Many thanks, and apologies for the wrong forum.

On 2 Jul 2007 Pegasus Mail & Mercury - Automated Email <> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I am thinking that I might have fewer crashes caused by loss of
> connectivity on a wireless laptop by installing Pegasus Mail locally
> on my laptop, accessing the mailbox on the remote machine.
>
> 1. Will this help with this problem?

Might help.  
>
> 2. How would I go about making this change?

1.    Use Help | About Pegasus Mail | Info and note your current HOME & NEW mail directory setup.  IIRC, yours should already be in UNC format like \\server\volume\pmail\mail\~8

2.    Install Pegasus Mail to c:\pmail on the laptop.

3.    Go to c:\pmail\programs and run pconfig.exe.  Change the Standalone Home and NEW mail directory spec to point at the current server mailbox location.  Save and exit.

Now the program is running locally and points at the remote location of the folders.   

You can also simply use IMAP4 from the local version of WinPMail on the laptop (my preference in fact) via your Mercury/32 setup so that the loss of connectivity with the mailbox directories will be further isolated.  Makes it better when the laptop goes on the road as well.

>
> I know this is probably quite simple, but I need to be sure of my
> steps.
>
> Are there advantages to either system? What if I want to open the
> same user on another machine on the network - not at the same time,
> of course).
>
> Thanks
>
> Ellie
>  

[quote user="DonPedro"]

NOW I am completely off the hook!

could someone with in-depth knowledge jump in please for an explanation what is going on?

how

could ellie experience multiple running copies of pm without the -ms

switch and what is in effect the meaning of the -A swich since ellie

solved her problem (multiple instances of pm running) by removing it?

[/quote]

Well, why or how removing the -A switch could have solved Ellie's problem, is a puzzle for me as well. In NON-NOVELL-NETWARE mode the -A switch is ignored anyway. So it might have something to do with other options (or illegal characters) on the commandline. Deliberating on that would end up guessing... so I withhold.

Running multiple copies of Pegasus Mail is something that shouldn't be considered unless you know exactly what you do and NEVER run 2 instances on the same mailbox. Pegasus Mail is not designed for that. There are multiple ways to run more instances at the same time, either by setting an environment variable, using the Pegasus.ini file or (since version 4.x) using the -MS commandline option.

[quote user="Gene"]

I am using PM 4.41.  I am on vacation and trying send mail using cox.net.  I csn recieve mail great but can't send any.  The error I get to that has something to do with smtp settings.  I need to reply to mail using Pegasus.  Is there anyone out there who can help? Thanks

 [/quote]

It's common practice nowedays that you can only send using the server from the location where you actually are logged into. Many ISP's do not allow using their mail server for sending. It might be that cox.net can be used, using any authentication method.

Do you keep your new mail folder open all the time?

Close that New Mail folder and close down Pegasus Mail. At the next restart all those sombie things must be gone. 

Is it possible that the message  (.CNM file) is being deleted by some other action in the background. I have seen where Pegasus has displayed a message in the list of newmail, but in the background (sometimes on the server) a process such as an antivirus program has detected some malware in that message and deleted or quarrentined it. Pegasus still displays that message in the list and attempts to delete it from the list fail.

But, it you close NewMail and re-open, the message is gone. 

 The other cause of messages that really are there, not being deleted is that somehow thet have been marked as read-only. When the message is highlighted, press F12 and check that the read-only field is not set. Remove the setting if necessary and continue...

[quote user="djmeydey"]

Hi
This could be the problem. But what drivers can I take, but those from HP themself?
I have these printers: HP deskjet 1280 and HP PSC 1210
I really don't know if there are other drivers available.
[/quote]

 You can get drivers for these printers directly from HP.  To test is you are really having a printer problem though create a new printer set to print to a file and then use that as the default printer driver.  If things speed up then this is a printer driver problem.

Run pconfig.exe from the program directory and reset the HOME and NEW mail directory spec.  The path for the new mail directory should point at the locatin of the pmail.ini file; the home mail directory should pint at the PMM files.  They are probably the same.  With an old version it should look something like c:\pmail\mail and with a new version it should be c:\pmail\mail\admin or c:\pmail\mail\~8  Also since these were recovered from a CDROM make sure they are not marked as read-only.

Thank you, David, that's very kind of you.  I hope you do get the opportunity to do some documentation of the configuration files (maybe you could delegate this to somebody you trust with the source code?) but I know you have more important projects already in progress.

I solved my immediate problem with a little gawk code that changed all the zeros to ones in the 8th byte (ignoring any non-zero values) for all my users and sites, and visiting the people with oddball values personally and showing them where to set the auto-timezone in their GUI.  We're all copacetic now.

When I make a default PMAIL.INI template for my users, I start with a fresh empty H:/PMAIL folder and run the current version of Pegasus, and answer the opening questions with a set of known unambiguous values.  Then I replace the occurrences of those values within the newly created configuration files with numbered tags (like this: %1, %2, %3.1, etc.) to create the template files.

When a new user is created, the template files are processed to place the appropriate information in the appropriate places (this is just one of many processes that are necessary to create a new user; we have to provision the phone system, establish 802.1x access policies, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum) using a little script like so:

prepmail.sh homeserver HJSimpson "Homer J. Simpson"

The prepmail script will substitute homeserver for %1, and  HJsimpson for %2, and "Homer" for %3.1, and so forth.

