tcpserver -p and smtpd and DNS

[David Killingsworth]

I have been running qmail for about 8 months, It works great.
So far I have not been able to resolve on problem.
When an smtp connection comes in we only want to connect
with servers who have forward and reverse DNS that match.

I managed to install a macro into sendmail (mail server we replaced)
in about 15 minutes that takes the IP of the incoming smtp request
looks up the name, then looks up the IP for the NAME. the IP 
should be the same as the connecting host. If this is not the case
the smtp connection should be dropped.

I use tcpserver to start smtpd.
I use the -p (paranoid) option, (added the option a few days ago)
which by my preliminary understanding was supposed to accomplish
this task of DNS cross-matching.

However I receieved an email recently whois headers are

Received: from unknown (HELO www.somang.or.kr) ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
I noticed that there isn't a hostname.
nslookup 211.38.3.100  will return no hostname.
So back to the drawing board.
http://cr.yp.to/ucspi-tcp/tcpserver.html   ( <-- drawing board)

I notice -p: Paranoid. After looking up the remote host name in DNS, look up
the IP addresses in
DNS for that host name, and remove the environment variable
$TCPREMOTEHOST if none of the addresses match the client's IP address. 

upon re-reading this option I notice it did what it says it does,
It removed the $TCPREMOTEHOST, hence the "Received: from unknown "

I still got the email. So now I figure that $TCPREMOTEHOST is
passed to smtpd in the environment variables. 
so somehow I need to tell smtpd to close
if "condition" is not met.
Oh.. I have read the man pages. I have installed qmail, vpopmail,
on more than a dozen
servers for nearly that many clients. I understand quite abit.
 David Killingsworth.

Re: Default forward address for entire domain with non sytems accountassign file

[Ryan Byrne]

Check Man page for qmail-send  - virtualdomains. You may
also need to use an alias (man dot-qmail).

Hope this helps,

~~Moose~~

On Sun, 13 May 2001, Peter Janett wrote:

> I apologize if this is a dumb question, but I can't seem to figure out how
> to set up a default forwarding address for virtual domains.  In other words,
> if an email is sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED], it will be forwarded to a
> preset address.
> 
> Maybe it has something to do with the setup I'm using, which is Paul Gregg's
> non system account setup, http://www.pgregg.com/projects/.
> 
> I had the impression that I should setup something using + in the assign
> file, but I'm just not figuring it out.
> 
> Any help appreciated,
> 
> Peter Janett
> 
> New Media One Web Services
> 
> WEB HOSTING FOR WEB DEVELOPERS
> 
> Sun, IRIX, Windows 2000, Linux;
> PHP, MySQL, Perl, Cold Fusion,
> MS SQL, ASP, SSI, SSL
> http://www.newmediaone.net
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> (303)828-9882
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Ryan Byrne
Server Analyst
Technical Services
John Fairfax Holdings
(02) 9282 3634
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

No mail arrival notice!

[[EMAIL PROTECTED]]

Hi,

  There is no mail arrival notice while
the message would show up in $HOME/Mailbox!  What seems to be the
problem?  Thanks a lot!!

CY Wang

Default forward address for entire domain with non sytems account assign file

[Peter Janett]

I apologize if this is a dumb question, but I can't seem to figure out how
to set up a default forwarding address for virtual domains.  In other words,
if an email is sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED], it will be forwarded to a
preset address.

Maybe it has something to do with the setup I'm using, which is Paul Gregg's
non system account setup, http://www.pgregg.com/projects/.

I had the impression that I should setup something using + in the assign
file, but I'm just not figuring it out.

Any help appreciated,

Peter Janett

New Media One Web Services

WEB HOSTING FOR WEB DEVELOPERS

Sun, IRIX, Windows 2000, Linux;
PHP, MySQL, Perl, Cold Fusion,
MS SQL, ASP, SSI, SSL
http://www.newmediaone.net
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(303)828-9882

How to resend individual message?

[Evelyn Huang]

Hi,
 
 Thanks for all the people who replied 
to my questions earlier!!
 But can anyone here tell me how I can 
resend individual message?
Besides, if I don't have a legitimate domain name, there is no 
way for me to test if the incoming messages from remote addresses work, 
right?  
    Again, thanks for all you kind 
help!!!
 
Evelyn Huang

Re: alias documentation

[Nick (Keith) Fish]

Neil Grant wrote:
> 
> maybe this is a stupidly easy question but I cant find where do I find out
> about the format of .alias files, and other documentation on them?
> 
> Neil

`man dot-qmail`

or if you didn't put qmail's man files in one of your MANPATH directories:

`man -M /var/qmail/man dot-qmail`

-- 
Keith
Network Engineer
Triton Technologies, Inc.

alias documentation

[Neil Grant]

maybe this is a stupidly easy question but I cant find where do I find out
about the format of .alias files, and other documentation on them?

Neil

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly? - More Info

[Patrick Starrenburg]

Thanks to Adrian Ho and Mark Jefferys explanations for the solution. Adrian 
you were halfway there with your first reply and Mark's link pointed me in 
the right direction to track down the problem. The TZ setting was GMT +2 
which apparently means actually the box was calculating GMT **minus 2 
hours**. That seems logical?! I had selected Amsterdam during installation 
of Redhat but obviously had changed it sometime thereafter during setup and 
testing of qmail. Obviously from the above I was not aware of the counter 
intuitiveness of Posix time zones!!

