bookmark_borderDAVx5 CalDAV may break with Unicode symbols in Horde/Kronolith syncs.

If you get user complaints about broken CalDAV syncs with Horde, there’s many places to look at. In one particular instance, an event was created from travelling app Transportr into the stock android Calendar app. Through the DAVx5 sync app, the user wanted to push these events to Horde’s SabreDAV interface – and from there, also sync it to his desktop email solution, Mozilla Thunderbird.

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However, his sync application told him about an error. The server administrator saw a 500 status code in the server log.

1.1.2.11 - user [24/Jan/2021:18:48:26 +0000] "PUT /horde/rpc/calendars/user/calendar~KL14jYhCMpbet4ecYzAg1bn/2bace303-f0d8-4df6-9652-baa5fb9e86c4.ics HTTP/1.1" 500 892 "-" "DAVx5/3.3.8-ose (2021/01/13; dav4jvm; okhttp/4.9.0) Android/11

The root cause was actually not in the software code but in the MariaDB database configuration. The calendar entry from Transportr included some Unicode icon characters like a fast train and some arrows. These characters are part of the standard unicode encoding, utf-8.

Now you might wonder: New installations of mysql and MariaDB default to a character set they call utf-8 since 2010 or so. This shouldn’t be an issue. However, what they call utf-8 is not what you would expect.

Some years ago, TV sets which did not support the full HD resolution were marketed as “HD ready”. In some sense, the default character set is “unicode ready” at best. The default data type saves on disk space by encoding a subset of utf-8 into up to three bytes. While this supports most natural language characters, it is only a fraction of what Unicode can offer. Database manufacturers are well aware that this is not something you should run nowadays that unicode icons like the hamburger are all over the place is user generated content. The mysql manual even says:

“Please use utf8mb4 instead. Although utf8 is currently an alias for utf8mb3, at some point utf8 is expected to become a reference to utf8mb4. To avoid ambiguity about the meaning of utf8, consider specifying utf8mb4 explicitly for character set references instead of utf8.”

Now that’s what I did. First I changed horde’s database encoding to utf8mb4 in conf.php:

$conf['sql']['protocol'] = 'tcp';
$conf['sql']['charset'] = 'utf8mb4';

Then I changed the mysql server’s and client’s default charset:

cat /etc/mysql/my.cnf
[server]
character-set-client-handshake = FALSE
character-set-server = utf8mb4
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci
[client]
default-character-set = utf8mb4
[mysql]
default-character-set = utf8mb4
[mysqld]
character-set-server = utf8mb4
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci

I have obviously stripped a lot of file content not relevant to our story. After reloading the database, all new connections should use the real utf8 encoding and new tables should be created with the new standard. But what about existing content? We need to convert all tables and all their text-like columns, varchars, mediumtexts etc.

First, it’s backup time – better safe than sorry.

Then, let’s find all tables in our db server and feed them conversion commands.

mysql --database=horde -B -N -e "SHOW TABLES" | awk '{print "ALTER TABLE", $1, "CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;"}' | mysql --database=horde

Do this in a downtime or ensure HA some way or other. It will take some time. Some sources suggest it might be sensible to also rebuild the tables with the optimize command. I am not very convinced, but it won’t harm.

mysqlcheck --auto-repair --optimize --user="hidden" -p --databases mysql horde

After this, repeat the sync test. It should work this time.

bookmark_borderHorde Development Review: October 2020

October was a very busy month in Horde development, even though a lot of things happened under the hood and cannot be accessed right now.

