On 2014-12-09 01:32, Lewis Butler wrote:

I have Roundcube installed on my web server to access the accounts on my mail server.

I have a friend who has his mail and website hosted at a third party, but they only offer squirreltail (with no plugins) or Horde (which will not display his HTML email because that is a global setting) or standard IMAP via a client0side MUA.

I do not want to host his site or email, but I am willing to setup Roundcube for him, if I can.

What I would need to be able to do is have him load up a roundcube instance on my machine and then... login with his account info for the third party host? I mean, it seems as this would work if Roundcube is essentially acting as an MUA, but is it?

I am assuming this would have to be an entirely different Roundcube install just for him.

I know it would be easier to just use a regular MUA, but he's old and set in his way and his idea of the Internet is Launching Internet Explorer. Having another application just for email would be difficult for him, and would then be difficult for me. He's used to webmail though, and that's what he's used for years, so RC seems like an idea.

Oh, and if possible I'd like to setup this instance of Roundcube so that only his account is allowed to try to login to the third party provider. I don't want to become an alternate webmail for everyone else.

So, is this possible? Am I just asking for trouble?

Should be fairly easy, assuming you can get the appropriate IMAP and SMTP connection info from his provider. Yes, for simplicity you'll want a separate instance of RC with it's own database, and then you could use either an alias or virtual host in your webserver to point a non-public URL to this new instance. I do this all the time for testing, I have 3 different RC instances running on my production server (Apache) right now.

Once you get it up and your friend has logged in for the first time, you can restrict other users of his hosting company from using your instance as an alternative webmail by setting the param "auto_create_user" to false in either config.inc.php (v.1.0.x) or main.inc.php (versions prior to 1.0.x).

-- 
Arne Berglund
System Administrator, Internet Services
Lane Education Service District
Eugene, OR
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