Well I was unable to make it crash after that.  I tried moving emails between local and remote, (and in doing so I stumbled across the Outlook Express duplicate message issue, badly), I tried sending and receiving and moving files on the same account at the same time, hitting it with multiple users on a shared account, and everything else I could think of.

So far, I am becoming to believe it is one of two things;

a) Some kind of unexpected response from the ISP's SSL-enabled server that gums it up (because it crashes fairly consistently when it fails to deliver as described above), or

b) There is a user-detector that only makes it crash when a user is using it, which turns off when they go home and I slave away at night to try to figure out what the deal is.

Next step: 

I made arrangements with another company to let me relay mail through their SMTP servers, no SSL and no restrictions.  And I will grab the mail off the encrypted POP3 accounts with a regular client for the time being.  Thus, no SSL.  And I will see if the program is stable that way.

 I'll let you know how it turns out.  Thanks for your help.

--97T-- 

P.S.  I've given up on running a mailing list using someone else's smtp and pop servers, so I'll start a more appropriately named thread for the crashing issue.

 
P.P.S> -- For those who find themselve chasing bugs, this might be a nice diversion:  Cricket Kit

I set one up a long time ago, but now I've forgotten the basics.  On trying to set one up, the following questions come up:

The incoming mail will be gotten off a mailbox at my ISP using pop3; for example mymailinglist@myisp.com

In the Edit List Name And Membership File dialog box, for List Address, it doesn't want the email address.  What should I put here?

In the Mailing List Settings, General Tab, Title input box, the help says to use a descriptive name, but there is an option to enter an address.  What should I put here?

How do I get the program to snatch messages from mymailinglist@myisp.com and process them? 

Which modules do I need besides the pop3 and smtp clients?

Do I need to set up the mailing list as a user? Do I need an alias or something?

Where are the instructions for this? 

Sorry for being so clueless, and thanks for your help.

--97T--

Edit:  I have set up a mailing list, and added one of my email addresses (off site) as moderator and user.

I also set up a local user, and got the pop3 client to grab messages off the mailbox at mymailinglist@myisp.com.
 

Okay, I figured it out (partway).

The trick is, as follows:

Assume your mailing list will be at mymailinglist@myisp.com, a pop3 mailbox on a remote server.

You need mymailinglist@myisp.com in the input box, with the 'full address' box checked.

Then you need a USER named mymailinglist.

Now, all I've got to do is figure out how to let people subscribe.

The only place I could find out how to tell them how to do that was in the template file.

And it looks like it wants to use maiser@somedomain.com.  Which can't work, because the list is at mymailinglist@myisp.com.

I know I had this working a few years ago, I sure wish I could remember how I did it all.

 

Now I've got another problem. 

In normal mode, it appears to me that if Joe sends a message to the list, it gets forwarded using Joe's email address in the From: field. 

My brain-dead ISP insists upon having each From: address going out using their server to be qualified separately.

That is, if I want to send using their server, and I want Mercury's SMTP client to log into their smtp server as myaddress1@myisp.com, but have the From: address as  someone_on_my_list@somewhere_else.com, then I have to go to their web page and generate a confirmation email to that address, and verify it.  Otherwise the server returns an error (which crashes Mercury after a few tries, btw).

This is extremely tedious and I'm not so sure I want to have to do this for everyone on my list.

So, if I tell the list server to send anonymously, Mercury appears to use the postmaster username as a From: address.  This blows up because that is a local account.  (My server is on a local network and reaches out through a firewall.)  There's no way for me to register this name at my ISP, because it's not a valid email address.

I checked the help file, and it recommends against using a remote email address as the postmaster.  Besides, I'm thinking it would be unwise to use the mailing list address as the postmaster address, for about 16 different reasons. 

Is there some way I can get the list server to use the remotely located list server email address as the From: address?

> I set one up a long time ago, but now I've forgotten the basics.  On
> trying to set one up, the following questions come up:
>
> The incoming mail will be gotten off a mailbox at my ISP using pop3; for example mymailinglist@myisp.com

The mailing lists and postmaster use the "Internet name for this system" as a domain name.   The mailing list will have to be aliased to mymailinglist@<internet name for this system>  If you are using an IP address for this name the the address would be in the literal address form mymailinglist@[<IP address>]

>
> In the Edit List Name And Membership File dialog box, for List Address,
> it doesn't want the email address.  What should I put here?

