension for other platforms!
The query and propagation of free/busy data is done via REST and WebDAV interfaces. You can catch a in-depth walkthrough of how it’s done in this overview PDF.
For info on how to set it up, checkout SRC/ZimbraServer/docs/freebusy-interop.txt. Grab a copy via perforce, this post, or ask us about it in the ZCS forum section.
Don’t need interop? You can also visit http:// zimbraserver.domain.com/home/username?fmt=freebusy to display an aggregate HTML calendar of the user’s free-busy data. (Of course you can always choose to select “exclude this calendar when reporting free/busy times” on your calendar properties if you wish.)
iCalendar (the standard .ics not the Apple program) only gets you so far. We’ve previously covered CalDav in Apple’s iCal for Mac, but where does the CalDav field stand for Windows and Linux users?
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It’s important to push communication between different programs, platforms, and technologies. We’ve just completed a free-busy interop that we’ll blog more about that later, but you can checkout the forum announcement.
This week, Jong L. and John H. are at CalConnect Roundtable XII from June 2nd to 6th, 2008. Where they’re doing some heavy testing with other clients and servers to make sure that we’re compatible and standards-compliant. |
A good consortium for that is CalConnect’s Interoperability Test Events (C.I.T.E.) the latest we attended during a previous Roundtable back in February. It included all sorts of IOP and Mobile IOP events, where interoperability testing between different calendaring and scheduling implementations were preformed. Organizations participating in the C.I.T.E. events were Apple, Microsoft, Zimbra (Yahoo!), Oracle, Sun, Kerio, Marware, Scalix, and Sony Ericsson.
While there’s plenty of CalDav compatible programs out there our server-team judges are firm: Pizazz and setup wizards won’t get you anywhere if you can’t correct that meeting time or properly notify others of the change.
If you want strict specification adherence in a cross-app & cross-platform thick-client: Our winner is Mulbery for Linux, Windows, & Mac. In addition to being a Swiss-army-knife of protocols, it’s also Open Source.
How to set it up? Checkout the wiki article CalDav and Mulberry - Zimbra :: Wiki or drop in over at the community forums for help.
Download and give it a try: http://www.mulberrymail.com/
Leave us a message below if you got another contender you’d like us to put through its paces.
As anyone who uses Zimbra knows, we like to make cool stuff. A while back, we decided to make a rich mobile client for Zimbra Collaboration Suite which a regular phone could use to access Zimbra. We decided to base it on J2ME, a ubiquitous Java Runtime environment on many mobile devices, that allows it to run Java-based applications. The result is called ZimbraME– and now it’s ready for a wider audience.
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Times have been busy for us here @ Zimbra. We have been working to get some cool stuff into 5.0.3, and some other cool stuff that we’ll blog about later. In the mean time, Zimbra’s been nominated for the a Webware top 100 award.
Who do you think should win?
If you’re a Zimbra fan, show us you love us. Click to vote.:)
< /end shameless plug>
Zimbra has a toaster for Mac, and a toaster for Windows…but didn’t have a toaster for Linux until pbruna came along with his adaptation of the checkgmail program by Owen Marshall. Linux fanboys rejoice, your toaster is here (bread not included).
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