Released: August 3, 2012

ClearOS Community 6.3.0 has arrived! Along with the usual round of enhancements, this release introduces new apps focused on the mail server stack. Anchored on the Zarafa for ClearOS solution, you can now implement an on-premise or private cloud mail server using ClearOS. This release includes the following new apps: Zarafa Community for ClearOS, Mail Antivirus, Mail Antispam, Antispam Updates, Greylisting, and more.

For businesses and organizations, ClearOS Professional 6.3.0 also includes Zarafa Professional for ClearOS, Mail Antimalware Premium powered by Kaspersky and Gateway Antimalware Premium powered by Kaspersky. The Zarafa solution provides Outlook support (calendaring, tasks, etc.) as well as integrated mailbox backup.

It is important to note that the Zarafa Community for ClearOS is a paid app - just $10 - from a member of the community. There is also a free POP/IMAP server available for beta testing.

Along with updating the base system built on source code from Red Hat Enterprise Linux ¹⁾ 6.3, this release includes the following major changes.

• Zarafa Community for ClearOS
• Zarafa Professional for ClearOS (Professional Edition)
• Basic POP/IMAP Server (beta)
• SMTP Server
• Greylisting
• Mail Antimalware Premium powered by Kaspersky (Professional Edition)
• Mail Antivirus
• Mail Antispam
• Antispam Updates
• Gateway Antimalware Premium powered by Kaspersky (Professional Edition)

The base mail domain is used by a number of apps: SMTP Server, IMAP, Mail Filter, etc. Each app saves this information in its own configuration file, but we really only want to see the domain in one place in the user interface. That's where the Mail Settings app comes in. This might not be the way we'll do it in the final release, but that's how it is done right now:

• Go to System|Account Manager|Account Manager to make sure the accounts system (users/groups) is running.

• Go to System|Settings|Mail Settings to set the mail domain.

• Go to System|Accounts|Users to create a few users. Please make sure the SMTP Server User and Zarafa Account are enabled for the user. Feel free to fill out the contact information too - this information is shown in Zarafa's address book!

• Go to System|Accounts|Groups to create a group or two. You will see a new option when adding/editing a group: Distribution List. If you leave this option enabled, the group becomes a mail distribution list (e.g. sales@example.com will go to all the members of the sales group).

• Go to Server|Messaging and Collaboration|Zarafa Community and start all the servers (if not running).

That's it. You should be able login to the Zarafa web client with your user account credentials:

• Go to https://w.x.y.z/webaccess to access Zarafa's web client

Please visit the ClearOS Download page for download options.

• The last step in installer may take a couple of minutes to complete

For ClearOS 6, the barrier for having an app available in the web interface was raised. If the quality or features in ClearOS 5.2 were not up to the standards of a modern small business server/gateway, the feature was either upgraded or deprecated.

The default groupware and mail solution is now based on Zarafa technology.

Horde/Kolab has been deprecated and is no longer supported. This policy may change in a future ClearOS 6 release.

The reporting engine in ClearOS 6 is being completely overhauled. An administrator does not want to sift through 5 different reports to see what a particular user was doing on the network. Instead, a unified reporting tool is under development. The reports in version 5.x have been deprecated.

The Advanced Firewall app was marked as deprecated in version 5.2. It is no longer available. The Custom Firewall can be used as an alternative.

The Administrators app does not fit into the group-based policy engine in ClearOS 6. The underlying mechanism that existed in ClearOS 5 has been ported to version 6, but it requires command line configuration.

The Dynamic VPN app provides advanced IPsec support in ClearOS Professional. The unmanaged IPsec tool has been unmaintained for a few years and was dropped in version 6. It's open source, so if someone wants to revive unmanaged IPsec, go right ahead.