In this case simply "mymailinglist" will work.
 
>
> In the Mailing List Settings, General Tab, Title input box, the help
> says to use a descriptive name, but there is an option to enter an
> address.  What should I put here?

When setting up the list name you need to use a descriptive  name like "My Mailing List"<mymailinglist@myisp.com> and then check the box saying "Is full address".  That way the mail as sent will have the proper from address.


>
> How do I get the program to snatch messages from
> mymailinglist@myisp.com and process them? 
>
> Which modules do I need besides the pop3 and smtp clients?

None.

>
> Do I need to set up the mailing list as a user? Do I need an alias or something?

No user, you need the alias.
>
> Where are the instructions for this?
>
> Sorry for being so clueless, and thanks for your help.
>
> --97T--
>  
>
>
>  
>

If they can access Mercury/32 from the outside world all they need to do is use http://<yourserver>:<your port> to do the accessing.  With your setup they need to send mail to maiser and do the subscribing.  I would assume that they would be sending to maiser@<your domain> and then you alias that to maiser@<Internet name for this system> so is gets send to the maiser function when the mail is received.  Checkout the help for the options they have to subscribe.

You need to get that postmaster address registered or you are going to have major problems.  Any mail server that does not have a valid postmaster account is going run into problems delivering the mail. If you can get a mymailinglist@mydomain.com registered then you sure can get postmaster@mydomain.com registered as well. 

Thank you for your reply, Thomas.

We have a DSL account with ATT, and our website is hosted off-site.  We have a number of email accounts off-site, like engineering@mydomain.com, etc., plus others, where the users need to get and respond to those emails.  To do that with ATT's smtp server, you have to authenticate as their user, and substitute the From: address.  Any client does that. 

What I have been doing is getting all mail inbound off existing pop3 mailboxes from various locations with MercuryD, and sending out using one of our ATT accounts with MercuryC.  MercuryI handles IMAP for users on the LAN.  That way the box stays behind the firewall and uses a local IP address.

So, up until today, I haven't been using Mercury as a 'real' server at all, at least not to the internet.  And there have not been any problems delivering mail, since with outgoing mail, I'm just a client to ATT's smtp server.

It ran a long time like that -- get 'em in with POP3, let the users access with IMAP, send 'em out using the ATT SMTP. 

Now, the first thing that happened is that ATT decided to require SSL connections to their POP3 and SMTP servers.  So I had to upgrade to the current version of Mercury. 

The second thing they did is to require verification of email addresses to be used in the From: part of the header.  So, for every user replying to messages using an off-site mailbox, I had to go to their website, register it, and confirm, if I wanted to send using their SMTP server.  Although irritating, all is well and good.

The bad part of this is that under these conditions, any address not previously registered results in a response, 

553 From: address not verified; see http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/manage/sendfrom-07.html<cr><lf>,

which response causes Mercury to crash.

Anyway, I can get around that.

But today I decided I wanted to start a little mailing list.  I've done it before, and I've got everything working now, using the remote servers.  Except this one thing:

The From: address is the postmaster's address.  And, I wanted to make the mail coming from the list read, From:  the mailing list email address.  I coulda sworn that's what it was before (a few years back), but I'm greying and my brain is calcifying, so I'm probably wrong about that.
 

Right now the postmaster's address is a local account, "admin", aliased to admin@192.168.1.24.  (The IP of the machine running Mercury.) It might be all bolluxed up that way, but it's been working.  It allows me to get the mail, and it heeds the warning about making the postmaster a remote mailbox.  And it never ever loops or anything.  I get the admin mail using IMAP on the same machine.  Here's why I did that: "The postmaster account is usually an alias to a real user on your system, and this is the expectation within Mercury. Enter in this field the username of the user on the machine where Mercury is running who is to act as your postmaster. While it is permissible to have a non-local address as your postmaster address, we strongly recommend you do not do this, since it can create real problems and mail loops when the remote machine is unreachable."

