That really has nothing to do with Mercury.

It is a Mail Transfer Agent that provides mail transfer services in an efficient & configurable manner.

It is not an all singing and all dancing "groupware solution".

1. Yes. The loader is not required as the service performs the monitor & restart functions. Also a daily restart is not usually required on a recent OS, earlier versions of Windows sometimes had issues with memory management and leaks that a daily restart would overcome.

2. As stated above, a known bug.

3. This could be a result of the user account Mercury is running under. I have been using NTWrapper for some time (since before Mercury could do it) to run as a service and this is working fine, so I have not changed to using the built in service functionality.

Let me check it. I didnt check that part. Thanks.

There is a fine manual that is installed with mercury and contains (mostly) all you need to know about configuring Mercury.

If you then have some specific questions about anything in particular, come back and ask.

I disabled it and tested my mail system and everything still works. Not quite sure why I had it enabled. Thanks again!

Yes, you are right. After uncheck this option all works fine now. Thank you [:D]

We have set it so that the subscribers are set to NOMAIL, if a total error count is 2.

In your case, if you select a week (not the same as 7 days), the error counter is cleared on a Sunday (according to the help).

Your initial period could have been shorter than a week, or if your e-mail server was down when going from Saturday to Sunday, then I guess the clearing would not take place.

Another guess is that the error handling routines, might not be in synch with the user-statistics, as you change mode. F.ex. if you edit the lists.mer file manually you have to restart Mercury.

But this is guesswork from my side.

Untick th option "Offer only unread mail"

Thomas, thans so much!

this sounds all very promising! we will be testing this tomorrow and i will let you know how this worked out for us! :)

You need to examine the session logs, to try to figure what is causing the code.

> They do know what we are doing, but I am struggling to convince them that they need to solve it (the isp is British Telecom)

I'm not all that sure you'll be all that successful.

> Sending via mercury e doesnt work - see the post: 'Cant Get Mercury E to send'!

If you got a fixed IP address and registered host name then you could bypass the ISP assuming that they do not block port 25 outbound.  They should never block port 25 (either inbound or outbound) on a system running a mail server.


> Is the way mercury behaves the norm for mail list servers?  if so it
> gives me more ammunition.

It's the norm for all mailing list servers.  The From: address is the original senders email address, the sender should be the mail servers email address.  Here's the edited headers of a major mail server running LISTSERV.


Return-path: <owner-pmail@bama.ua.edu>  <this is the original connecting MAIL FROM: address>
.
Date:         Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:37:48 +0100
Reply-To: Pegasus Mail for Windows Discussion List <PM-WIN@bama.ua.edu>,
 Fred Bone <Fred.Bone@DIAL.PIPEX.COM>
Sender: Pegasus Mail Discussion List <PMAIL@bama.ua.edu>
From: Fred Bone <Fred.Bone@DIAL.PIPEX.COM>
Subject: Problem with References:
Comments: To: PM-WIN@bama.ua.edu
To: PMAIL@bama.ua.edu

 

If you set 'powerschool' as a local user and set up the alias as above Merc won't be trying to send postmaster notifications offsite.

The only failures Merc will see is from your relay, and if that is causing failures, trying to send failure notifications through it is not going to work.

Failures for bad address or whatever to your student parents etc will be handled by the echalk servers and delivered back to the from address, powerschool@upson... which is presumably a mailbox you have set up with them.

So you only need to get them to relay mail from powerschool@upson....

Also, if you clear out the Queue folder, it will stop trying to send the OLD failure messages.

> Here it is. What are we looking for? Thanks for taking a look
>
> [General]
> myname:          localhost    # Canonical name for this server
> timezone:        +0000    # Time Zone to add to date fields
> file_api:        1    # Use the file api instead of queues
> mailqueue:       \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\QUEUE    # Where mail should be put for delivery
> smtpqueue:       \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\QUEUE    # Where the SMTP client should look for mail
> newmail_path:    \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\MAIL\~N    # Where to find the users' WinPMail mailboxes.
>
> [Protocols]
> \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\mercurys.dll

Damn, another broken XAMPP setup.  If you are going to use UNC then you need to user full UNC by adding the \\server\volume to all of these paths.  Probably easier though if this is on a standalone system to use the  drive:\\xampp\MERCURYMAIL\mercurys.dll  All the paths in this file need to be changed.