I use a single SMTP definition and a single TOOLBAR.PM on each site's homeserver and use symbolic links for each user; that way I can change them in one place and have everyone changed at once.

A new user's password is flagged as pre-expired on the POSIX side, and when that person logs in the first time, they are redirected to a web page (which they can't escape without rebooting) which makes them set a strong password.  That password is encrypted and written into the users' IMAP.PM file (it's also entered into LDAP, and some other places, with the appropriate encryption for each place).

It's conceptually elaborate, but there's really very little code that is very easy to maintain, and it saves many man-hours every year as well as making account provisioning painless for users and system administrators.

I have a similar process that lets our sysadmins painlessly change a users' name (usually due to marriage or divorce) and preserves all their files and email intact.

If your email hub is sendmail and/or MailScanner (rather than Mercury) you can also make archive copies there fairly easily.

Incidentally, archiving on the email hub integrates better with backup and disaster recovery plans (especially if you are USA federally regulated by SOX, FDA, or HIPAA) than depending on individuals to maintain personal stores.  Once you are doing strong archival, if someone really needs to recover an old message they can request it be drawn from the archive copy by the email hub administrator.

Personally, I very much appreciate that Pegasus doesn't put the attachments in copies to self.  File version management simply should not be performed with an email engine, to be frank - it'd be "good enough" solution that would drive out existing optimal solutions.  Thanks, David!

We have been trying it out and that's why I'm asking these questions. Thanks for your help. We'll look elsewhere.

sam

I think this "How to" message could be moved to the FAQ section...

Well, I think the state.pmj did the trick. I tried the hiearch and the ini to no avail but seem to have had success with the state.pmj and I couldn't find any .lck files to delete. I am still having problems in that Pmail will not play a sound when new mail arrives I have the radio box checked in the prefs and am using this command line E:\Pmail\Programs\winpm-32.exe  -Z 512 -A. Also, I am not able to use the send link by email in IE. Pmail is set for the default mailer.

Thanks for your help getting the main problem fixed.

I suspect that there is a problem with deleting the deleted messages folder on closing.  Try deleting it manually once before closing and see what happens. 

I searched for the WI_sph.ini file and had 4 of them. Each one for a different mail box. 3 of them were set to 0 and the 4th one to 1. That 4th one was not the mail box in question but, after setting it to 0 the problem seems to have corrected itself in the mail box that was having the problem. Thank you for all your help.

Strat

Apologies if this is too far off-topic, but I've been running Pegasus Mail in "standalone mode" for hundreds of users for many years.  Works great!

I just set the location of PMAIL.INI and friends to a mapped network drive, that is individually mapped at network login time to each person's private "home" folder.

So, winpm-32.exe lives in P:/CURRENT/PMAIL, along with the various .fff files and similar customizations we have in place, and PMAIL.CFG (in the same share) tells Pegasus to find its other files in H:/PMAIL.

When I upgrade pegasus, I install the new version on the P: network share and test it for a while, figuring out the new capabilities and making sure there aren't any bugs that would impact my users, and once that's done I just move the new version to /CURRENT.

There are some additional bells and whistles - for instance, the /CURRENT directory is actually a symbolic link on the host side, so I can switch versions on the fly rather easily, and we dynamically generate registry hacks, policies, and login scripts from a perl script that runs on the server at network login time - but I think I hit the high points.

Since the location of a mail directory is a mapped drive, it's easily moved about, as long as the mapping resolves to the new location.  We're completely IMAPped now, too, so the individual PMAIL directories only hold personal settings and cache info.

Oh, and don't do this technique on a dial-up link if you are using POP or any other mail storage method that will require Pegasus to open bazillions of files on the H: share.  It will become so slow as to be unuseable with relatively few messages - this isn't really Pmail's fault, it's because SMB is a grossly inefficient protocol and Pegasus was orginally developed on the relatively snappy IPX stack.  You're still OK with IMAP though, even on a slow link.

OK, solved it. This will (hopefully!) be my final post on the matter! Turns out I didn't have enough disk space...the spam folder was about 700MB and I had about 500MB. Freeing up a few gigs allowed the compression to complete successfully (I guess a new PMM file needs to be created before the older one is deleted, perhaps?)

Anyway, hope this is useful to someone. David, I don't know how feasible it is to catch the reason for compression failure but if it would be possible to display something about a lack of disk space that would be helpful (assuming that was indeed the problem).

Cheers! 

Hi !

Well, David, this is a suggestion, but maybe you can use it : .I think it is open source, and on top of that it is really light. The only problem is that it gives sometimes a terrible rendering. I let you to check it further for you are far more experienced than me.

Cheers !

Ginhead.
 

There is a work-around for this.

Move all the messages in your Unix folder to an empty normal folder - that will only move messages that have not been "deleted"
Delete the Unix folder and create a new one with the same name as previously.
Move the messages back from the normal folder to the (new) Unix folder.

Bob

hi

what printer are you using? this happened for us as well, when i upgraded from 4.31 to 4.41.  it has nothing to do with novell or windows server 2003. 4.31 was printing correctly, 4.41 was not - but only with brother hl 1450 printers. hp 1320 were working fine and printing from the chosen tray! we have defined a 2nd printer with the correct setting ie print from 2nd tray only as default - no success.

mario