Now, I could get around this whole deal if I expose the box to the internet and set it up to run  MercuryE and deliver mail directly.  But first, I expect I will have to learn how to set up the postmaster and domain name properly.  Then, if one of my neighbors in the same netblock gets hacked, I will end up in a black hole, and our business emails won't get delivered.  And then all of my trusting users will come after me with pitchforks, daggers, and flaming arrows for sure.  Or, just go all out and register a domain and set the thing up as a real server. Which I could do, done it before, but I've been trying not to have to admin a Windows server on the internet if I can avoid it. (I have a real job here, too!)

So, my questions are: Did I completely misunderstand the instructions about the postmaster account?   Could I run into problems if I set up an external email account as postmaster, and my connection to the internet fails?  Is there any way to get the list address as the From: address on outgoing list messages?

Sorry for being so windy, Thomas.  Your insightful help on this forum is golden, and I appreciate it.  Thanks!

--97T-- 

> Thank you for your reply, Thomas.
>
> We have a DSL account with ATT, and our website is hosted off-site.  We
> have a number of email accounts off-site, like engineering@mydomain.com,
> etc., plus others, where the users need to get and respond to those
> emails.  To do that with ATT's smtp server, you have to authenticate as
> their user, and substitute the From: address.  Any client does that. 

You need to setup a postmaster@mydomain.com so that failures of mail sent from user@mydomain.com can be properly reported if nothing else.  It also will allow other to report problems with your mailings to the system admin. You could then set the name of the system to mydomain.com.  

You should also setup maiser@mydomain.com so that people from the outside can send to the mail server to subscribe and unsubscribe from the mailing lists.

>
> What I have been doing is getting all mail inbound off existing pop3
> mailboxes from various locations with MercuryD, and sending out
> using one of our ATT accounts with MercuryC.  MercuryI handles IMAP
> for users on the LAN.  That way the box stays behind the firewall
> and uses a local IP address.

OK.

>
> So, up until today, I haven't been using Mercury as a 'real' server
> at all, at least not to the internet.  And there have not been any
> problems delivering mail, since with outgoing mail, I'm just a
> client to ATT's smtp server.

How does mail to postmaster@mydomain.com get handled?

>
> It ran a long time like that -- get 'em in with POP3, let the users
> access with IMAP, send 'em out using the ATT SMTP.
>
> Now, the first thing that happened is that ATT decided to require
> SSL connections to their POP3 and SMTP servers.  So I had to upgrade
> to the current version of Mercury.

Ok, that's seem like a good idea.  Since all connections are authenticated then they do not have problems with the bad guys working their servers for outbound mail.


>
> The second thing they did is to require verification of email
> addresses to be used in the From: part of the header.  So, for every
> user replying to messages using an off-site mailbox, I had to go to
> their website, register it, and confirm, if I wanted to send using
> their SMTP server.  Although irritating, all is well and good.

Why in the world are they doing this.  All it does is annoy the customers, has little or no affect on spammers.

>
> The bad part of this is that under these conditions, any address not
> previously registered results in a response,
>
> 553 From: address not verified; see http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/manage/sendfrom-07.html<cr><lf>,
>
> which response causes Mercury to crash.

That I cannot understand.  This response line looks quite normal except for the trailing comma.  Do you have a MercuryC session log showing this crash?  I would like to see this for review.  

>
> Anyway, I can get around that.
>
> But today I decided I wanted to start a little mailing list.  I've
> done it before, and I've got everything working now, using the
> remote servers.  Except this one thing:
>
> The From: address is the postmaster's address.  And, I wanted to
> make the mail coming from the list read, From:  the mailing list
> email address.  I coulda sworn that's what it was before (a few
> years back), but I'm greying and my brain is calcifying, so I'm
> probably wrong about that.

It's never been the mailing list.  The To: field is the mailing list and the sender field should be as well.

>  
>
> Right now the postmaster's address is a local account, "admin",
> aliased to admin@192.168.1.24.  (The IP of the machine running
> Mercury.)

This address should be admin@[192.168.1.24] and this IP should be in the domains list as well.