  • A decision was made that Horde RPC will default to json-rpc and deprecate xmlrpc in upcoming releases, maybe already dropping xmlrpc in Horde 6. PHP8 will remove xmlrpc from the core distribution and move it into PECL, giving it much less of an installation base.
  • B1 Systems GmbH released a typescript client for the Horde Ajax Framework https://github.com/b1-systems/horde-ajax-client
  • Horde Injector: I continued my work from September. The Maintaina version of Injector now supports PSR-4, PSR-11, PSR-12 specifications. Backward compatibility is good. The unit tests have been converted to namespaced versions – see https://github.com/maintaina-com/Injector/tree/refactor-psr4
  • Horde Components: The Components tool has been converted for PSR-4 autoloading in a composer setup. Also, some minor improvements on the composer file generator have been added
  • I worked on upgrading Diana Hille’s DNS library for the horde framework, giving it the same PSR-4 makeover, converted it from wrapping AWS cli to wrapping AWS Route53 SDK. I think we can opensource the component soon.
  • I created a little testbed application for the improved controller/routes handling in recent horde/core. horde/frogsie is the first Horde application stub to feature a RESTish interface. Frogsie writes iptables rules to implement a TCP/UDP Front Proxy in plain linux.
    It doesn’t sport web UI or CLI though as it’s both a case study and a stop-gap utility. However, it’s a good example to learn from.
  • Horde Installer Plugin v1.1.0 supports both composer 1.x and composer 2.0 – This is mostly based on work by Kieran Brahney of SupportPal. I also began working on converting horde-deployment to remove the last bits of PEAR and make it compatible with composer 2.0. It’s not released yet.
  • I am looking at the old vilma application at the moment. This will most likely not materialize before november. Vilma is a simple mailbox manager along the lines of postfixadmin. My primary interest is using it together with hordectl for a turnkey default setup. Vilma will get the PSR-4 treatment and likely I will want to change some of the architecture. Focus is on a minimum viable product that nicely integrates with my groupware bundle and fulfills very limited needs. I appreciate the work of Christian Bolz on PostfixAdmin and I do not intend to build a full scale replacement.

What’s next?

  • More library conversions to PSR-4, PHP7 features.
  • Most likely I will upgrade unit tests to a more recent PHPunit
  • Release Cleanup / Upstreaming efforts for existing non-released code.
  • Better theme support for horde-installer-plugin

Results first, more talk later.

bookmark_borderHeads Up: Cannot login as horde admin anymore?

Please be careful: Horde has introduced a new default setting $conf[‘auth’][‘lowercase’] which acts like the auth hook used to do.

This might lead to issues when your default admin account is named “Administrator”.

It is actually a very useful setting. It ensures that any prefs and other profiles also work with case-insensitive backends regardless of how you type the user name.

How to fix?

a) Lowercase all admin names in your $conf[‘auth’][‘admin’] settings in conf.php

b) disable $conf[‘auth’][‘lowercase’] by setting it to false value.

bookmark_borderPEAR down – Taking Horde to Composer

Since Horde 4, the Horde ecosystem heavily relied on the PEAR infrastructure. Sadly, this infrastructure is in bad health. It’s time to add alternatives.

Everybody has noticed the recent PEAR break-in.

A security breach has been found on the http://pear.php.net webserver, with a tainted go-pear.phar discovered. The PEAR website itself has been disabled until a known clean site can be rebuilt. A more detailed announcement will be on the PEAR Blog once it’s back online. If you have downloaded this go-pear.phar in the past six months, you should get a new copy of the same release version from GitHub (pear/pearweb_phars) and compare file hashes. If different, you may have the infected file.

While I am writing these lines, pear.php.net is down. Retrieval links for individual pear packages are down. Installation of pear packages is still possible from private mirrors or linux software distribution packages (openSUSE, Debian, Ubuntu). Separate pear servers like pear.horde.org are not directly affected. However, a lot of pear software relies on one or many libraries from pear.php.net – it’s a tough situation. A lot of software projects have moved on to composer, an alternative solution to dependency distribution. However, some composer projects have dependency on PEAR channels.

I am currently submitting some changes to Horde upstream to make Horde libs (both released and from git) more usable from composer projects.
Short-term goal is making use of some highlight libraries easier in other contexts. For example, Horde_ActiveSync and Horde_Mail, Horde_Smtp, Horde_Imap_Client are really shiny. I use Horde_Date so much I even introduced it in some non-horde software – even though most functionality is also somewhere in php native classes.

The ultimate goal however is to enable horde groupware installations out of composer. This requires more work to be done. There are several issues.

  • The db migration tool checks for some pear path settings during runtime https://github.com/horde/Core/pull/2 Most likely there are other code paths which need to be addressed.
  • Horde Libraries should not be web readable but horde apps should be in a web accessible structure. Traditionally, they are installed below the base application (“horde dir”) but they can also be installed to separate dirs.
  • Some libraries like Horde_Core contain files like javascript packages which need to be moved or linked to a location inside another package. Traditionally, this is handled either by the “git-tools” tool linking the code directory to a separate web directory or by pear placing various parts of the package to different root paths. Composer doesn’t have that out of the box.

