I'm having some3 issues with squirrelmail i have it installed all the php and imap modules i need i've tried aeromail and it loads the php but when i try to load squirrelmail's index.php it will not load it tries for some time but then i get nothing, what am i doing wrong?

Nothing? Do you not get any error message or anything? Take a look at your httpd "error_log".

i get nothing i've cancelled it a couple times because it stops responding and when i to reload the page it drags on and i get no result

Is your webserver running an no ports are being blocked:
netstat -nlp

Can you serve other static documents from the server?

yes everything works the ip brings up the default page and aeromail's default page works (used it to test imap and PHP4 settings) but all to no avail but when i try myip/squirrelmail/index.php instead of aeromail's it doesn't load at all

I've gotten it working now but i've encountered a new issue it will not let me log in i've tried root and another user account called user but i still cannot get in... what am i doing wrong?

Oh and what might this mean??
Warning: Failed opening '/var/www/squirrelmail/functions/page_header.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/share/pear') in /usr/share/squirrelmail/functions/display_messages.php on line 99

i get that when i try to log in

Either the file:
/var/www/squirrelmail/functions/page_header.php

does not exist or does not have the right permisions.

What might the proper permissions be? currently they are all set to root

root is an owner - can you less the file?
ls -l the file & post

the owner of the file is root i'm not sure how using less on the file would acomplish much normally i use ls -al and it shows all of the permissions as root

Not it shows the owner and group as root. Can you post the ACTUAL output from:
ls -la /var/www/squirrelmail/functions

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11098 Nov 11 2002 abook_database.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5717 Nov 11 2002 abook_global_file.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8946 Nov 11 2002 abook_ldap_server.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11614 Nov 11 2002 abook_local_file.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14976 Nov 11 2002 addressbook.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1729 Nov 11 2002 array.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7859 Nov 11 2002 attachment_common.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 539 Nov 11 2002 auth.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1709 Nov 11 2002 constants.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8008 Nov 11 2002 date.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12797 Nov 11 2002 db_prefs.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6658 Nov 11 2002 display_messages.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6167 Nov 11 2002 file_prefs.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6758 Nov 11 2002 gettext.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 8436 Aug 6 06:12 global.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 39131 Nov 11 2002 i18n.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 556 Nov 11 2002 imap.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16027 Nov 11 2002 imap_general.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 22404 Nov 11 2002 imap_mailbox.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 28087 Nov 11 2002 imap_messages.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7337 Nov 11 2002 imap_search.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 469 Nov 11 2002 index.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 34467 Nov 11 2002 mailbox_display.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 72174 Nov 11 2002 mime.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13010 Nov 11 2002 options.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7621 Nov 11 2002 page_header.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2848 Nov 11 2002 plugin.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3537 Nov 11 2002 prefs.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 30175 Nov 11 2002 smtp.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12846 Nov 11 2002 strings.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5619 Nov 11 2002 tree.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5331 Nov 11 2002 url_parser.php

Try chowning the files to the user that your webserver runs as.

they are the same :S