WING, the Web IMAP/NNTP Gateway

Description

WING is an Open Source Apache/mod_perl based system which allows users to access email held on an IMAP server via any web browser. The latest public release is version 0.9.

Here are PostScript slides of the talk "The Design and Implementation of a Large Scalable Mail Server" I gave at the UKUUG Linux '99 conference at Aston, U.K. This talk is about Herald, the Oxford University mail cluster which uses WING.

Features

The browser does not need to support Java, JavaScript or frames but table and cookie support are preferable.
Users can create a hierarchy of multiple mailboxes and browse and move messages between them.
Messages with MIME attachments can be displayed nicely.
Per user defaults (such as screen size and mail signature) can be set and saved between sessions.
Files local to the client browser can be included in composed messages or MIME attached to them.
Arbitrary headers can be added to composed messages except that the "From:" header cannot be changed or forged for outgoing messages from WING.
WING is scalable up to thousands and tens of thousands of users.
Users can import address books by uploading them via their browser (only Pine format address books supported in this version).
Users can create their own links (bookmarks), presented in a hierarchical list which can be folded/unfolded.
Users can login using a "portal" view which provides a frame down the left hand side of the browser containing site-configurable links along with their personal links. This is the only part of WING which requires frame support from the browser.

When integrated with a mail cluster similar to the one we have here at Oxford University, WING also has these features:

Users can manage their account via the WING interface. This includes changing passwords, querying disk usage of mailboxes and disk quota an setting mail forwarding and "vacation" messages.
Users can create address books which can be browsed, searched and shared in an ACL controlled manner with chosen lists of other users and groups.
WING server nodes can be added or removed transparently and can be taken down for upgrades without affecting user service.
There are a few web-based admin tools for querying the status of the WING cluster and its users.

Requirements

In its current state, WING requires many other pieces of software to function. Future versions may be easier to install, configure and maintain but this one requires the attention of an experienced system administrator familiar with Apache/mod_perl, Perl and SQL databases. It was also developed primarily for Linux and other platforms may have to add extra Perl code to make up for missing features. For configuring a mail cluster and its associated features (currently undocumented), the administrator will also need to know about network configuration, firewalling, NFS, automount, named and exim.

Availability

WING is available from your favourite CPAN site as modules/by-authors/Malcolm_Beattie/wing-0.9.tar.gz and is also available from its home site in tar.gz form ftp://ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/perl/wing-0.9.tar.gz or (better) source RPM form ftp://ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/linux/SRPMS/wing-0.9-1.src.rpm or "binary" (noarch) RPM form for Red Hat 5.x Linux ftp://ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/linux/RPMS/noarch/wing-0.9-1.noarch.rpm WING depends on many other pieces of software and Perl modules, most of which are available from CPAN, a couple only from the home site mentioned above.

Mailing List

There isn't any official support. There is a mailing list called "wing-admin" where those who use or want to use WING can discuss things. The list is a majordomo list. To subscribe, send the following message body (the subject line is irrelevant and ignored)

    subscribe wing-admin

to majordomo@maillist.ox.ac.uk. To unsubscribe again send the message body

    unsubscribe wing-admin

to the same address. To send messages to the list, mail to wing-admin@maillist.ox.ac.uk (only subscribers can send to the list). There is an archive of the mailing list available.