Directions were based on the article written here: http://binaryimpulse.com/2013/01/zimbra-zcs-ubuntu-12-04/.

A copy of the post can be downloaded here.

However, I ran into some problems installing the suite. You need to prepare the default installation of Ubuntu 12.04 x64 sever before running the install scripts for Zimbra. The directions apply only to new installations. All commands were run under root.

Install CSF – This is a program to configure IPtables painlessly. Original article here. I ran the following commands:

wget http://configserver.com/free/csf.tgz
tar xf csf.tgz
cd csf
./install.sh
vi /etc/csf/csf.conf

The following ports were added

For Tcp-in:

,7071,7780

For Tcp-out:

,993,7071,995,7780,465

Also…set Test to 0

Then restart csf

csf -r

Afterwards, you need to remove sendmail and apache. Zimbra will reinstall these.

apt-get remove sendmail sendmail-bin
apt-get purge exim4 sendmail sendmail-bin
apt-get remove apache2*

Next update your DNS MX records. Make sure their is an A record pointing to the  server and a corresponding MX for the same server, followed by a the primary MX record for the root domain entry itself.

For example, in bind:

mail.example.com.        A    1.2.3.4
mail.example.com.        MX 0 mail.example.com.
example.com.             MX 0 mail.example.com.

Next update your hosts file.

vi /etc/hosts
1.2.3.4 mail.example.com    mail
echo mail.example.com > /etc/hostname

Install perquisites for Zimbra

apt-get install netcat-openbsd libidn11 libpcre3 libgmp3c2 libexpat1 libstdc++6 libperl5.14 sysstat sqlite3

Reboot the server – this is an actual terminal command.

reboot

And lastly, fetch the Zimbra installation files and run the install scripts

wget http://files2.zimbra.com/downloads/8.0.2_GA/zcs-8.0.2_GA_5569.UBUNTU12_64.20121210115059.tgz
tar -zxvf zcs-8.0.2_GA_5569.UBUNTU12_64.20121210115059.tgz
cd zcs-8.0.2_GA_5569.UBUNTU12_64.20121210115059
./install.sh

The only hiccup I ran into originally was an issue related to uninstalling postfix from the default installation of Ubuntu. This resulted in purging some crontab settings and permissions that need to be present in order for the server’s status to show up properly in the Admin console. Reference thread here.Summary of the fix is the following. Note: this was all done as root, hence lack of sudo anywhere.

1. give access to zimbra user to the /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/crontabs folder :

chown -R zimbra:zimbra /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/crontabs

2. change directory to zimbra crontabs

cd /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/crontabs

3. Concatenate all the files into one crontab

cat crontab >> crontab.zimbra
cat crontab.ldap >> crontab.zimbra
cat crontab.logger >> crontab.zimbra
cat crontab.mta >> crontab.zimbra
cat crontab.store >> crontab.zimbra

4. create the zimbra crontab and set permissions

crontab crontab.zimbra

chown zimbra:zimbra crontab.zimbra

Check to see if it concatenated… result should be very long.

su Zimbra

crontab -l