Hello Thomas,

 using LDAP synony doesn't mean to implement LDAP on your Server. David calld it (I think so) that way, because the attribute was introduced with the LDAP Support of NDS. Pmail / Mercury use native NDS call to access that attributes. My tests also show, that both programs use the same Attribute: Internet EMAil Address in NDS Schema, which is mapped to the LDAP interface of NDS to the Ldap Attribute mail.

I recommend to either not load NLDAP.NLM if you don't use it (no Imanager, no Ldap contextless Login, no ....) or to configure your Firewall (FILTCFG.NLM) to not allow Ldap from outside. The last is what I do.

 Klaus

I tried to use synonyms with the this configuration:

Server: Mercury/W32 v4.52
Clients:  Pegasus Mail v4.41 in Netware NDS-Mode, 1 central installation for all users

In the Mercury help there is written that I can use NCONFIG.EXE to create the synonyms both for Pegasus Mail and for Mercury.
If I add a synonym with NCONFIG and this user sends a mail, I get an error message in the Mercury Core Process Window
"Job Mxxxxx from xxxx <synonym-address> has invalid or illegal from address" and in the Mercury Core log I read " User xxxx <synonym-address> not known at this site".
Moreover, in the queue file (.101) I see that the FROM: header contains the synonym but the Reply-to: header contains the original addresss based on the username.
Sending a mail TO the synonym address results in adequate error messages.

Thats why I tried the second method explained in the Mercury help - creating a synonym source file, compiling this and placing one copy in the appropriate directory on the Mercury server and the other copy in the directory on the Netware server, that contains the central installation of Pegasus Mail.

Now sendig a mail TO this synonym address works, but if the user with the synonym sends a mail FROM his account, his FROM: header is not changed to the synonym. That means, it works only like an alias.

What's wrong ? 

Thanks, Thomas 

I recently moved from a Netware bindery based install (NW 6.5 SP6) to NDS mode and have found it to be much easier to maintain. One thing that makes it easy is to have LDAP working correctly - configuration of user aliases is almost zero now. Here is one thing to make it much easier - use the tool for NWADMIN found here http://prope.insa-lyon.fr/~ppollet/netware/smtpsnp/index.ssi ... it can be configured to make user e-mail address creation as easy as clicking one button.

Keep in mind that the alias as Mercury/32 sees things in NDS mode changes from username@mydomain.com mapping to username/servername (bindery style) to being unnecessary (with the IMAP module running, anyway). The only aliases I have listed in Mercury/32 now are things like purchasing@mydomain.com alias for LDAPaddress@mydomain.com. I have completely abandonded the synonym creation now. If using NW 4.11, you may be looking to use the "foriegn e-mail address attribute" of the user. You can have multiple addresses configured in NDS / eDir for a particular user and they do not have to be a true username at all (I have many that follow the firstname.lastname@mydomain.com format).

Not sure if I have answered this clearly but I have nearly an identical configuration working very well.

Regards,

Bryan 

As far as I know, Pegasus doesn't access the synonyms.mer file, but retrieves the current user's synonym from NDS. I have a setup similar to yours.

It seems that Pegasus has difficulty accessing NDS. This could be due to insufficient rights or a Novell client problem - I use Novell client v4.83 sp 1. There are some versions around with known problems.

However, in you first setup Pegasus DID succeed in finding the synonym, only Mercury did not...

Hope this helps.

You must enable Ldap Synonym in NCONFIG (which is read by Pmail) and in Mercury seperately.

Hello Bryan, Bart and Klaus,

many thanks for your answers.

Using LDAP in Mercury for incoming mails  is no solution for me, because we get so many SPAM mails to not existing addresses, and this would result in so many unnecessary LDAP requests that the server would be busy only by this.

I  have found out, that the best method is to use synonym.mer on the Mercury machine AND configuring synonyms for the outgoing mails by Nconfig.
Using synonym.mer on the Mercury machine AND enabling LDAP for outgoing mails in Nconfig also works.

Bart wrote,  that Pegasus seems to have  difficulties in accessing NDS.  What I found out, is that Nconfig and LDAP use different NDS attributes. Whereas Nconfig creates an attribute "EMail Address" wich contains "SMTP:username@mydomain", LDAP uses the attribute "Internet EMail Address", in ConsoleOne under users  "Properties / General / Identification"  called "E-Mail Adress". As I remember there were some changes of attributes from Netware 4.1 to 5.1 and newer and I think that's the problem for Mercury.

Regards, Thomas