1).......General info about Web E-Mail
1.1).....Price
2).......How to change the mail delivery program
3).......Other web servers
4).......Install/Uninstall
5).......How do I get attachments to work
5.1).......Configuring Apache for attachments
6).......Security
6.1).......Root suid
6.2).......Ssl/plain test passwords
6.3).......Plugins
7).......Future
7.1).......Ports

1) General info about Web E-Mail
  Web E-Mail was written by Andrew Shaw, who is now a junior at
Loyola University Chicago.  The project was started in his sophomore
year. Web E-Mail was designed to be easy to use and accessible from
anywhere.  There are two home pages for Web E-Mail. There is
www.execpc.com/~shaws and ashaw.dyn.cheapnet.net/webmail.  The execpc web
page is up year round, but the ashaw.dyn.cheapnet.net web page has working
demos and it is up most of the  school year.  Again there are two support
E-Mail addresses, tiberiusj@yahoo.com,  and ashaw@acm.math.luc.edu.
  I am always looking for a job. If you are in the Chicago or Milwaukee
area; and you like the work, need a good reliable programmer or need
anyone that is  good with computers, send me an e-mail OR you can send me
stuff.  See below.

1.1) Price
  FREE!!!!!!!!!!!  However, if you like the work and if you would like to 
send the author something like cash($25), A JOB!!, computer parts(an alpha
would be  nice ;), or anything else you think I might like, e-mail me at
tiberiusj@yahoo.com and I'll give you my current mailing address (or see
the web e-mail home page).  
  Note, this will NOT buy you a warranty or support but it will help to
keep software like this coming.
  

2) How to change the mail delivery program
***This only applies to versions 1.0c and above***
  There is no support for any other mail delivery programs in
this  version.  The send function was changed to incorparate
attachments. The change in the send function, made wesend obsolete and
changing mail delivery programs harder.  Support for other delivery will 
be added in later versions.  If you have a sendmail compatable replacement
you can set the sendmailpath var in the conf file.  However no support
will be give for MTA other then sendmail.

***This only applies to versions 1.0b and earler***
  To change the mail delivery program, edit wesend which should be in your
path.  (It was installed in a directory of your choosing during the
installation).  To change this file it takes a bit of knowledge of shell
programming.  The first half of wesend formats the e-mail message and
stores the message in a file called ~/.webmail/emailtmp.  Then it is
passed to sendmail or the mail delivery program of your choice.


3) Other web servers
  Web E-Mail should work, without modification, with any Unix web server
that supports cgi 1.1 and http 1.1.  Web E-Mail has been  test on apache
1.2 running on linux 2.0.36.  Attachments do require apache 1.3.


4) Install/Uninstall
  See README


5) How do I get attachments to work
  Web E-Mail supports attachments, but it is not enabled by
default. Attachments do work, but you might want to test it before you let
your system users use it.

5.1) Configuring Apache for attachments
   A change must be made to your Apache configuration file.  In  srm.conf
file, or maybe httpd.conf depending on your configuration, you
will find a line that looks like  

  "ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /home/httpd/cgi-bin/"  
Add the line
  "ScriptAliasMatch ^/cgi-bin/attachments/(.*) /home/httpd/cgi-bin/email.cgi"

BEFORE the first line!!!!  This is important, the added line needs to be
added BEFORE the old line.  The paths in these  two lines are dependent on
your system and might need to be  changed.  This is a bit confusing, if
any one has a better way to explain this let me know. The general form for
these lines are, 
ScriptAliasMatch ^<your http cgi path to run web email>/attachments/(.*) <the path to the web email executable>
ScriptAlias <your http cgi path> <your real cgi path>
The directory attachments does NOT need to exist.


6) Security

6.1) Root suid
  Web e-mail must be run as root and it must have the suid bit set.  This
is a  security risk!  I have taken all of the precautions that I can to 
minimize the  risk, after the user has logged in, web e-mail switches to
that users id and  gives up its root privlages.  However, it is possible
that I over looked  something.  Use this software at your own risk, if you
get hacked I will not be held responsible.

6.2) Ssl/plain text passwords
  Web e-mail sends passwords in plain text.  This means anyone
with a sniffer can see your password fly by.  This is very simular to
telnet's security or lack of.  To fix this, use a web server with
ssl.  Apache running with ssl has been shown to work with web e-mail.

6.3) Plugins
  The plugin DOES run as root at certain times.  Hopefully this
will be fixed in future releases.  To protect yourself, only run
trusted plugins, or plugins that you have looked at EVERY LINE!  The only
code that should be in a plugin are "printf"s containing html tags and a
few "if" statements.  
IF THERE IS ANY OTHER CODE, DO NOT RUN THE PLUGIN!!! 
IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THE CODE IS DOING, DO NOT RUN THE PLUGIN!!!


7) Future
  There are a few things in the works for future releases. Suggestions
are welcome.  Current plans include 
 1. An NT port (not looking very likely)
 2. mime attachments (in final testing)
 3. folders (in final testing)
 4. Multi language support (depends on skin support)
 5. Skin support (in final testing)
 6. A BSD port (I am currenlty working on getting a bsd machine)

  This may change in time.  For the NT port I need a sendmail 
equivalent for NT and a machine running NT.  I can get the NT machine, but
I haven't found a good sendmail replacement.

7.1) Ports
  Web e-mail has can be compiled on Solaris, however it has not been
tested.  Work has been done to get web e-mail to compile on Mac OSX but
we have run into a few difficults.  