I just wanted to point out a couple of things also to the list:

  1) I *had* already read through the *complete* thread on this topic not 
wanting to rehash an old issue *before* I posted the question to the list 
but I did not determine that there was a clear explanation of the topic. I 
was aware of the discussion re: the Date: field. That's why I specifically 
mentioned that my MUA inserted it, however some persons simply erroneously 
jumped on that topic again. In my case it was nothing to do with the Date: 
field.
  2) I recall that the discussion about this in the archive went on for 
*much* longer than this thread and still then there was no clear clean 
answer. This obviously is a point of potential confusion that perhaps one of 
the more experienced qmail members could write a FAQ about. DJB's document - 
http://cr.yp.to/immhf/date.html gives information but is not ideally suited 
to a FAQ type of document.
  3) If this list is for technical questions regarding qmail then you are 
going to get people *starting* with qmail, and yes... maybe even starting 
with Linux. And that means starters questions. If we are going to follow 
DJB's wish to spread the use of qmail then you are going to get more of 
those types of questions...
  4) And finally - On Sun, 13 May 2001, Peter van Dijk wrote:
>I say we stop this thread. The user's box is misconfigured and he's
>failing to see why UTC in headers is good. Let it be.
Gee thanks Peter - you are the list owner are you? I believe your politeness 
is misconfigured. I'd like to point out that you didn't provide an answer, 
in fact you said...

[snip]
>>*Linux box*
>>[root@linuxbox patrick]# date
>>Sun May 13 17:02:55 GMT+2 2001 - Check

>Yes.

So you didn't pick up on the incorrect TZ setting. Of course we all 
suspected something was (possibly) wrong with my Linux box, even I was 
saying that! What we were looking for was a solution or a pointer to the 
solution. Perhaps this list *should* be moderated.

Thanks again everyone esp. Adrian & Mark.

PS
_
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly? - More Info

[Peter van Dijk]

On Sun, May 13, 2001 at 09:10:12PM +0200, Felix von Leitner wrote:
[snip]
> 
> The date "18:56:24 -" is equivalent to the date "16:56:24 +0200", so
> there is no error whatsoever here.  The MTA prints the date as GMT,
> which actually is a feature, because it allows easy comparison of dates
> by humans, without having to calculate away time zones.

18:56:24 - equals 20:56:24 +0200, at least within qmail. This is
not POSIX notation, hence your confusion.

I say we stop this thread. The user's box is misconfigured and he's
failing to see why UTC in headers is good. Let it be.

Greetz, Peter.

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly? - More Info

[Felix von Leitner]

Thus spake Patrick Starrenburg ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> =
> *Test email*
> Return-Path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Received: (qmail 6078 invoked from network); 13 May 2001 **18:56:24** - 
> [[[ Where does 18: come from ??]]]
> Received: from unknown (HELO amsmta03-svc.chello.nl) (213.46.240.7)
>   by xxx.homeip.net with SMTP; 13 May 2001 **18:56:24** -
> Received: from w2kbox by amsmta03-svc.chello.nl
>   (InterMail vK.4.03.02.00 201-232-124) with SMTP id 
> <20010513145513.IXEE12765.amsmta03-svc@w2kbox>
>   for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
>   Sun, 13 May 2001 16:55:13 +0200
> Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> From: "Patrick Starrenburg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Test 16:55
> Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 16:55:43 +0200

The date headers is OK.
So what you are actually talking about is the Received lines.

The date "18:56:24 -" is equivalent to the date "16:56:24 +0200", so
there is no error whatsoever here.  The MTA prints the date as GMT,
which actually is a feature, because it allows easy comparison of dates
by humans, without having to calculate away time zones.

Felix

Re: Handling high volume lists (was: Newbies vs. arrogant experts)

[Chris Garrigues]

> From:  "Robin S. Socha" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date:  13 May 2001 10:18:45 +0200
>
> * Russell Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [010512 20:57]:
> > Chris Garrigues writes:
> 
> >> As it is, I consider unsubscribing several times a week (and it's
> >> not because of the newbies).
> 
> > I send qmail list traffic into its own mailbox, and read it once a
> > day.  It's kind of handy, because I can see the questions which don't
> > get answered, and sometimes I answer them if I feel so led.
> 
...
> But it's much easier to whine and groan, Chris, instead of taking some
> action, isn't it? After all, your post was brought to us via softmail
> written by the same k3wl D00d3 who invented the Internet (no, not Al
> "Treehugger" Gore, but the Great Chairman Gill Bates himself), so it
> *has* to be okay, eh? Not.

[ Since you mentioned me by name, I guess i won't ignore your generally useful 
message with a generally negative tone. ]

I have no idea what you mean by "softmail written by [Bill Gates]".

My post was written in exmh which is layered on top of mh running under Linux 
and delivered using qmail via a firewall/mailrelay also running qmail to a 
mailing list running ezmlm and qmail to you.  If there was anything "written" 
by Bill Gates, it's not on my end.

Clearly you didn't look at the headers of my original message, and in fact, 
I'll assume you didn't even read it since you apparently decided for no good 
reason that I must be a user of microsoft software.  

Allow me to quote myself from the message that you ignored:

> I've been on this list now since late 1996 and in recent times, it's become 
> almost intolerable with all the flamage.  Somehow on other lists people manage 
> to co-exist with newbies without having to extract a pound of flesh with every 
> question.  I suspect that if this list had been this rude in 1996, I would 
> have stuck with sendmail.