> \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\mercurye.dll
> \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\mercuryp.dll
> \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\mercuryd.dll
> \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\mercuryx.dll

Do you really use MercuryX

> \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\mercuryf.dll
> \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\mercuryh.dll
> \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\mercuryw.dll

Or these three??

> \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\mercuryi.dll
> \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\mercuryb.dll
>
>
> [Mercury]
> failfile:     \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\Mercury\FAILURE.MER    # Delivery failure notification template
> confirmfile:  \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\Mercury\CONFIRM.MER    # Delivery confirmation template
> aliasfile:    \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\Mercury\ALIAS.MER    # System-wide alias file
> synfile:      \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\Mercury\SYNONYM.MER    # User synonym database
> listfile:     \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\Mercury\LISTS.MER    # List of lists
> logwidth:     30    # Width of address fields in logfile
> retpath:      1    # Do/Don't use 'return-path' for errors
> maxhops:      30    # Used to detect mailing loops
> gullible:     0    # If NZ, don't validate 'From' fields
> bitnethost:   cunyvm.cuny.edu    # Relay host for '.bitnet' rewrites
> poll:         10   # Seconds between queue polling cycles
> scratch:      \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\Scratch    # Where we can write temp files
> returnlines:  15    # How many lines of failed messages to return
> postmaster:   Admin    # NetWare UIC of postmaster
> broadcast:    1    # Yes, we want broadcast notifications, but
> receipts:     0    # ... no broadcasts for receipt confirmations
> PM_notify:    1    # Do/Don't send errors to the postmaster
> change_owner: 1    # Change message ownership to recipient
> auto_tzone:   1    # If NZ, obtain timezone information from OS
> LogLevel:     15    # System message reporting level
> LogMax:       100    # Maximum number of system messages to store
> RetryPeriod:  30    # Period between job retries (minutes)
> MaxRetries:   16    # Maximum number of times a job can fail
> TwoPasses:    1    # If NZ, process submission queue in 2 passes
> Autoaddress:  0    # If NZ, auto-generate user addresses based on name
> Daily_exit:   0    # If NZ, auto-restart each day after maintenance
> No_Areply:    0    # If NZ, disable automatic replies system-wide
> Alt_Forward:  0    # If NZ, allow alternate forwarding specification
> Maint_hour:   2    # Hour for daily maintenance (24-hour clock)
> Maint_min:    0    # Minute for daily maintenance
> Retry_Mode:   0    # If NZ, use progressive backoff for queue retries
>
> [MercuryC]

Not used.
>
> [MercuryE]
> Poll : 15
> Timeout : 60
> # Session_logging : o:\mail\mercury\melogs
> # Session_logmode : 1
> # Nameservers : 139.80.64.1
>
> [MercuryD]
> scratch              :     \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\Mercury
> # Timeout : 30
> # Poll : 120               # How often to check hosts for new mail (seconds)
>
> [MercuryS]
> # Session_logging:  G:\           # Directory to write session transcripts
> debug:       1                    # Whether or not to show session progress
> # allow:       192.156.225.2        # A machine we WILL permit to connect
> # refuse:      192.156.225.0        # A group of machines we WON'T permit.
> logfile:     \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\Logs\MERCURYS.LOG
> # size:        1500000
> Relay : 0         # Control non-local relaying
>
>
>
> [MercuryP]
> Scratch : \xampp\MERCURYMAIL\Mercury
> Stack : 32768
> Mark_Read : 1
> SSL_Mode : 0
> Login_Disabled : 0
> Timeout : 60
>
> [MercuryX]
> # Cmd_Delay: 10
> # Cmd_Wait: 1
> # IE4_Dialling: 0
> # Use_ETRN: 1
> # Clients_only: 1
> # Sunday: 0800,1800,3,15,30,60
> # Monday: 0830,2100,5,15,60,60
> # Tuesday: 0830,2100,5,15,60,60
> # Wednesday: 1500,1900,2,30,5,30
> # Thursday: 0900,1900,2,30,0,0
> # Friday: 0830,2100,5,15,60,60
> # Saturday: 1031,1035,2,45,-1,0
>
> # [Groups]
> # testgroup            :     TESTGRP
>
> [Domains]
> # NetWare Server           Domain name
> localhost  :  localhost
> localhost  :  localhost.net
> localhost  :  localhost.org
> localhost  :  localhost.com