Horde already has been generating composer manifest files for quite a while. Unfortunately, they were thin wrappers around the existing pear channel. The original generator even took all package information from the pear manifest file (package.xml) and converted it. Which means, it relied on a working pear installation. I wrote an alternative implementation which directly converts from .horde.yml to composer.json – Calling the packages by their composer-native names. As horde packages have not been released on packagist yet, the composer manifest also includes repository links to the relevant git repository. This should later be disabled for releases and only turned on in master/head scenarios. Releases should be pulled from packagist authority, which is much faster and less reliant on existing repository layouts. https://github.com/horde/components/pull/3

To address the open points, composer needs to be amended. I currently generate the manifests using package types “horde-library” and “horde-application” – I also added a package type “horde-theme” for which no precedent exists yet. Composer doesn’t understand these types unless one adds an installer plugin https://github.com/maintaina-com/installers. Once completed and accepted, this should be upstreamed into composer/installers. The plugin currently handles installing apps to appropriate places rather than /vendor/ – however, I think we should avoid having a super-special case “horde-base” and default to installing apps directly below the project dir. Horde base should also live on the same hierarchy. This needs some additional tools and autoconfiguration to make it convenient. Still much way to go.

That said, I don’t think pear support should be dropped anytime soon. It’s the most sensible way for distribution packaging php software. As long as we can bear the cost involved in keeping it up, we should try.

bookmark_borderhorde trustr – A new horde CA app step by step

Trustr is my current project to create a simple certificate management app.
I decided that it is just about the right scope to demonstrate a few things about application development in Horde 5.

I have not made any research if the name is already occupied by some other software. Should any problems arise, please contact me and we will find a good solution. I just wanted to start without losing much time on unrelated issues.

My goals as of now:

– Keep everything neat, testable, fairly decoupled and reusable. The core logic should be exportable to a separate library without much change. There won’t be any class of static shortcut methods pulling stuff out of nowhere. Config and registry are only accessed at select points, never in the deeper layers.
– Provide a CLI using Horde_Cli and Horde_Cli_Application (modeled after the backup tool in horde base git)
– Store to relational database using Horde_Db and Horde_Rdo for abstraction
– Use php openssl extension for certificate actions, but design with future options in mind
– Rely on magic openssl defaults as little as possible
– Use conf.xml / conf.php for any global defaults
– Show how to use the inter-app API (reusable for xml-rpc and json-rpc)
– Showcase an approach to REST danabol ds in Horde (experimental)

The app is intended as a resource provider. The UI is NOT a top priority. However, I am currently toying around with a Flux-like design in some unrelated larger project and I may or may not try some ideas later on.

Initial Steps: Creating the working environment

I set up a new horde development container using the horde tumbleweed image from Open Build Service and a docker compose file from my colleague Florian Frank. Please mind both are WIP and improve-as-needed projects.


git clone https://github.com/FrankFlorian/hordeOnTumbelweed.git
cd hordeOnTumbelweed
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml up


This yields a running horde instance on localhost and a database container.
I needed to perform a little manual setup in the web admin ui to get the DB to run and create all default horde schemas.

Next I entered the developer container with a shell
docker exec -it hordeOnTumbelWeed_php_1 bash

There are other ways to work with a container but that’s what I did.

 

Creating a  skeleton app

The container comes with a fairly complete horde git checkout in /srv/git/horde and a clone of the horde git tools in /srv/git/git-tools

A new skeleton app can be created using

horde-git-tools dev new --author "Ralf Lang <lastname@b1-systems.de>" --app-name trustr

The new app needs to be linked to the web directory using

horde-git-tools dev install

Also, a registry entry needs to be created by putting a little file into /srv/git/horde/base/config/registry.d

cat trustr-registry.d.php

<?php
// Copy this example snipped to horde/registry.d
$this->applications['trustr'] = array(
'name' => _('Certificates'),
'provides' => array('certificates')
);

 

This makes the new app show up in the admin menu. To actually use it and make it appear in topbar, you also need to go to /admin/config and create the config file for this app. Even though the settings don’t actually mean anything by now, the file must be present.

I hope to follow up soon with articles on the architecture and sub systems of the little app.

bookmark_borderHorde_Rdo Many to Many relations and Horde DB Migrator

Many to Many relations btween to object types or table rows are usually saved to a database using a third table.

