> The purpose of the PTR record is for reverse dns right?

Correct

> is there a way to enable short names

They work for me when sending via the Mercury queue with Pegasus mail.  The address is expanded though when passing through Mercury.

> thanks for the info, the url doesnt seem to work

I don't know, I'll check this out.

Mercury starts with the system. Loader.exe is in All Programs\Startup and maintenance is scheduled for 2am each day. Mercury is always run under the domain administrator login. The domain (and local) administrator accounts have full control over mercury\*.* and pmail\*.*. User mailboxes are nested under pmail\

It has worked fine for several years - this happened once before. It is a testament to the resiliency of Pegasus Mail and Mercury how easy it is to recover from these situations.

A MX lookup for your domain gives this result:

- Name=imagineandthink.zapto.org
    Type=MX, Class=1, TTL=60 (1 Minute), RDLENGTH=4
    Preference=10, Mail Exchange=imagineandthink.zapto.org
Additional Records Section:
- Name=imagineandthink.zapto.org
    Type=A, Class=1, TTL=60 (1 Minute), RDLENGTH=4
    IP Address=121.215.144.174

However, I'm not able to connect to 121.215.144.174 (no ping response, no reply on port 25, no reply on port 110). In other words, the MX record is formally correct, but there is no server to be found at that IP address.

So: Make sure the MX IP is right, make sure the required ports aren't blocked by a firewall, make sure SMTP and POP3 ports are forwarded to the local server IP from your Internet router/modem. Furthermore, to connect locally to the server on port 110 use the LAN IP address, not the public IP.

This is the networking part. Besides that there might be things to check in Mercury configuration, but we can come back to that when the network issues are resolved.

Needless to say it's much easier to set things up with a fixed IP if that option is available.

/Rolf 

How do I  configure pop server passwords in a non netware mode mercury configuration

You enter them manually in Configuration | Manage local users by editing the user and entering a password.  This password ends up in a file called passwf.pm in the new mail directory of the user.  Here's a sample.  The <password> is replaced by the desired password.

[quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"] The problem is caused by the receiving system not properly handling the packet too large error message so that the sending system does not know that it must reduce the packet size.  On the Mercury system you can turn off the  MTU discovery which always uses the same packet size.  BTW, when you test the MTU size it's best to test against the server with the problem.[/quote]

Thanks for the explanation. I'm presently learning the intracies of TCP/IP and so far have discovered that there are a lot of controls in place to try to prevent this from happening. Although I still have a lot more to learn, I guess that there exists the odd system along the route that is ancient or does not comply with the RFC's.

[quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"] Typical problem where the receiving system is not properly handling the MTU Discovery operation.  When using MTU Discovery, the sending system keeps increasing the packet size until the receiving  system sends back the packet too large message.[/quote]

Again, from I have read, TCP on the receiving system should close the receive window so that the sending system stops sending data until it receives a notification that it can resume. However, I'm still working my way through this so this statement may be rather naive...

[quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"] If the anti-virus software is setting between Mercury and the receiving host monitoring the TCP/IP transfer then this can also cause the same sort of problem.  Most anti-virus operating as a proxy is probably causing more problems than it solves.[/quote]

Thanks for all the help. I guess that all I can do is contact the receipient and say that this behaviour is beyond our control.

Cheers!

1. Make a backup of that mailbox.

2. Delete the file named newmail.cac

3. Verify that the file in question indeed has the correct filename extension (which presumably is .PMM). If not rename it. Try opening the folder again.

4. If it still doesn't work, get the mbxmaint utility from your Pegasus installation, or download it from here:

5. Run a check on the folder. If mbxmaint reports a problem, run a repair. If possible, close Mercury and Pegasus while doing this.

/Rolf 

> Hi, I'm new in Mercury mail, even I'm trying it before to get the software.
>
>  My problem is: I need to keep the e-mails of all my users into the  server, because when I have a problems with the computer, and is
>  necessary to restore the software, I can restore the e-mails from the  server, is this possible with mercury? and how can I do?

If all of the users use IMAP4 then you will have all of the mail on the server.  That said, IMAP4 is a much more busy protocol that POP3 and if you have a lot of users then you need a honkin' big server (multiple processors, gigs of RAM) to handle the process.