Most likely you looked at the one sentence that Russell quoted and thought to 
your self:  "Hey!  An opportunity to prove to some whinny little twit how much 
smarter he'd be if he used the cool tools that I use."

It's exactly this attitude that I was referring to in the parenthetical comment 
that Russell quoted.  Can't we try to give the benefit of a doubt instead of 
looking at every post as an opportunity to prove that we have bigger opensource
balls than the next guy?
-- 
Chris Garrigues http://www.DeepEddy.Com/~cwg/
virCIO  http://www.virCIO.Com
4314 Avenue C   
Austin, TX  78751-3709  +1 512 374 0500

  My email address is an experiment in SPAM elimination.  For an
  explanation of what we're doing, see http://www.DeepEddy.Com/tms.html 

Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft,
  but they could get fired for relying on Microsoft.



 PGP signature

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly? - More Info

[Mark Jefferys]

On Sun, May 13, 2001 at 06:28:53PM +0200, Patrick Starrenburg wrote:

% *Linux box*
% [root@linuxbox patrick]# date
% Sun May 13 17:02:55 GMT+2 2001 - Check

Your clock seems to be set wrong.  According to Solaris and at least
one web page I dug up, , GMT+2 is a posix
time zone equivalent to GMT-0200 (!).  Your linux box thinks that you
are sitting somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.

Try setting your local TZ to "Europe/Amsterdam", and reset your clock.


Mark

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly?

[Antonio Dias]

Patrick,

Seens to me that qmail is doing the right thing. Below is the headers from
a message sent by you to qmail list and all date fields inserted by qmail
are using the correct time:

>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun May 13 14:40:22 2001
Return-Path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Received: (qmail 13318 invoked from network); 13 May 2001 15:49:43 -
Received: from useful.dataloss.nl ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
  by a.mx.sst.com.br with QMTP; 13 May 2001 15:49:43 -
Received: (qmail 63964 invoked by uid 1001); 13 May 2001 15:50:20 -
List-Help: 
List-Unsubscribe: 
List-Subscribe: 
Delivered-To: mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Received: (qmail 63959 invoked from network); 13 May 2001 15:50:19 -
Mailing-List: contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]; run by ezmlm
Delivered-To: mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED]
X-Originating-IP: [212.187.119.59]
From: "Patrick Starrenburg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bcc:
Subject: Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly?
Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 17:47:46 +0200
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 13 May 2001 15:47:46.0770 (UTC)
FILETIME=[0E613B20:01C0DBC4]

-- 
Antonio Dias

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly? - More Info

[Frank Tegtmeyer]

"Patrick Starrenburg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> (as it is summer and for once the sun is shining in Holland) with
> daylight saving it is GMT +02:00. So...

I repeat: there must something wrong with your Linux setup. Qmail uses
system calls of the underlying operating system to generate the
timestamps. If they are wrong it gets wrong data from the system
(see now.c in the sources).
Did you try to set CET? Maybe your timezone definitions are corrupted?

Besides that you created a new thread, effectively destroying the
possibility to follow the discussion in an efficient way. Plus you
gave no new information, you only repeated your first mail.
So don't expect new answers.

Regards, Frank

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly? - More Info

[Mark Delany]

Your problem is almost certainly not qmail related.

First off you may want to learn how Unix/Linux keeps time.  Believe it
or not, Unix/Linux don't know anything about timezones. They all keep
time internally in UTC (nee GMT). Yes, every Unix server on the planet
current has the same time. To see what it is, run this command from
the shell:

perl -e 'print time,"\n"'

You should get a number back that reflects the number of seconds since
00:00UTC, Jan 1, 1970.

When you run something like the date command, it takes this internal
number, looks up your current timezone setting and *converts* the
internal number to an external representation that matches your
timezone.

So, what you've shown us with your "date" command is simply that the
combination of the internal time of your server + the timezone setting
gives you the correct display.

Now, qmail does not do *any* conversion when it generates it's
timestamp, it takes the raw internal time value and prints it without
looking at any timezone info.

So, to answer your question:

> Received: (qmail 6078 invoked from network); 13 May 2001 **18:56:24** - 
> [[[ Where does 18: come from ??]]]

The "18" comes from the internal time value maintained by your
kernel. Your kernel believes that it is currently 18:56:24 UTC. If
that is not the current UTC time then the internal value in your
kernel is set wrong.

You can find out what your kernel thinks is UTC by going:

TZ=GMT date

from your shell.

I'll bet that the output from that command matches the date/time in
the qmail header.


Regards.

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly?

[Mark Delany]

On Sun, May 13, 2001 at 05:47:46PM +0200, Patrick Starrenburg wrote:

> Code bloat?? Doesn't seem like an excuse to me to (**possibly** we haven't 
> determined this yet) have a fundamental error in a system because someone 
> doesn't feel like adding code to internationalise something.

Why do you suggest that there may be a "fundamental error in a
system"? Seems like a pretty unlikely conclusion just because the date
is in a format that you don't expect.

As it happens this topic has been done to death many times - you may
want to check the archives. It is not a bug nor is it a "fundamental
error in a system". Rather, it is a known and conscious decision by
the author and is allowed by the standard.

The only way to change this behaviour is for you to patch your version
of qmail - I vaguely recall someone announced a patch here, but the
archives have a better memory than me.


Regards.