For example, if every server can have multiple services and each service can run on multiple computers, we need a third table to store the relations:

server table:
server_id | server_name
        1 | hoellenhund.internal.company.com
        2 | forellenfisch.internal.company.com
service table:
service_id | service_name
         1 | tomcat
         2 | dovecot
relation table:
service_id | server_id
         1 | 1
         2 | 2
         2 | 1

Horde’s ORM Layer Horde_Rdo supports creating, checking and changing such relations but it’s not very prominently documented.

Let’s look at an example.

First, we need to create the database schema. Note that the relations table has no autoincrement key, only the two columns used for lookup


/usr/share/php5/PEAR/www/horde/hvview/migration # cat 1_hvview_base_tables.php
<?php
/**
* Create Hvview base tables.
*
* Copyright 2015-2015 B1 Systems GmbH (http://www.b1-systems.de/)
*
* See the enclosed file COPYING for license information (GPL). If you
* did not receive this file, see http://www.horde.org/licenses/gpl.
*
* @author Ralf Lang
* @package Hvview
*/
class HvviewBaseTables extends Horde_Db_Migration_Base
{
/**
* Upgrade
*/
public function up()
{

$t = $this->createTable('hvview_technical_landscapes', array('autoincrementKey' => 'landscape_id'));
$t->column('landscape_name', 'string', array('limit' => 255, 'null' => false));
$t->column('period_id', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => false));
$t->end();

$t = $this->createTable('hvview_resource_pools', array('autoincrementKey' => 'resource_pool_id'));
$t->column('pool_name', 'string', array('limit' => 255, 'null' => false));
$t->column('landscape_id', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => false));
$t->column('period_id', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => false));
$t->end();

$t = $this->createTable('hvview_hardware_pools', array('autoincrementKey' => 'hardware_pool_id'));
$t->column('pool_name', 'string', array('limit' => 255, 'null' => false));
$t->column('landscape_id', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => false)); /* possibly redundant, but may speed up things */
$t->column('period_id', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => false));
$t->end();

/*Relations table*/
$t = $this->createTable('hvview_rp_hwps', array('autoincrementKey' => false));
$t->column('resource_pool_id', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => false));
$t->column('hardware_pool_id', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => false));
$t->end();

$t = $this->createTable('hvview_periods', array('autoincrementKey' => 'period_id'));
$t->column('period_ts', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => false));
$t->end();

/* We collapse hypervisor and blade server objects into one for now - let`s see if this scales well */
$t = $this->createTable('hvview_servers', array('autoincrementKey' => 'server_id'));
$t->column('period_id', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => false));
$t->column('hardware_pool_id', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => false));
$t->column('hostname', 'string', array('limit' => 100, 'null' => false));
$t->column('state', 'string', array('limit' => 20, 'null' => true));
$t->column('os_release', 'string', array('limit' => 20, 'null' => true));
$t->column('comment', 'string', array('limit' => 255, 'null' => true));
$t->column('hv_free_vcpu', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => true));
$t->column('hv_free_memory', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => true));
$t->column('hv_free_disk', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => true));
$t->column('hv_total_vcpu', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => true));
$t->column('hv_total_memory', 'integer', array('limit' => 11, 'null' => true));
$t->column('hv_excluded', 'integer', array('limit' => 1, 'null' => true));
$t->column('hv_vm_count', 'integer', array('limit' => 3, 'null' => true));
$t->end();

// Indices not before we have an idea which of them we need most
// $this->addIndex('hvview_items', array('item_owner'));

}

/**
* Downgrade
*/
public function down()
{
$this->dropTable('hvview_technical_landscapes');
$this->dropTable('hvview_resource_pools');
$this->dropTable('hvview_hardware_pools');
$this->dropTable('hvview_periods');
$this->dropTable('hvview_servers');
$this->dropTable('hvview_rp_hwps');
}
}

The relations are defined in a Horde_Rdo_Mapper class which also knows how to spawn objects from the rows.

