Introduction

Push server technology is very trendy nowadays, especially with the iPhone which now allows connections (just like Windows Mobile) to an Exchange-like push server. The problem is that for the open-source world, Exchange is not an option. I found a well-developed project on SourceForge called Z-Push that works perfectly with Postfix.

Installation

We’ll download the latest version from https://z-push.sourceforge.net and extract it to /var/www:

  tar zxvf z-push-<version>.tar.gz -C /var/www

Now we’ll apply the proper permissions:

  chmod 777 /var/www/z-push/state
chmod 755 /var/www/z-push/state
chown www-data. /var/www/z-push

Configuration

Apache

We need to configure Apache to redirect /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync to /var/www/z-push/index.php. There are two options:

  • Using alias:
  Alias /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync /var/www/z-push/index.php
  • Using VirtualHost

Add this to your virtualhost configuration (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default):

         <Location /z-push>
               Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
               Order allow,deny
               allow from all
               RedirectMatch ^/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync /var/www/z-push/index.php
       </Location

PHP

Now we need to make some modifications to your PHP configuration:

  php_flag magic_quotes_gpc off
register_globals off
magic_quotes_runtime off
short_open_tag on

Restart the Apache server:

  /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Z-Push

Now we just need to edit a few fields in the configuration:

  ...
date_default_timezone_set("Europe/Paris"
...
$BACKEND_PROVIDER = "BackendIMAP";
...
define('IMAP_SERVER', 'deimos.fr');
...

Now, you just need to test your configuration by connecting to your server: http:///Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync
If you get a login/password prompt, enter your IMAP account credentials, and if you get this message, it means it’s working :-)

  GET not supported
This is the z-push location and can only be accessed by Microsoft ActiveSync-capable devices.

FAQ

I have problems but don’t know where they’re coming from, how can I debug?

Simply create a debug file:

  touch /var/www/z-push/debug.txt
chmod 777 /var/www/z-push/debug.txt
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Last updated 24 Jul 2008, 08:12 CEST. history