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly? - More Info

[Peter van Dijk]

On Sun, May 13, 2001 at 06:28:53PM +0200, Patrick Starrenburg wrote:
[snip]
> *Linux box*
> [root@linuxbox patrick]# date
> Sun May 13 17:02:55 GMT+2 2001 - Check

Yes.

> *W2K box*
> C:\>date
> The current date is: Sun 13/05/2001 - European date format naturally
> C:\>time
> The current time is: 17:03:13.83
> System TZ settings
> GMT+01:00 (with Daylight Saving +1hour) = GMT+02:00 - Check

Yes.

> Onto the test email... I created the mail on the W2K box, forget about the 
> MUA used that is irrelevant. Just note that it correctly inserts the Date: 
> field with GMT +0200 TZ offset. To simplify things I bounced the email off 
> my ISP's SMTP server back to my e-mail account on the Linux box. Now here is 
> the problem - firstly see that the ISP's server also uses +0200 local time 
> TZ offset with same time as box my MUA is on *but* when it is picked up by 
> qmail's SMTP daemon that timestamps it as 18:56:24 -. IF it was going to 
> use - (GMT) THEN it should have changed time to 14:56:24 - which is 
> 16:56:24 *minus* the extra two hours TZ offset for my location. Instead it 
> has *added* two hours, then called it GMT, then when my MUA picks it up and 
> looks at the **Received:** field in GMT format it *correctly* converts it to 
> my local time of GMT +0200 and displays it to me as being received as 20:56 
> hours. Which, by the way, hasn't arrived yet! Thats how the 4 hours time 
> difference comes about.

qmail never changes the Date: header for mails. It only adds one for
locally-injected mails. If your sending MUA inserted a Date header,
that is the header the receiving MUA sees. If this is not true, either
one of the other mailsystems in the chain is misconfigured, or you are
doing something weird on your qmail machine.

Greetz, Peter.

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly?

[Adrian Ho]

On Sun, 13 May 2001, Patrick Starrenburg wrote:

> Peter van Dijk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >qmail uses - because it is the receiving MUA's task to display the
> >date in the format the user desires. If your MUA is unable to do so,
> >complain to the MUA author.
> It does, pls check my original mail. You will see that the MUA fully and
> correctly inserts the Date: field including TZ offset.

Yes, and thanks to qmail's insistence on using -, it's clear that your
TZ setting is wrong (see my reply to your original mail).

> >qmail uses - because only if all headers use the same timezone,
> >reliable debugging is possible.
> ?? This logic seems a red herring to me.

- lets you worry about just one thing (does machine X have the correct
UTC?) rather than several things (does machine X have the correct local
time?  did X's admin set TZ correctly at initial installation?  is X's
current idea of TZ correct for this time of year?  did X's MTA take all
the above into account _and_ print the timestamp correctly?)

- lets you quickly see MTA hop intervals without having to mentally
add/subtract GMT offsets (easy to get wrong when you're in a hurry or
suffering from sleep deprivation).

In short, it's mind-boggling why most MTAs _don't_ use -.

-- 
Adrian Ho   [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Unsubscribe Doesn't Work

[Brett Randall]

Is [EMAIL PROTECTED] the address you subscribed with?

> "Jim" == Jim Darrough <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Help!
>  I have sent three blank emails to
>  "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" in an attempt to
>  unsubscribe three times without any apparent effect. Anyone
>  got a better idea?


> Thanks, Jim Darrough

> Jim Darrough, ARS KI7AY
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.ki7ay.com

-- 
"Hardware, n.: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked."

- The Devil's Dictionary to Computer Studies 

qmail does not handle timezones properly? - More Info

[Patrick Starrenburg]

Dear All

OK, sigh... I was hoping to avoid the "religious OS wars" and I intend to 
stick to the facts, I hope everyone else can also. I need to give you some 
further details on the setup. Also I have done a further test and I still 
see a problem with qmail.

I have a network (for purposes of this test we only need to worry about two 
machines) Linux box running Redhat 7.1 and W2K box (with a hamster named 
bill inside furiously running a spinning wheel to power the OS. Occasionaly 
I chuck in a used Emacs manual for him to chew on).

Anyway... jokes aside - as far as I, and all the documentation I read, can 
see both machines are correctly configured for local time as GMT + TZ 
offset. I am in western Europe which is GMT +1 hour, at the moment (as it is 
summer and for once the sun is shining in Holland) with daylight saving it 
is GMT +02:00. So...

*Linux box*
[root@linuxbox patrick]# date
Sun May 13 17:02:55 GMT+2 2001 - Check

*W2K box*
C:\>date
The current date is: Sun 13/05/2001 - European date format naturally
C:\>time
The current time is: 17:03:13.83
System TZ settings
GMT+01:00 (with Daylight Saving +1hour) = GMT+02:00 - Check

Onto the test email... I created the mail on the W2K box, forget about the 
MUA used that is irrelevant. Just note that it correctly inserts the Date: 
field with GMT +0200 TZ offset. To simplify things I bounced the email off 
my ISP's SMTP server back to my e-mail account on the Linux box. Now here is 
the problem - firstly see that the ISP's server also uses +0200 local time 
TZ offset with same time as box my MUA is on *but* when it is picked up by 
qmail's SMTP daemon that timestamps it as 18:56:24 -. IF it was going to 
use - (GMT) THEN it should have changed time to 14:56:24 - which is 
16:56:24 *minus* the extra two hours TZ offset for my location. Instead it 
has *added* two hours, then called it GMT, then when my MUA picks it up and 
looks at the **Received:** field in GMT format it *correctly* converts it to 
my local time of GMT +0200 and displays it to me as being received as 20:56 
hours. Which, by the way, hasn't arrived yet! Thats how the 4 hours time 
difference comes about.

