ZoE - Mail-Aggregator

It takes more than a mail client to make a database

Users receiving several hundred mails a day will soon notice that their mail client slows down more and more. If searching for an older mail you either have to spend lots of time or get lots of hits due to bad search functions. Additionally mails get deleted rather fast to regain survey of the mails.

What we need is a database with search function easy to configure and use. If possible usable via webbrowser. A kind of goolge for mails.
And this is the point where ZoE comes in....

ZoE? - What's the use of it?

ZoE is a database with search function. Written in Java and available free of charge athttp://zoe.nu/.
It is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License which allows non-commercial use for everyone.

ZoE works between mailserver and eMail client and journalizes all incoming and outgoing mails for collecting them in a database. Additionally ZoE provides a comfortable search function to search the bunch of mails.

Installation

Installing ZoE is rather easy. You only need to have the current Java runtime environment (J2RE) installed which is included with the most distributions or can be obtained from www.java.com.
Then you only have to unpack the ZoE package:

  >> tar zxvf Zoe20030920.tgz -C /usr/local/
  

  >> cd /usr/local/Zoe
  >> java -jar Zoe.jar 
  

   #!/bin/bash
   #
   #	/etc/rc.d/init.d/zoe
   #
   # Starts zoe
   #
   # chkconfig: 2345 80 20
   # description: Zoe is google for email
   # processname: zoe
   
   # Source function library.
   . /etc/init.d/functions
   
   RETVAL=0
   
   #
   #	See how we were called.
   #
   
   prog="zoe"
   
   start() {
   	# Check if atd is already running
   	if [ ! -f /var/lock/subsys/zoe ]; then
   	    echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
   	    cd /usr/local/Zoe
   	    /path/to/j2jre1.4.2/bin/java -jar Zoe.jar daemon > /dev/null 2>&1 &
   	    RETVAL=$?
   	    [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/zoe
   	    echo
   	fi
   	return $RETVAL
   }
   
   stop() {
   	echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
   	cd /usr/local/Zoe
   	/path/to/j2re1.4.2/bin/java -jar Zoe.jar shutdown > /dev/null 2>&1 &
   	RETVAL=$?
   	[ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && rm -f /var/lock/subsys/zoe
   	echo
           return $RETVAL
   }
   
   
   restart() {
   	stop
   	start
   }	
   
   reload() {
   	restart
   }	
   
   case "$1" in
   start)
   	start
   	;;
   stop)
   	stop
   	;;
   reload|restart)
   	restart
   	;;
   condrestart)
   	if [ -f /var/lock/subsys/zoe ]; then
   	    restart
   	fi
   	;;
   *)
   	echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|condrestart}"
   	exit 1
   esac
   
   exit $?
   exit $RETVAL:
  

Configuration

If ZoE is installed correctly we can configure our eMail accounts. You can access ZoE with your webbrowser on port 10080, so point it to:

  http://localhost:10080
  

ZoE can cope with POP3 mailboxes as well as with IMAP boxes and even supports encrypted connections.

When using ZoE between mail server and client the option "Leave messages on server" should be disabled because it could exhaust your mail quota on the server. For the first phase of testing this option is quite useful.

You can create more than one mail account which are searched for new messages one after another

Client configuration

The mail client has to be configured to contact the ZoE-server as POP3-server. The IMAP-protocol is not supported, yet but planned for further versions. To archive sent mail with ZoE you have to set the SMTP-server in your mail client to be the ZoE-server, too. Thus all mails sent are draged through ZoE before sending them to the receiver.

To not gain problems with running services (and because of higher ports are only usable with root-rights) ZoE listens on ports 10110 (POP3) and 10025 (SMTP). This is important when configureing your mail client!

Another important fact is that ZoE only supports SMTP-Auth meaning that the server requests a password before sending mail so not everybody can missuse your server for sending spam. This password protection can be configured in the Preferences-menu under Authentication.

Additionally the mail client has to have the "Leave Messages on Server" option activated.

Functioning

If all settings are done ZoE runs in the background collectin mails being unnoticed by the user.

Only when searching for mails you get in touch with ZoE again.

ZoE spots mailing lists automatically and sorts them. User names, sender location, eMails and Links are extracted and displayed in table form so even searches for persons or locations can be performed.

You can use ZoE even as webmail-application, although it is not intended for that:

On the main page the user is given an overview on all incoming mails and allows the user to read them and even create new mails.

Multiuser

ZoE is thought for usage on single user systems. But with a bit additional work it can cope multiple users, too.
The program automatially determines which user ran the Java runtime environment and runs ZoE under this account.
Using the -D option ZoE can be given a user name to be run as. So there is no need to have a system-account and a running JRE for every user using ZoE on a network-wide accessible server.

  >> java -Duser.name=OptionalerUserName -jar Zoe.jar
  

Differentation between the different users is done with authentification (username, password) for the different services (Web, SMTP, POP3).

Further information on running ZoE in multiuser environment can be found at http://zoe.omara.ca/MultipleUsers

Vista & further Information

• ZOE as IMAP-server
  Until now ZoE can not be used as IMAP server, but it is planed for the future. When the IMAP-funtionality is available ZoE could perfectly be run in combination with other webmail-sytsems as e.g. Horde IMP.

• Documentation
  The documentation on ZoE is slimmish.
  The only documentation to take serious is the ZoE-Wiki on http://zoe.omara.ca/ZoeDocsHome
  If you are looking for help using ZoE you should subscribe to the ZoE mailinglist: http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=54877

• SPAM
  ZoE itself can not identify SPAM-mails, but it can identify mails containing specific lines in the mail header as they are inserted by spam-software like POPFile, SpamAssassin, SpamPal or SpamBayes e.g.:

    X-Text-Classification=spam / [POPFile]
    X-Spam-Flag=yes / [SpamAssassin]
    X-SpamPal?=spam / [SpamPal]
    X-Spambayes-Classification=spam / [SpamBayes]
    

• RSS-Feeds
  RSS-feeds can be used as messags-source as easy as eMail accounts. RSS-feeds are polled regularely and new segments are mailed to the user as eMail as well as included in the database.

Conclusion

ZoE is one of few programs that work in background and only appear if they are needed. Most of the time the user will not notice anything of ZoE, but when searchin "exactly this one mail" he will realize the inestimable value of this software.

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