PHP

An absolute requirement is PHP 4.1.2.

PHP must be compiled with these modules:

XML. Enabled by default. Used by the help subsystem.
gettext. Required for internationalization. Gettext is a standard part of every Linux distribution. --with-gettext configuration option.
mbstring. Required for conversion between different codesets. --enable-mbstring configuration option.

Other modules, required by various applications or plugins:

IMAP. Required by the mail application and the IMAP authentication module. IMAP c-client 2001 is recommended. You can get the latest version of it here. --with-imap configuration option.
Various SQL modules. JAWmail uses PEAR::DB for access to SQL servers. It supports almost all SQL servers that PHP does.

Configuration

There are some configuration directives that have to be tweaked.

In case that your webserver doesn't support per directory configuration, then you'll have to alter the php.ini file. It can usually be found in /usr/local/lib/php/.

Note: This will affect the entire installation of PHP! If you are running any other applications, check their documentation regarding this.

In case that you are running Apache, copy the file .htaccess.dist to .htaccess and alter it so that it fits to your setup. You'll also have to set AllowOverride (at least) to Options in your httpd.conf, otherwise the .htaccess won't have any effect.

magic_quotes_gpc. This directive needs to be set to Off. When magic_quotes_gpc are turned on, all quotes and backslashes get escaped by backslashes automatically.
register_globals. This directive prevents propagiation of HTTP GET and POST and cookie variables. It has to be set to Off.
include_path. The include_path directive has to include these paths, seperated by a colon:
- .
- ../../
- Path to your PEAR installation, usually /usr/local/lib/php/.
The single dot has to be the first one!

PEAR

PEAR stands for PHP Extension and Application Repository. It is a collection of various libraries for SQL access, mail handling, caching and other neat things.

JAW requires a recent version of PEAR - at least the one that is distributed with PHP 4.1.0.

Be sure that path to PEAR (usually /usr/local/lib/php/) is in the configuration directive include_path of PHP! Script test.php in the root directory of JAWmail will check these directives!