Should have a real domain in here if you are going to be receiving mail either by MercuryD or MercuryS.

Hi Rolf,

one or both of the updates solved my problems. Thanks for helping me.

Cheers,

 Arthur 

If it's possible to confirm it's a reverse DNS issue you could ask your ISP to change the record for your IP address, which they quite likely would do for a business client. (At least for a fee.)

/Rolf 

> Another question, is it possible to make the clients respond more quickly to changes ie. if one user marks an e-mail as deleted or
> read it shows quite instantly in the other users client? The idea is that the users will take care of the oldest unread e-mail but I am
> afraid that it is very easy that two users handles the same e-mail.

It's quite possible, unless all the users also Cc:  or Bcc: the original mailbox so that others see that the message has been processed.  If this though is a help line I've not found that a user complains about too much help. ;-)

FWIW, the delete (expunge) IMAP4 function does not happen on the server until all users are disconnected.  You might want to go to POP3 here instead of IMAP4 so that mail is downloaded an processed and not available to other members of the team.

That said, I would use a mailing list as the mailing address.  All the members of the support group as members of the list so all get the mail.  All replies go both to the sender and the list so members of the list know that the message has been processed and more importantly, how it was processed.

I really like using PMail for this since it's "Glossary" function allows the use of pre-planned responses to common questions.  All users can copy a glossary.pm to their account so that they could be using pre-approved replies.  ;-)
 

> And another, is it possible to store sent items at the mail-server instead of locally on each users client application (in this case
> Outlook)? I want all the users to be able to see what is sent and all sent messages to be stored in the same location.

An always filter for incoming and outgoing mail that forwards a copy of the mail to a common account provides an archive of all mail transactions.  You can trigger this one on the specific address of the account so that everything addressed to the account is available in one place.

Not currently as it is designed only as a temporary block.

What particular problems are you having?

I appreciate the Help everyone here has provided.

But I have decided that it is more trouble then it is worth at this point. This was a pet project and not much of a priority.

 You guy were very helpful thanks.

>
> how do i configure mercury? what is mercury mail's default server name? im really lost with this. and what kind of authentication should
> i use?? thanks in advance


Go to Mercury/32 and open Configuration | Mercury core and look at what you have entered for "Internet name for this system"  Normally you would enter that.  You can also just enter the IP address of the system running Mercury/32.

David Harris has implemented ESMTP AUTH CRAM-MD5 for MercuryS.  It does a SMTP authentication in accordance with RFCs 2554 and 2195.  It will also do the LOGIN and the strange MS AUTH=LOGIN.

In this case look at what you have set in Configuration | MercuryS | Connection control.  It should be using SMTP authorization and is so there will be a file with the authorized file name.  In the case of incoming mail though the authentication is not really required, it's only used to ensure that you are not relaying mail off the server to other servers.

> My Malling server at my school Crashes when i have a large amount of
> teachers login Mercury/32 crashes

How many IMAP4 connections are there and what are the specs on the server?


> But we recently had suffered a lightning strike to our school building
> and we had to replace ram sticks (1g) per stick and a mother board

There may still be problems with the hardware.  Bad memory is one of the primary reasons for a system to go down, especially when heavily loaded.

> but also i see some times that the server kicks teachers off when they
> try to login .

If there are too many bad logins then MercuryI will lock that IP out from further connections for 30 minutes.  If all of the connections are coming in from one IP address then you might want to edit the MercuryI connection control and set this IP address to be removed from the short term blacklisting.