Strange... if there is something wrong with my logic or setup of my Linux 
box then please tell me (nicely, no flaming of OS's) but it seems pretty 
straightforward to me. I remember something in the previous thread on this 
topic in the list archive about a qmail program called "datemail" is this 
meant to fix this problem and how does use it in conjunction with the qmail, 
smtpd & pop3d daemons. My setup was done using qmail-conf.

Regards

Patrick
=
*Test email*
Return-Path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Received: (qmail 6078 invoked from network); 13 May 2001 **18:56:24** - 
[[[ Where does 18: come from ??]]]
Received: from unknown (HELO amsmta03-svc.chello.nl) (213.46.240.7)
  by xxx.homeip.net with SMTP; 13 May 2001 **18:56:24** -
Received: from w2kbox by amsmta03-svc.chello.nl
  (InterMail vK.4.03.02.00 201-232-124) with SMTP id 
<20010513145513.IXEE12765.amsmta03-svc@w2kbox>
  for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
  Sun, 13 May 2001 16:55:13 +0200
Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: "Patrick Starrenburg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Test 16:55
Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 16:55:43 +0200

_
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Unsubscribe Doesn't Work

[Jim Darrough]

Help!

 I have sent three blank emails to 
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" in an attempt to unsubscribe three times 
without any apparent effect. Anyone got a better idea?

Thanks, Jim Darrough

Jim Darrough, ARS KI7AY
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.ki7ay.com

Re: MASS mailing

[Karsten W. Rohrbach]

Mike Jackson([EMAIL PROTECTED])@2001.05.13 13:46:29 +:
> Netra's are little 1U pizza box style 'servers'. They are meant for
> telecom operators, etc. I use one for a qmail/courier imap server for a
> few hundred users, and it's ok. I definitely would not consider it a
> 'high end' solution. Yes, Solaris is slow, but it's also stable. Sort of
> like an old John Deere tractor ;-). I wouldn't use one of these for a
> million message per day list, although a cluster of them might be ok.
suns in general are not worth the money IMVHO. i would not bother buying
suns for internet server use since pc technology prcing has dropped this
low in the last few years that a cluster of let's say four 2way smp
pentium3 boxes with scsi/raid subsystem and really much ram (~1gb/box)
costs less than a single enterprise 250 ;-)
the other fact is, that you can get a better maintained operating
system than slowlaris with better design and at least the same stability
for $0 (--> netbsd/openbsd/freebsd) that comes with a decent compiler
kit and all of the tools youre gonna ever need.
sun is a marketing organization.
the internet is a community.
it's up to every single one of us to decide what he likes best and
prefers for his operations platform *grin*

/k

ps: tco, as pointed out by their funny and colourful marketing papers,
is not the issue if you compare the amount of patches you had to apply
on solaris boxes the last 2 years to the ones for free/net/openbsd.
i mean _system_ patches, _not_ patches for subsystem like bind et al.

-- 
> Booze is the answer. I don't remember the question.
KR433/KR11-RIPE -- http://www.webmonster.de -- ftp://ftp.webmonster.de
[Key] [KeyID---] [Created-] [Fingerprint-]
GnuPG 0x2964BF46 2001-03-15 42F9 9FFF 50D4 2F38 DBEE  DF22 3340 4F4E 2964 BF46

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly?

[Patrick Starrenburg]

"Patrick Starrenburg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>>people saying qmail works as designed - why?

>Because it makes debugging easier.

? I was meaning "works as designed" putting (possibly) incorrect timestamps 
on emails. Are you meaning debugging times or debugging qmail? If the former 
then that is why there is a worldwide standard of local time being GMT + TZ. 
If Linux can store file timestamps in GMT and display them on the fly in 
local time (GMT + TZ offset) then surely qmail can do the same also.

>>It seems to be the only mail server that does so.

>So what? Is that a problem?

If it is wrong then yes! It's not a question of qmail versus the world but 
qmail correct or incorrect. If incorrect then DJB et. al. ought to fix it.

_
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly?

[Patrick Starrenburg]

Peter van Dijk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>qmail uses - because it is the receiving MUA's task to display the
date in the format the user desires. If your MUA is unable to do so,
complain to the MUA author.
It does, pls check my original mail. You will see that the MUA fully and 
correctly inserts the Date: field including TZ offset.

>qmail uses - because only if all headers use the same timezone,
reliable debugging is possible.
?? This logic seems a red herring to me. Anyway my testing does not bear 
this out, pls see my extra info email.

>qmail uses - because timezone support adds a lot of code bloat
that makes no sense in an MTA. Your sending client should add a date
header.
It does, pls check my original mail.
Code bloat?? Doesn't seem like an excuse to me to (**possibly** we haven't 
determined this yet) have a fundamental error in a system because someone 
doesn't feel like adding code to internationalise something.