The Objects

/usr/share/php5/PEAR/www/horde/hvview/lib/Entity # cat ResourcePool.php 
<?php

class Hvview_Entity_ResourcePool extends Horde_Rdo_Base {
}

/usr/share/php5/PEAR/www/horde/hvview/lib/Entity # cat HardwarePool.php 

The Mappers:

/usr/share/php5/PEAR/www/horde/hvview/lib/Entity # cat ResourcePoolMapper.php 
<?php
class Hvview_Entity_ResourcePoolMapper extends Horde_Rdo_Mapper
{
    /**
     * Inflector doesn't support Horde-style tables yet
     */
    protected $_classname = 'Hvview_Entity_ResourcePool';
    protected $_table = 'hvview_resource_pools';
    protected $_lazyRelationships = array(
             'hwps' => array('type' => Horde_Rdo::MANY_TO_MANY,
                          'through' => 'hvview_rp_hwps',
                          'mapper' => 'Hvview_Entity_HardwarePoolMapper')
    
            );

}

/usr/share/php5/PEAR/www/horde/hvview/lib/Entity # cat HardwarePoolMapper.php 
<?php
class Hvview_Entity_HardwarePoolMapper extends Horde_Rdo_Mapper
{
    /**
     * Inflector doesn't support Horde-style tables yet
     */
    protected $_classname = 'Hvview_Entity_HardwarePool';
    protected $_table = 'hvview_hardware_pools';
    protected $_lazyRelationships = array(
             'rps' => array('type' => Horde_Rdo::MANY_TO_MANY,
                          'through' => 'hvview_rp_hwps',
                          'mapper' => 'Hvview_Entity_ResourcePoolMapper')
    
            );

}

The relation is defined in both direction and only loaded on-demand ("lazy") as opposed to upfront when the item is created from the database rows.
Now let's fetch two items and link them:

You can do this through the mapper or through one of the two partners

Adding a relation to an object using the object

// $rm is a ResourcePoolMapper instance
// $hm is a HardwarePoolMapper instance
$rp = $rm->findOne(); // In reality, you would not pick a random item but add some criteria
$hwp = $hm->findOne();
$rp->addRelation('hwps', $hwp);

Adding a relation to an object using the mapper

// $rm is a ResourcePoolMapper instance
// $hm is a HardwarePoolMapper instance
$rp = $rm->findOne(); // In reality, you would not pick a random item but add some criteria
$hwp = $hm->findOne();
$rm->addRelation('hwps', $rp, $hwp);

bookmark_borderHorde Recipe: Storing the last login language

A simple Horde Hook to store the last chosen login value in a user preference.
You can use this for example to determine in which language automatic messages by cron job or daemon should be sent.

// // APPLICATION AUTHENTICATED HOOK: See above for format.
public function appauthenticated()
{
global $language;
global $prefs;
if ($language) {
$prefs->setValue('language', $language);

}

// // Code to run when an application is first authenticated
}

If you want, you can modify it so it won’t overrule manual settings in the prefs UI:


if ($language && empty($prefs->getValue('language')) {
$prefs->setValue('language', $language);

}

bookmark_borderHorde starts Crowdfunding for IMP Multi-Account feature: Funded after a week

Michael Slusarz of Horde LLC started a crowdfunding experiment: He offered a 3000 $ project at crowdtilt.com to back up development of the IMP multi-account feature. Multi-Account support allows users to manage multiple mail boxes within one horde account. The feature is meant to replace Horde 3’s fetchmail feature which has not been ported for Horde 4 and 5 because technically, it’s not desirable anymore.

Michael Slusarz: The old fetchmail functionality is not coming back. It simply doesn’t work coherently/properly in a PHP environment with limited process times (and is non-threaded).
The replacement MUST be the ability to access multiple accounts within a single session. But this is not a trivial change

After Slusarz started the fundraising campaign, long-time supporters and users of horde contributed funds.

Currently, after three days, more that 80% of funding have been raised. About 500 US $ are still missing. The change is not trivial and probably going into IMP 6.2 for Horde 5.

As mentioned previously, this is a multi-week project, at least from a project planning perspective. And that doesn’t include the bug-fixing that is likely to be significant, given the fact that this is 1) an invasive UI change and 2) is involving connections to remote servers.

That being said – this is something I personally would *really* like to see in IMP also, so I am willing to provide a discount and prioritize this over some other activities I am currently involved in.
[..]
* This won’t be available for IMP 6.1. This will go into 6.2, at the earliest.

The Horde IMP Webmailer is among the most popular webmail applications in the world. It is shipped with most widespread linux distributions like openSUSE and Debian and has been used to drive webmail and groupware applications for large-scale userbases all over the world.

Currently, Horde 5 / IMP 6 is integrated into the cpanel administration product.

