Roundcube as a proxy

[nick_theboatman]

Evening all

Newbie here (so please forgive me if this is a "no-hoper" or "stupid" or "it works like this already" as a development proposal).

I am looking at a fork of Roundcube that can be mounted on a server (shared webspace) (eg using only FTP) with no system/root access to function.
This is because I am coming across more and more service providers who do not run cPanel and so the use of Roundcube (installed by the service user) is no longer available. In one case the mail reader provided by the service provider for webmail use is awful and I have had a range of client complaints.

If I can persuade Roundcube to work using only some PHP (ie no root- or sudo-based  installation / system calls / system file access) then it appears to me that the upload of a Roundcube installation dataset to a subdomain filesystem could then operate as the Roundcube installation (using IMAP as normal, to get at the mail server) and be used in situations where otherwise it could not be installed.

My questions to start this are:

1(a)    Has this been done already ; or
1(b)    Is it indeed a "no-hoper" for some Roundcube system design constraint?
2 What are the system calls external to PHP that might cause some difficulties
3    Other comments to start this exercise off.

Thanks and looking forward to hearing from people who might like to be involved.

[SKaero]

There should be no problems running Roundcube standalone, in fact I've be doing that since long before cPanel included Roundcube as a option. You can see the full list of requirements here: https://github.com/roundcube/roundcubemail/blob/release-1.6/INSTALL

In general it can be installed like any other PHP application, just download the "Complete" package here: https://roundcube.net/download/ upload those file via FTP, setup a database and then run the installer at <url-to-roundcube>/installer/