Cheers

Patrick
_
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Re: Newbies vs. arrogant experts (was: Newbie with tcpserver)

[Karsten W. Rohrbach]

Russell Nelson([EMAIL PROTECTED])@2001.05.12 21:54:32 +:
> Chris Garrigues writes:
>  > As it is, I consider unsubscribing several times a week (and it's not because 
>  > of the newbies).
> 
> I send qmail list traffic into its own mailbox, and read it once a
> day.  It's kind of handy, because I can see the questions which don't
> get answered, and sometimes I answer them if I feel so led.
yup, i think every mailing list subscriber should consider setting up
multiple inboxes for the lists. my setup is
qmail/procmail/safecat/mutt/vim for processing my mail (plus a bunch of
mime helper apps to view the micro$haft "rich" emails or simply bounce
them ;-)
several people i know use maildrop instead of procmail/safecat and it
also seems to work pretty good.
it saves a lot of work, and you are not tempted to flame people because
they write mails that appear in-between your normal mail folder :->

/k

-- 
> "I think pop music has done more for oral intercourse than anything else
> that has ever happened, and vice versa." -- Frank Zappa
KR433/KR11-RIPE -- http://www.webmonster.de -- ftp://ftp.webmonster.de
[Key] [KeyID---] [Created-] [Fingerprint-]
GnuPG 0x2964BF46 2001-03-15 42F9 9FFF 50D4 2F38 DBEE  DF22 3340 4F4E 2964 BF46

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly?

[Adrian Ho]

On Sun, 13 May 2001, Patrick Starrenburg wrote:

> I sent the mail from the client at 19:22 GMT +0200 (western Europe summer
> time) it arrived back to me about a minute later and displays on my client
> MUA as being received at **23:23** hours, i.e. four hours in the future!
> [...]
> The client PC clock said 17:22 (+0200) correct time, the Linux box
> said 17:22 and is setup correctly with TZ = GMT +0200.

I assume the 17:22 was a typo, and you really meant to type 19:22.

I think your problem is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of signed
GMT offset notation for TZ.  A positive offset is actually treated as a
location _behind_ UTC (ie. _west_ of the Greenwich meridian).  I can't
recall the reasoning behind this seemingly counter-intuitive notation, but
the timezone-related tools I've examined all use this convention.

This, of course, neatly accounts for the 4-hour discrepancy you're seeing.

If you want to continue using GMT offset notation on your system, you
should therefore set TZ to GST-2 (or something similar -- it's been a
while since I played with timezone info).

It may actually work better if you use a locale-name setting for TZ; the
tzselect program (if you have it) will work it out for you.  For instance,
if you're living in Austria, the proper value is "Europe/Vienna".

-- 
Adrian Ho   [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: MASS mailing

[Mike Jackson]

Charles Cazabon wrote:

> There's other tricks as well, but with the above list you should easily be
> able to handle 1M deliveries a day on decent hardware.  I'm afraid I'm not
> familiar with the Netra you mention.
> 

Netra's are little 1U pizza box style 'servers'. They are meant for
telecom operators, etc. I use one for a qmail/courier imap server for a
few hundred users, and it's ok. I definitely would not consider it a
'high end' solution. Yes, Solaris is slow, but it's also stable. Sort of
like an old John Deere tractor ;-). I wouldn't use one of these for a
million message per day list, although a cluster of them might be ok.

Mike

qmail-analog

[ross]

Hi List,

I have installed the qmail-analog software
(http://cr.yp.to/qmailanalog.html). This has been a great help as I can
now find out information on active users on my system.

Is there a simple command to identify a users details? I would like a
simple report which gives me information on a per domain or per user basis.

I would like one command which lists all the emails a certain user has
recievedis this possable?

For the benifit of the list here are the commands I use to extract data
from the logs:

To list general details:
awk '{$1="";$2="";$3="";$4="";$5="";print}' /var/log/maillog | cat |
/usr/local/qmailanalog/bin/matchup | /usr/local/qmailanalog/bin/zoverall

To list the details of all the users ont he system:
awk '{$1="";$2="";$3="";$4="";$5="";print}' /var/log/maillog | cat |
/usr/local/qmailanalog/bin/matchup | /usr/local/qmailanalog/bin/zrecipients

To list all the people who have sent emails to our customers:
awk '{$1="";$2="";$3="";$4="";$5="";print}' /var/log/maillog | cat |
/usr/local/qmailanalog/bin/matchup | /usr/local/qmailanalog/bin/zsenders



Regards,

Ross Cooney
_
Technical Director
Cyber Sentry Ltd, 101 Johnstown Road, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin, Ireland.
 
Email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Telephone:  + 353 1 2352546 (sales)
Telephone:  1550 927 017 (Technical Support Ireland)
Fax:+ 353 1 2847263
 
 
This communication contains information which is confidential and
may also be privileged.  It is for the exclusive use of the
intended recipient(s).  If you are not the intended recipient(s),
please note that any distribution, copying or use of this
communication or the information in it is strictly prohibited.
If you have received this communication in error, please notify
the sender immediately and then destroy any copies of it.
_
 
 

qmail Digest 13 May 2001 10:00:01 -0000 Issue 1363

[qmail-digest-help]

qmail Digest 13 May 2001 10:00:01 - Issue 1363

Topics (messages 62348 through 62363):

Re: config for stand-alone box
62348 by: john gennard
62349 by: john gennard
62351 by: Charles Cazabon

Re: reason for problem found: connection reset after 1 minute
62350 by: tonix (Antonio Nati)

Re: notification of new email whenever user logs in on the shell
62352 by: Charles Cazabon

