This is an old revision of the document!
Simply download VPOP3 from the website, and run the installation program and follow the prompts.
Occasionally people may have problems with the PostgreSQL part of the installation. If that happens, please contact us either by email at support@pscs.co.uk or by phone to +44 (0)1484 855800, and we will do our best to help.
If this is an initial installation, then you can call 0871 311 1047 (calls cost 10p per minute from a BT land line) and we can remote into your server to help you configure it. Note that this service is not available for reinstalls/moves etc. See other articles on this Wiki, or use our normal support methods.
You may need to turn off disk write-back caching on your PC. Database systems require tight control of hard disks to avoid disk corruption. Write back caches will pretend to write data to the disk before actually doing so. This means that if the PC is turned off (or explodes or the power fails) between the cache pretending to have written the data and it actually being written, the data will be lost, and this can cause the database to be corrupted.
To disable write caching:
Note that if you disable write-back caching then you will slow down the disk access on the PC, so the choice is really yours whether you prefer the speed of having it enabled or the safety of disabling it. Using server PC hardware with battery backed cache is the best option if you need both the speed and the safety.
We recommend that the VPOP3\pgsql\data folder is excluded from any virus scanning. That is because if any of the data files in these directories contain anything which the virus scanner considers suspicious it may delete or quarantine a database file, and thus trash the database completely, needing a database restore from a backup, and probably losing some messages.
Desktop virus scanners often have email virus scanning capability. These often cause problems if run on a mail server itself (that is not what they are designed to do). We recommend that if you encounter any problems with sending or receiving mail, you turn off the email scanning part of the virus scanner on the VPOP3 computer to see if that is the problem. If it is, then you can use one of our integrated virus scanners such as avast! for VPOP3, use a third party virus scanner specifically designed to run on a mail server, or rely on the virus scanner on the users' PCs.
Some virus scanners include a firewall/Internet security component. If you use one of these, then you need to be prepared to configure the firewall to allow VPOP3 to act as a service for your network. We cannot provide support for this (except for the standard Windows firewall) as part of our free email support service. You should contact your antivirus/firewall vendor for help, or use one of our paid support options.
When you install VPOP3 it will ask you to create an initial user. This counts towards your user count and is created as your initial administrator account. More administrator accounts can be created later if you wish, and you can remove the initial user if you wish.
The default username & password for the initial user is:
but obviously these can be changed to whatever you wish.
Make sure you remember the details of the initial user you have created as you will need these details to be able to log into the VPOP3 settings later!