POPFile Documentation 

First Time Setup: Step 1
 Installing
Step 2
 Bucket Setup
Step 3
 Email Programs
Step 4
 Training
 
Using POPFile with:  Firewalls  Secure Password Authentication  Other Proxies
 Multiple Email Accounts

Installing POPFile

POPFile comes in two versions - an easy-to-install Windows version, and a cross-platform version for technically-minded users. Once installed, the two are identical.

Easy-to-Install Windows Version

Download the Windows installer from the POPFile Download Page, and run setup.exe and follow the instructions in there. You can launch POPFile from the Start Menu (Start > Programs > POPFile > Run POPFile in Background), or reboot and it will start automatically. Important note: nothing will appear on your screen! To check if it's running correctly, read the "Accessing POPFile" section below.

System Requirements

You'll need several things to get started with POPFile.

  1. The latest POPFile release.
  2. An e-mail account that uses the POP3 protocol (most accounts do, although you can't use POPFile with web-based services like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail without extra software)
  3. Around 2MB free disk space

You can obtain the latest POPFile release as a zip file at the top of the package list at the POPFile download page. Windows users will want the file under the section labeled Windows Only.

POPFile itself occupies just over a megabyte. The word lists (called the corpus) used to classify your email will take some additional space depending on how much mail you use to train POPFile and how many buckets you create.

Cross-Platform Version

Get Perl running on your machine, then download the POPFile Perl zip from the POPFile Home Page, and extract it to a directory of your choice. On Windows platforms, launch with the command perl popfile.pl.


Checking POPFile is running correctly

POPFile doesn't have a traditional interface like most programs - you access it through your web browser. Don't worry - unless you say otherwise, no-one outside your machine can access it.

To load POPFile, go to http://127.0.0.1:8080, or (for the Windows version) click on the 'POPFile Web Interface' link in your Start Menu. Important note: if, during the Windows install process, you chose a different port to talk to POPFile on, replace the "8080" part with whatever you chose.

If you get an error message, check that POPFile is really running, and that you have the port number correct (it should be 8080, but if you changed it, you'll also need to change that in the web address you're going to.)

If you get a POPFile screen, congratulations! Now it's time to set up how you want your mail sorted. Let's go on to the Bucket Setup. >>


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