Re: HELP - newbie
62353 by: Charles Cazabon

Re: Newbies vs. arrogant experts (was: Newbie with tcpserver)
62354 by: Chris Garrigues
62358 by: Russell Nelson

badmailfrom
62355 by: audit
62356 by: Johan Almqvist

qmail and procbox
62357 by: El Chupacabra

qmail does not handle timezones properly?
62359 by: Patrick Starrenburg
62362 by: Peter van Dijk
62363 by: Frank Tegtmeyer

Resolution: Qmail and Request Tracker
62360 by: Chris Jackman

Handling high volume lists (was: Newbies vs. arrogant experts)
62361 by: Robin S. Socha

Administrivia:

To unsubscribe from the digest, e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

To subscribe to the digest, e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

To bug my human owner, e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

To post to the list, e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


--



On Fri, 11 May 2001, you wrote:
> john gennard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I've installed v.1.03 from  a src.deb package onto Debian Potato.
> > There is a large volume of literature which I've spent some days
> > reading and can't find explanations for a number of points (entirely
> > due to my semi- computer literate state).
> 
> Please do not take this as a flame, insult, or pointless reply, but if (by
> your own admission) you are only semi-literate in computers, what are you
> doing installing a Unix MTA?
> 
Charles, I certainly do not take any form of offence from your
reply - quite the opposite, in fact, I'm grateful you have
taken the time out to respond.  

A couple of years ago, after reaching 70, I got a computer and following 
a frustrating few months with Windoze switched to Linux which lets me 
control things when, of course, I understand what I'm doing. Now, for 
good or ill, I'm 'hooked' and want to learn 'all about it' (a forlorn hope as
each time I understand some aspect, another vast vista  of knowledge
yet to be acquired appears before me). In short, its become a hobby.

Sendmail seems offered on most distros, and during reading about
email (using it has not presented me with problems - I've been using
kmail), a very strong case seems to be made for qmail as an
alternative. Nowhere have I seen any advice that the inexperienced
should avoid it.  Spam is starting to annoy me and so I decided to
look at fetchmail, procmail, mutt and qmail as a 'package' which
might enable me to do something about it.

Most 'advisors' on serious newsgroups seem to be highly qualified
and experienced individuals who good-naturedly greatly assist  those
like me. - they do not of course have to do so.  In 'this day and age'   
this is unusual.  At the same time, I do wonder if those brought up
in times when some degree of computer literacy is the norm can
understand how the likes of myself struggle learning 'alien' 
concepts in a completely foreign language, and without the
possibility of discussing things face to face with tutors, peers and
other users.  Manuals are written by persons who know their subject
and believe those reading will appreciate what they say -
this is proper and completely understandable but for us is
frustrating (I doubt a brain surgeon can even countenance that
there exist people who don't know how to stop a simple haemorrhage). 
Then the 'sublime irony', when we install and use, with help, that
covered by a man page  and again read the page we say 'well it's
quite clear what it meant - it's obvious'.

Didn't mean to 'go on so'. Thank you very much for your response and
the helpful information you have imparted. Replies like yours are
specific to points raised, whereas general literature tends to be
too widely based.  My gratitude - but I'm still going to
try to go ahead even if eventually I decide a simpler approach is
more expedient in my circumstances - any knowledge I gain is likely
to be a 'plus'.  

Regards,John.

> Perhaps you should instead use something like mutt to read mail off your ISP's 
> POP3 or IMAP server, and transfer any outgoing mail to them with a relay-only 
> MTA like nullmailer.
> 
> > I connect to an ISP by dialling with a modem and have just two user
> > accounts. I've never really understood the concept of a FQDN and so
> > can't with confidence create a /var/qmail/control file. Hypothetically,   
> > my ISP is heaven.com, I call my box eden and have users adam and  
> > eve, what is my FQDN? (I log in as say garden - so outsiders email
> > me as [EMAIL PROTECTED]).
> 
> You don't have an FQDN.  Well,

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly?

[Frank Tegtmeyer]

"Patrick Starrenburg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> people saying qmail works as designed - why?

Because it makes debugging easier.

> It seems to be the only mail server that does so.

So what? Is that a problem?


> Received: (qmail 1266 invoked from network); 11 May 2001 21:22:45 -
> Received: from unknown (HELO starr02) (192.168.1.10)
>   by xxx.homeip.net with SMTP; 11 May 2001 21:22:45 -
> Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 19:22:30 +0200

I have never seen this behaviour. I suspect there is something wrong
with your Linux setup:

> problem. The client PC clock said 17:22 (+0200) correct time, the
> Linux box said 17:22 and is setup correctly with TZ = GMT
> +0200.

If it says 17:22, it is *not* configured to GMT +0200. Try to set
Timezone CET. It should say 19:22 then. This two hour offset
corresponds to the four hour offset of qmail.

Regards, Frank

Re: qmail does not handle timezones properly?

[Peter van Dijk]

On Sun, May 13, 2001 at 08:19:27AM +0200, Patrick Starrenburg wrote:
[snip]
> I have already read previous (heated) discussions on this topic on the list 
> archive but could not discern a clear answer apart from some people saying 
> qmail works as designed - why? It seems to be the only mail server that does 
> so. Why does qmail use - when the PC it is running on is setup as GMT 
> +0200? It clearly is causing a problem. Is there any configuration option 
> which can be called to have qmail respect the time zone of the computer it 
> is running on? Where and how would this be called for both qmail [POST] and 
> SMTP daemons?

qmail uses - because it is the receiving MUA's task to display the
date in the format the user desires. If your MUA is unable to do so,
complain to the MUA author.

qmail uses - because only if all headers use the same timezone,
reliable debugging is possible.

qmail uses - because timezone support adds a lot of code bloat
that makes no sense in an MTA. Your sending client should add a date
header.

