Installing Egroupware

How to install Egroupware on a computer running Windows 2000, XP or 2003.

There are other ways of installing the necessary bits and pieces, but the method below
seems to be the most straightforward for the non-expert...

1. Download the necessary files

1. Go to www.egroupware.org, go to the "Downloads" section in the Contents
menu on the left, and look under "Latest stable version". You should see a link to
"Official ... packages from sourceforge.net". Click on the link, and you will be
taken to the Sourceforge download page. Here you will find three different .zip
files (and some other files too, which are for installing on Linux).
eGroupWare-xyz.zip is the main Egroupware program, which you definitely
need to download.
eGroupWare-egw-pear-xyz.zip is the "pear" package, which you will only need
if you want to use Egroupware's built-in mail client (which can be integrated with
the calendar to send automated reminders). I have not experimented with this, so
if you want to use it, you will need to check the documentation at
www.egroupware.org.
eGroupWare-gallery-xyz.zip is the "gallery" package", which you can use to
create online photo albums inside Egroupware. Otherwise it's not needed.
2. Go to http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html and follow the
links to download the latest version of the XAMPP Windows Installer (which is
one .exe file). XAMPP contains Apache, PHP and MySQL in one installer, which
makes the installation quite simple.
3. If you don't have it already, you may also want to download and install the latest
version of Firefox from http://www.mozilla.org/en/firefox. This is because some
parts of the Egroupware install process do not always work with Internet
Explorer.

2. Install XAMPP
1. Launch the XAMPP Windows Installer which you downloaded. Choose the
desired language for the installation, and click OK.

2. Click Next.

3. Click Next, to choose the default install location.

4. IMPORTANT - in the XAMPP Options dialog, tick "Install Apache as service"

and "Install MySQL as service". Then click the Install button.

5. After a minute or two, the installation finishes. Click the Finish button, to close
the installation wizard.

6. Now Xampp tests the Apache configuration. If you see a message that the Apache
service has failed to start, it usually means that either:
a. Your computer's firewall is blocking it (so add an exception in your firewall
program to allow c:\xampp\Apache\bin\apache.exe access to the local network). If
you use Windows Firewall, it will automatically block Apache, and you might

need to click Unblock when you see the following message.

b. Some other program is using port 80 or port 443. You can figure out which one
by using the Netstat command together with Task Manager - see here for more
details.
7. Click OK at this dialog box, which confirms that Apache and MySQL services
have been installed.

8. Click Yes at this dialog box, to start the XAMPP control panel.

9. Make sure that both Apache and MySQL are started in the XAMPP control panel

- they both need to be running before you can continue with the installation.

10. Now test that Apache is working properly - open Internet Explorer or Firefox,
type in localhost into the address bar and press Enter. You should see the XAMPP
page, like this one.

3. Install Egroupware & create PHP header

1. Open the Egroupware zip file which you downloaded at the beginning, and unzip

all the files to C:\xampp\htdocs. This might take a few minutes, and at the end
you will have a new folder C:\xampp\htdocs\egroupware, with subfolders and
files like this:

2. Open Internet Explorer or Firefox, type in localhost/egroupware into the address

bar and press Enter. You should see a page like this.

If you see an error instead, make doubly sure that your Egroupware files are
unzipped into the right place before trying again.
3. Click on Run installation tests. This will test whether all Egroupware
components are working properly.
After the test, you will see a report something like this (the screenshot shows the
bottom of the report).

Each item will be shown with one of three symbols:

o
o

A green tick (OK)

A yellow lightning bolt (a warning).
It's normal to see some warnings - for example next to Oci8 and Ldap,
which you only need if you are setting up a more complex system. There
will also be a warning next to Pear (which is a component you may not
need anyway - see above).
a red X (A problem which needs to be fixed before you can continue).
This usually means either that XAMPP is not working properly, or there is
some problem with the files you unzipped.

4. If the tests show no problems, click on Continue to the Header Admin, at the
bottom of the screen. This will bring you to the header setup page, with a message
at the top saying You have not created your header.inc.php yet! You can create
it now. If you scroll down, you will see a number of settings which you can fill in.
This is the point where I did a lot of head-scratching when I was trying to follow
the setup instructions at egroupware.org...
Here's all you need to fill in:
Header Password

The password you will need the next time you change any of
the settings on this page. You cannot use a blank password.

Configuration
user

The username you will use to configure Egroupware system in

a few moments.
The easiest thing at this stage is to keep the default Admin.

Configuration
password

The password which goes with the username above. You'll

need this password the first time you log in. You cannot use a
blank password

5. When you have filled in this information, click on the Write button at the bottom
of the screen. You will see a message "Created header.inc.php!", along with a
Continue button.
Click the Continue button, and you will see the screen below.
If you are using Internet Explorer and nothing happens when you click the button,
you might need to open the page
(http://localhost/egroupware/setup/manageheader.php) in Firefox instead.

4. Configure Egroupware
1. Under Setup/Config Admin Login, log in with the configuration user and
configuration password you created in step 4 above. Now you will see this screen.

In Step 1 you choose which character set to use, according to which languages
you plan to install. In Egroupware 1.6, the default is UTF-8, which gives more
flexibility for installing languages with different character sets.
This is also the place to create your database - just click on the Create Database
button. Now you will see this screen:

Click on Re-Check My Installation, and you should see a message saying Your
database is working.

Click on the Install (all applications) button. When I did this, I got an error
message after a few seconds, with no obvious way of going back. If this happens
to you, you can get back to the setup screen by typing in
localhost/egroupware/setup into the address bar and pressing Enter.
2. If your applications have installed successfully, you will see a tick under Step 1 Simple Application Management. If there is a red cross instead, you may need
to click the Re-Check My Installation button.
When Step 1 is ticked, go to Step 2 - Configuration, and click on "Edit current
configuration". Here you add information about HTTP proxy and mailserver even if you don't plan to use those features, you need to put something in the
boxes - some dummy address like none.none will do. The picture below shows

the minimum information you need to provide.

Click the Save button at the bottom, and you should be back at the setup screen
with Step 1 and Step 2 ticked.
3. Let's move to Step 3 - Admin Account. Click the Create admin account button.
You will see a screen like this, which is to create the account which you will use
when you first log into your fully set-up Egroupware system.

The only things you need to fill in here are Admin username, Admin password
and Re-enter password. Then click the Save button at the bottom.
4. Step 4 - Language management is only needed if you want your users to be able
to see the user interface in a language other than English. In that case, click on the
Manage Languages button, and choose the languages you want for the user
interface. Ctrl+click lets you select multiple languages. Then click the Install
button.
When the Language installation is finished, you are not taken back to the setup
screen automatically - you need to click on "Setup Main Menu" in the left
column.

5. Steps 5 and 6 are completed automatically, so when all six steps are ticked (like
the picture below), click on Back to user login in the left column.

6. You should now see the standard Egroupware login screen.

Now you can log in with the username and password you created in step 3 above.
If the login is successful, you should see something like this:

Now you can go on to customise your Egroupware setup to suit the needs of
your users.