> It might be all bolluxed up that way, but it's been
> working.  It allows me to get the mail, and it heeds the warning
> about making the postmaster a remote mailbox.  And it never ever
> loops or anything.  I get the admin mail using IMAP on the same
> machine.  Here's why I did that: "The postmaster account is usually
> an alias to a real user on your system, and this is the expectation
> within Mercury. Enter in this field the username of the user on the
> machine where Mercury is running who is to act as your postmaster.
> While it is permissible to have a non-local address as your
> postmaster address, we strongly recommend you do not do this, since
> it can create real problems and mail loops when the remote machine
> is unreachable."
>
> Now, I could get around this whole deal if I expose the box to the
> internet and set it up to run  MercuryE and deliver mail directly.

I doubt if this would help all that much.  You are already sending using MercuryC so sending via MercuryE would not change all that much.  That said, I'm not at all sure that would help since I'm quite sure AT&T (Yahoo) is already blocking port 25.  

I would recommend you get a GMail account and point MercuryC at the GMail SMTP host
As long as your really do not abuse the server with MBytes OS mail you could make the same SSL connection to GMail as you do to your ISP and GMail does not even look at the From: addresses.

(b) -SMTP STARTTLS -

  Server host name: smtp.gmail.com
  Server TCP/IP port: 587
  SSL/TLS: via STARTTLS
  Enable server certificate fingerprint tracking: checked
  SMTP Authentication: Login to the SMTP server using POP3
  username/password (the GMAIL-POP3-definition has been chosen)

(c) - SMTP via SSL -

  Server host name: smtp.gmail.com
  Server TCP/IP port: 465
  SSL/TLS: via direct ssl connection
  Enable server certificate fingerprint tracking: unchecked
  SMTP Authentication: Login to the SMTP server using POP3
  username/password (the GMAIL-POP3-definition has been chosen)


> But first, I expect I will have to learn how to set up the
> postmaster and domain name properly.  Then, if one of my neighbors
> in the same netblock gets hacked, I will end up in a black hole, and
> our business emails won't get delivered.  And then all of my
> trusting users will come after me with pitchforks, daggers, and
> flaming arrows for sure. 

You got it.

> Plus, I'd have to add a nic to give access from the lan, or else go all
> out and register a domain and set the thing up as a real server. Which I
> could do, done it before, but I've been trying not to have to admin a
> Windows server on the internet if I can avoid it. (I have a real job
> here, too!)
>
> So, my questions are: Did I completely misunderstand the
> instructions about the postmaster account?   Could I run into
> problems if I set up an external email account as postmaster, and my
> connection to the internet fails?  Is there any way to get the list
> address as the From: address on outgoing list messages?

You must set the postmaster account to one of your local users.  This is what you have done.  However mail sent from the outside world must be able to be received by postmaster@mydomain.com and this is something you have not done.

>
> Sorry for being so windy, Thomas.  Your insightful help on this
> forum is golden, and I appreciate it.  Thanks!

Wow, Thomas, thank you for all that great information.  I have a few comments and a crucial question, inline. 

[quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"]> Thank you for your reply, Thomas.
>
> We have a DSL account with ATT, and our website is hosted off-site.  We
> have a number of email accounts off-site, like engineering@mydomain.com,
> etc., plus others, where the users need to get and respond to those
> emails.  To do that with ATT's smtp server, you have to authenticate as
> their user, and substitute the From: address.  Any client does that. 

You need to setup a postmaster@mydomain.com so that failures of mail sent from user@mydomain.com can be properly reported if nothing else.  It also will allow other to report problems with your mailings to the system admin. You could then set the name of the system to mydomain.com.  

You should also setup maiser@mydomain.com so that people from the outside can send to the mail server to subscribe and unsubscribe from the mailing lists.
[/quote]

I have a question about this, below.

[quote]

>
> What I have been doing is getting all mail inbound off existing pop3
> mailboxes from various locations with MercuryD, and sending out
> using one of our ATT accounts with MercuryC.  MercuryI handles IMAP
> for users on the LAN.  That way the box stays behind the firewall
> and uses a local IP address.

OK.

>
> So, up until today, I haven't been using Mercury as a 'real' server
> at all, at least not to the internet.  And there have not been any
> problems delivering mail, since with outgoing mail, I'm just a
> client to ATT's smtp server.