Update: After roughly a week, by 2013-08-14 the crowdfunding tilted: 3090 USD had been contributed.

http://lists.horde.org/archives/imp/Week-of-Mon-20130812/055265.html

http://lists.horde.org/archives/imp/Week-of-Mon-20130812/055265.html
I proudly get to make the announcement that the IMP Multiple Accounts
feature has been fully funded, as we reached the funding goal on
Crowdtilt this afternoon: http://tilt.tc/Evs2

I wanted to take the opportunity to thank all of the contributors:

– Simon Wilson
– Luis Felipe Marzagao
– Ralf Lang
– Digicolo.net srl
– Elbia Hosting
– Thomas Jarosch
– Andrew Dorman
– Henning Retzgen
– Michael Cramer
– Harvey Braun
– SAPO/Portugal Telecom
– Matthias Bitterlich
– Allan Girvan
– Bill Abrams
– Markus Wolff
– CAIXALMASSORA (Jose Guzman Feliu Vivas)
– Wolf Maschinenbau AG (Samuel Wolf)

It feels good to put a definite milestone into the enhancement ticket:

http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/8077

Should be able to start on this soon… hopefully tomorrow. Still
undecided on which branch I’m going to do development in but I will
post information to the dev@ list once I decide. Those that
contributed may get status updates.

Once again, thanks to everyone for supporting the Horde Project. Not
only was this an interesting experience from my standpoint (hopefully
others as well), but now we will soon get a feature that is obviously
desired by a large portion of the user base.

michael

bookmark_borderHorde Configuration: How to move passwd app into settings menu

The passwd app is a password management/changing utility for Horde which normally lives in a menu “my account” in the toolbar.

While it has been released and is in production use at many sites, it is also under development to expand and improve the module.Bankdrukken training + kogelvrije schouders bouwen – Lee Hayward’s totale fitness bodybuilding drostanolone kratom-effecten op fitness, pre-workout en bodybuilding.

Passwd provides fairly complete support for changing passwords via Poppassd, LDAP, Unix expect scripts, SMB/CIFS (under unix), Kolab, ADSI, Pine, Serv-U FTP, VMailMgr, vpopmail, SQL passwords and other more complicated setups.For a certain horde 5 installation, I needed to move the passwd app under the gearwheel/settings menu and out of the toolbar. After setting up passwd to work correctly, I added only one line to the registry.local.php file:

<?php
$this->applications['passwd']['menu_parent'] = 'settings';
?>

Everything you put into the menu labelled “settings” automatically appears in the gearwheel menu.

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bookmark_borderThey’re taking the Horde to Debian, to Debian!

Now that Horde Groupware 5 has been released as stable software, a lot of users noticed the shortcomings of the PEAR packaging systems. It does not provide an easy and smooth way to upgrade Horde 4 to the latest bugfix version anymore. If you run Horde 4 apps that have not been ported for Horde 5 yet, you need to be very cautious which pear commands you run. A simple pear upgrade -c horde would break your existing installation because it would upgrade everything to the most recent major version. This is not desirable for production systems. Distribution packaging is the solution to this. Receive only compatible upgrades until you decide to do a major upgrade.

Distribution packages of Horde 5 are available for openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from the isv:B1-Systems:Horde5:rolling project.

These packages include development snapshots of unreleased applications like Passwd for Horde 5. They have been modified to fit into the distribution specific standard directories, install regular jobs the distribution way etc. For example, the distribution apps don’t have separate .htaccess files but provide a ready-to-run apache2 vhost config.

Under debian however, nobody stepped up to help the main debian horde packager, Mathieu Parent, to finish the Horde 5 packages in time. This means, the next stable Debian release will probably not include Horde 5.

I have talked to Mathieu and built a patch for the Open Build Service which facilitates PEAR packaging for debian targets.

You can see the progress of debian packaging by adding the Debian repository of the project to your /etc/apt/sources.list file

cd /root/
echo "deb http://widehat.opensuse.org/repositories/isv:/B1-Systems:/Horde5:/rolling/Debian_6.0 ./" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
wget http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/isv:/B1-Systems:/Horde5:/rolling/Debian_6.0/Release.key
apt-key add Release.key
apt-get update

As of today, the repository only contains php-horde-autoloader but it I aim to fill it with all ~ 100 Horde pear packages (minus the bundles).

If you need business critical, supported Horde 4 or Horde 5 packages for openSUSE/SLES, Redhat/CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu or special architectures like ARM or Itanium, don’t wait for community action but ask for a commercial solution.