Greetz, Peter.

Handling high volume lists (was: Newbies vs. arrogant experts)

[Robin S. Socha]

* Russell Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [010512 20:57]:
> Chris Garrigues writes:

>> As it is, I consider unsubscribing several times a week (and it's
>> not because of the newbies).

> I send qmail list traffic into its own mailbox, and read it once a
> day.  It's kind of handy, because I can see the questions which don't
> get answered, and sometimes I answer them if I feel so led.

There are several ways of dealing with high volume lists (which in the
Microsoft Outlook (Express) age equals "high amount of lusers messing with
stuff they should never be exposed to"). I've been getting between 500 and
2500 messages (mail and news) per day for years, and I've found that there
is only one tool that does the job effectively: Gnus http://gnus.org/.·

Why? 


There are several problems with high volume lists. In no particular
order:

· lusers not reading the minimum amount of documentation;

· broken software (why did you not cut the "(was:" (which should have been
  "(Was:" in the first place) from your quote?). Examples:

  - removing References: headers in order to, well, what? break threads
(a concept alien to the morons in Redmond, but extremely useful - if
you have a good newsreader, you know what I'm talking about);

  - encouraging *wrong* behaviour like "message on top, full quote
below" (eh, bandwidth is unlimited, right?), excessive signatures
(yes, 4 lines *is* enough, no, I will *never* ring you up or visit
you) without sigdashes (yes, that's ^-- $, and yes, it *does* make
sense, because various tools can cut your sig from replies or
(even better) make it invisible if it sucks), sending HTML (what
is this - the web?) or VCards (as I said, I will *not* phone or
visit you, and no, I'm not interested in your birthday, favourite
sexual deviation or daughter's name either (if she's willing and
blonde, you can send me some bikini shots, though);

· off topic threads (like this one); 

· idiots and trolls (usually mutually interchangable, but stupid trolls
  are even more annoying (greetings to Michael T. Babcock while we're
  at it (remember kids: no lame flame without at least one ad hominem
  attack)));

· dupes (like, I am on this list and only a complete retard would send
  me a Cc: (which makes approx. 31 retards per month which, in return,
  makes me wonder when the prices for anti-personnel ammo will finally
  drop)).

Solutions:
==

· Encourage people who are obviously lost to adapt a behaviour fitting
  for a technical environment: tell them to read and follow
  http://learn.to/edit_messgages/ and the links therein;

· Tell them why using Outlook and similar "programs" is not only bad
  for themselves but also destroys threads, which means archives, which
  means shared knowledge databases;

· Use software that lives up to the challenge of a Microsoft-luser
  infested environment: Gnus.

  - Gnus introduces the concept of adaptive scoring. Killfiles are for
lusers, real men score: each article is assigned a value for "From:,
Subject:, References:, quote/text ratio, etc. and the summary for
the group the article is filtered into is sorted according to these
values: Gods first, lusers last.

  - Gnus automagically de-moronizes messages (while reading and in
replies):
* convert RE: AW: SE: to Re:;
* cut (Was:);
* wrap long lines;
* nuke HTML, VCards etc.;
* remove spurious blank lines;
* ...

  - Gnus works with IMAP (including mail splitting) and Maildir (courtesy
of Paul Jarc's nnmaildir.el - *great* work!). Ummm... are we on topic,
yet? Good.

  - Gnus lets you merge mailing lists into thematically similar groups.

  - Gnus lets you read mail like news (including expiry).

Possible additional weapons include procmail[1] and the BBDB (for
marking posters known to you).

Anyway, I sometimes wonder what makes people think they deserve help
if they don't invest a minimum amount of time and diligence into
writing their mails to technical mailing lists. The qmail list is a
particularly sad example with a group of *extremely* competent and
helpful (I've /never/ had to wait for more than 6h for an answer to
my problems (*all* of which were solved)) people being swamped by a
tidal wave of morons asking FAQs, not knowing their way around the
Internet or using orthography and grammar in a way that indicates a
grasp of the English language that will effectively bar them from a
deeper understanding of qmail, anyway.

Yes, people like me who are fairly new to qmail and had rather have these
people answer meaningful (i.e. "I can learn something from this" rather than
"wow, those are either extremely nice or masochistic people") questions get
very frustrated over this.

But it's much easier to whine and groan, Chris, instead of taking some
action, isn't it? After all, your post was brought to us via softmail
written by the same k3wl D00d3 who invented the Internet (no, not Al
"Treehugger" Gore, but the Gre

Resolution: Qmail and Request Tracker

[Chris Jackman]

On Fri, 11 May 2001, Charles Cazabon wrote:

> Chris Jackman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [...]
> > We noticed that there is no delivery 2: success message, nor is there
> > ever for any other email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [...]
> > If we kill all the alias processes first, and then kill the rt process (78014
> >  above) that is doing  "perl -T /var/rt/bin/rtmux.pl rt-mailgate tickets
> > correspond", we see this in the qmail logs:
> >
> > 2001-05-06 05:03:26.769179500 delivery 2: deferral: qmail-local_crashed./
>
> It would seem at first glance that your Perl script never finishes; it blocks
> on something, or goes into an endless loop.


Resolution:
One of my associates had rebuilt perl with threads.  That's what was
causing this problem.  We rebuilt perl w/o threads, and it works w/o a
problem.

cj