How does mail to postmaster@mydomain.com get handled?

[/quote]

At present, it doesn't, because there is no mydomain.com.  Just the local IP address.  Inside the lan, postmaster@192.168.1.24 works.  See my question below, please.

[quote]

>
> It ran a long time like that -- get 'em in with POP3, let the users
> access with IMAP, send 'em out using the ATT SMTP.
>
> Now, the first thing that happened is that ATT decided to require
> SSL connections to their POP3 and SMTP servers.  So I had to upgrade
> to the current version of Mercury.

Ok, that's seem like a good idea.  Since all connections are authenticated then they do not have problems with the bad guys working their servers for outbound mail.


>
> The second thing they did is to require verification of email
> addresses to be used in the From: part of the header.  So, for every
> user replying to messages using an off-site mailbox, I had to go to
> their website, register it, and confirm, if I wanted to send using
> their SMTP server.  Although irritating, all is well and good.

Why in the world are they doing this.  All it does is annoy the customers, has little or no affect on spammers.

[/quote]

I couldn't agree more.  What are the odds of someone sniffing an SSL'd connection?  On the other hand, it would block someone's compromised box if it forges the headers.  Recently we have been getting some bounce messages on one of our accounts.  Viewing them in detail, it looks like they were sent from boxes all over the world, to boxes all over the world, using the unfortunate salesman's address as the sender.  That's what they are out to block, I guess.  I can guarantee that none of those messages left his machine, because his only way out of here is through Mercury and thence through a very picky firewall that logs everything.  Not to mention all the other layers of protection in place, and there are multiples of those.  Gotta love Winderz!

[quote]

>
> The bad part of this is that under these conditions, any address not
> previously registered results in a response,
>
> 553 From: address not verified; see http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/manage/sendfrom-07.html<cr><lf>,
>
> which response causes Mercury to crash.

That I cannot understand.  This response line looks quite normal except for the trailing comma.  Do you have a MercuryC session log showing this crash?  I would like to see this for review.  

[/quote]

I added that comma, sorry.  The line is pasted from a log.
I don't have a log from when it crashed, or nothing got saved to it when it did crash.  Later on when the system isn't under use I will attempt to reproduce the crash with all logging turned on and see if I can turn something up.  It runs fine as long as I don't reproduce that condition.  So I'll get back to you on it.

[quote]
>
> Anyway, I can get around that.
>
> But today I decided I wanted to start a little mailing list.  I've
> done it before, and I've got everything working now, using the
> remote servers.  Except this one thing:
>
> The From: address is the postmaster's address.  And, I wanted to
> make the mail coming from the list read, From:  the mailing list
> email address.  I coulda sworn that's what it was before (a few
> years back), but I'm greying and my brain is calcifying, so I'm
> probably wrong about that.

It's never been the mailing list.  The To: field is the mailing list and the sender field should be as well.

[/quote]

OK, thanks.  It was another program I was thinking of that allows you to do that (but it's old and doesn't do SSL). 

The memory is the first thing to go, and I can't remember what the other thing is. 

[quote]

>  
>
> Right now the postmaster's address is a local account, "admin",
> aliased to admin@192.168.1.24.  (The IP of the machine running
> Mercury.)

This address should be admin@[192.168.1.24] and this IP should be in the domains list as well.

[/quote]

OK, I'll change the postmaster address. Should I delete the alias then?  The IP is in the domains list.

[quote]

> It might be all bolluxed up that way, but it's been
> working.  It allows me to get the mail, and it heeds the warning
> about making the postmaster a remote mailbox.  And it never ever
> loops or anything.  I get the admin mail using IMAP on the same
> machine.  Here's why I did that: "The postmaster account is usually
> an alias to a real user on your system, and this is the expectation
> within Mercury. Enter in this field the username of the user on the
> machine where Mercury is running who is to act as your postmaster.
> While it is permissible to have a non-local address as your
> postmaster address, we strongly recommend you do not do this, since
> it can create real problems and mail loops when the remote machine
> is unreachable."
>
> Now, I could get around this whole deal if I expose the box to the
> internet and set it up to run  MercuryE and deliver mail directly.