If all of your users were using Pegasus Mail and are all on the same LAN then they could be using Pegasus Mail in the direct mode and forget about using any sort of POP3/IMAP4/SMTP at all.

1.  Install WinPmail in the multiuser mode on the "server".  Use c:\pmail  for the program; c:\pmail\mail for the mail directories.

2.  Run PCONFIG.exe from the WinPMail program directory and change the HOME and NEW mail directory specification to the \\server\vol\pmail\mail\~8
    format.

3.  Go to the remote workstations and install a shortcut to the common program.

Ok, now you have the basic mail system setup.  You can send mail to each other using Pegasus Mail.  

4.  Install Mercury/32 on this same server pointing to the Pegasus Mail directory structure.  Use MercuryD, MercuryS, MercuryC at least. Use
    \\server\vol\mercury\queue for the mail spool directory.

5.  Point MercuryD at all of your POP3 mailboxes to download the mail to your Pegasus Mail user directories.

You now can send and receive Internet mail via Pegasus Mail.  The mail is delivered to the Pegasus Mail directories automatically.  You send mail simply but putting the output files into the Mercury/32 mail spool directory.  This is accomplished automatically with a Pegasus Mail User Defined Gateway.  

6.  If you want to maintain other POP3/IMAP4 clients, point the client at the at your Mercury/32 host as a POP3 and SMTP host using the Pegasus
    Mail username and password to pickup the mail.

You can do a complete inbound and outbound mail archive with this setup using a simple Mercury/32 "Always" filter that put a copy in a users mail directory.

[quote user="davron"]When I used option one I utilized MercuryE and it worked nicely. The Name servers input was left empty. 

When I wanted to work inside my network, in MercuryE there was an error which said (in general): can not resolve the "domain" (), so I cuntinued with your recommendation and I transfered to MercuryC.[/quote]

For sending and delivering mail entirely within your network, neither MercuryE nor MercuryC should normally come into use - Mercury should recognise that it is a local delivery because the domain name is in the list of 'Local domains', and deliver directly to the mailbox.

[quote]In the definition for the Smart host name i entered the mail server IP, and I had to enter my user name and password for authontication. Now MercuryC worked as well.

When I operated MercuryC and left Smart host name empty the program crashed. The site does not permit me to upload the printscreen of the crush, and I did not find any dump file to upload.[/quote]

MercuryC must have a hostname or (IP address) or else it can't operate.

Evening all.

I'm playing with global rulesatm, specifically printing. I found from back in 2008 which talks about printing attachments, but I'm more concerned with non-plain-text emails.Is there any way for mercury to nicely print HTML emails? If not i've planned a script to run instead which will go something like this:

• called by "run" filter for specific email address
• check script isn't already running (if so end)
• for each .cnm in local-users-direcotry
• open file as a text stream
• insert <html> & <pre> tags around header
• deal with message body as best we can
• create file array
• push each attachment through a binary stream and save them
• add each filename to the file array (including that of the original with .html extension)
• print each file in array using its default app (if possible)
• delete each file in array and delete the original email

It feels like overkill to have to go that far but i can see a better way to do it using the rules.

Any thoughts?

(p.s. i'm running v4.72)

You are right, it is not Mercury.

See here...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312362

I fully understand now, thank you for the response!

[quote user="NessDan"]My previous ISP did not block port 25 nor did it require you to send mail through their SMTP. My current ISP (Comcast) does not block port 25, but I'm on a Policy Blacklist according to spamhaus.org. Many major email sites like Live mail and Gmail don't accept my mail, while websites like mailcatch.com receive it just fine. I've found out that I can use MercuryC to relay mail via Gmail's SMTP and change around a few settings so that I can get my mail to send to major providers without issue so that's the good news.[/quote]

The spamhaus policy blacklist (PBL) contains IP addresses that normally don't send mail directly.  You can apply to be removed, but your current setup using Gmail to relay mail will be much more robust.

[quote]One other HUGE problem I was having until now was that whenever I sent mail from an outside source (Live, Gmail, Texting w/ phone) to my mail server, I'd look at the SMTP end-to-end log and see that the message was successfully delivered, but I didn't see anything in my inbox. This got me very frustrated seeing that no one really posts on a forum to say that their SMTP client is successfully receiving messages :P. I found out that I had to go to Mercury's Core Module > Local domains > and add my domain name (nessdan.net) to the list. This worked wonderfully! I still really wanna know why that actually made a difference...[/quote]

The local domains list tells Mercury which domains it should try to deliver locally.  Everything else it will queue for onward sending.

[quote]My final error is this: when I try sending mail from my mail server to *10DigitPhoneNumber*@txt.att.net , I get an error:

T 20101105 225232 4cd4cfc0 Begin processing job MO000004 from root@nessdan.net
W 20101105 225233 4cd4cfc0 Error connecting to primary server '209.183.32.63'.
E 20101105 225233 4cd4cfc0 Processing of job MO000004 incomplete or failed.
T 20101105 225233 4cd4cfc0 Job MO000004 processing complete.

Inside of Mercury, it says that there was a connection error during a handshake. Then the rest of the lines are txt.att.net being resolved to the IP, then trying to connect to the IP, then a Connection error. When I try sending mail to the same address using Live mail, it works fine. Any ideas on what's going on here?[/quote]

This is MercuryE again and it won't work for the reasons you have already discovered.  Go back to MercuryC :)

Glad you are making progress with your setup, but it can be slow progress using trial and error!

> Can you please explain why exactly the VERP option would help us to not get blacklisted? Also would changing the "Basic minimum period
> between queue job retries" setting help in this regard as well? Is there any best practices or even laws that I should look into that
> would help before sending out this large email blast?

The VERP sends a separate message to each user so that the receiving host does not have to process a single message for multiple users.  This makes the sending process much less spammy.   That said, if the content looks like spam, and the users complains to their providers then you'll get blacklisted no matter what the sending process.  This is especially true if you do not have a subscription process where the receiver actively requests you to send them a message.

Thank you for the advice Thomas.

I made this switch a few months ago.  It was straightforward except that, as Thomas says, you do need to get your ISP to set up a ptr record (also called a reverse dns record) for your fixed ip address before many recipients will accept you.  Do that before you make the switch.

You could use an SMTP transaction filter to reject mail with invalid addresses.

This would not let the mail continue on it's way, but the sender would get an immediate failure, and may become more interested in sanitising their own address list :)

> Our company currently has a dedicated mail host in house that emails out directly to the clouds.  We do not relay to another mail host or
> anything.  We want to implement a feature where we can email clients who have missed their last month's payment when we print their
> current statement.  As such, I'm wondering - how many emails per day can be sent this way before being blacklisted by Spamhaus and the
> like?  Many of them say they don't blacklist based on volume, but by practice, but I'm unsure of other sites.  At a previous job, our
> admin said that AOL would blacklist us for sending out something like 500 1 recipient emails per day, or any number with more than 75
> recipients.  We may have gone through AOL for our mail hosting, however.

BTW, you can register you server with AOL and they'll not block but send you a message showing where an AOL user complained about your mail.  I registered my server with AOL and they do run a pretty professional operation.  The postmaster really does answer the mail at AOL, that's more that I can same for most ISPs.

>
> We typically have around 400 clients who miss a payment each month (usually not the SAME 400, of course).  However, this can jump up
> and down a couple hundred, and many will probably opt out.  How likely does this seem to get us blacklisted?

Probably never if each person was getting a separate, tailored e-mail message.  The number of messages sent generally has nothing to do with getting blacklisted by Spamhaus and others.  Most of the blacklists look at the content and not the process.  

That said if you are trying to send the same message to 400 RCPT TO addresses and it looked at all spammy then you're getting on at least someone's blacklist.  ;-(

Hi, I've set up the mailbe webmail pro correctly, but, a question came to my mind, I intend to use only webmail pro to some users outside my organization, but how can I convert the pegasus files to Afterlogic webmail?? I know that I can copy the arquives, but the entries at the database I have to create also, don't I?

Can somebody help me?

Thanks [:)]