I doubt if this would help all that much.  You are already sending using MercuryC so sending via MercuryE would not change all that much.  That said, I'm not at all sure that would help since I'm quite sure AT&T (Yahoo) is already blocking port 25.  

[/quote]

No, I have a commercial account and can host servers if I want to.

[quote]

I would recommend you get a GMail account and point MercuryC at the GMail SMTP host
As long as your really do not abuse the server with MBytes OS mail you could make the same SSL connection to GMail as you do to your ISP and GMail does not even look at the From: addresses.

(b) -SMTP STARTTLS -

  Server host name: smtp.gmail.com
  Server TCP/IP port: 587
  SSL/TLS: via STARTTLS
  Enable server certificate fingerprint tracking: checked
  SMTP Authentication: Login to the SMTP server using POP3
  username/password (the GMAIL-POP3-definition has been chosen)

(c) - SMTP via SSL -

  Server host name: smtp.gmail.com
  Server TCP/IP port: 465
  SSL/TLS: via direct ssl connection
  Enable server certificate fingerprint tracking: unchecked
  SMTP Authentication: Login to the SMTP server using POP3
  username/password (the GMAIL-POP3-definition has been chosen)

[/quote]

Now there's an idea I hadn't thought of.  Thank you!

[quote]


> But first, I expect I will have to learn how to set up the
> postmaster and domain name properly.  Then, if one of my neighbors
> in the same netblock gets hacked, I will end up in a black hole, and
> our business emails won't get delivered.  And then all of my
> trusting users will come after me with pitchforks, daggers, and
> flaming arrows for sure. 

You got it.

> Plus, I'd have to add a nic to give access from the lan, or else go all
> out and register a domain and set the thing up as a real server. Which I
> could do, done it before, but I've been trying not to have to admin a
> Windows server on the internet if I can avoid it. (I have a real job
> here, too!)
>
> So, my questions are: Did I completely misunderstand the
> instructions about the postmaster account?   Could I run into
> problems if I set up an external email account as postmaster, and my
> connection to the internet fails?  Is there any way to get the list
> address as the From: address on outgoing list messages?

You must set the postmaster account to one of your local users.  This is what you have done.  However mail sent from the outside world must be able to be received by postmaster@mydomain.com and this is something you have not done.

>
> Sorry for being so windy, Thomas.  Your insightful help on this
> forum is golden, and I appreciate it.  Thanks!

[/quote]

So now my question: If I keep the box behind the nat'ed firewall on a private IP, etc, how to I get mail from the outside to be received by postmaster@mydomain.com, unless I set that address to an external email address against the advice given in the help file?  I'm a little cornfounded on the way this all gets used.  I can understand completely how it would be used if dns points mydomain.com directly to my machine.  But what if there is no mydomain.com?  My guess would be that in this case I must use the external email address.  But I'm not sure what problems will ensue from that.

There are other ways to skin this (mailing list behind a nat router) cat, but if it is possible I'd sure like to do it with Mercury on this box.

Thank you for your most generous assistance. 

> Wow, Thomas, thank you for all that great information.  I have a few comments and a crucial question, inline.
>
>  Thomas R. Stephenson:
> > Thank you for your reply, Thomas.
> >
> > We have a DSL account with ATT, and our website is hosted off-site.  We
> > have a number of email accounts off-site, like engineering@mydomain.com,
> > etc., plus others, where the users need to get and respond to those
> > emails.  To do that with ATT's smtp server, you have to authenticate as
> > their user, and substitute the From: address.  Any client does that.
>
>     You need to setup a postmaster@mydomain.com so that failures of
>     mail sent from user@mydomain.com can be properly reported if
>     nothing else.  It also will allow other to report problems with
>     your mailings to the system admin. You could then set the name of
>     the system to mydomain.com.  
>
>     You should also setup maiser@mydomain.com so that people from the
>     outside can send to the mail server to subscribe and unsubscribe
>     from the mailing lists.
>
>
> I have a question about this, below.
>
> >
> > What I have been doing is getting all mail inbound off existing pop3
> > mailboxes from various locations with MercuryD, and sending out
> > using one of our ATT accounts with MercuryC.  MercuryI handles IMAP
> > for users on the LAN.  That way the box stays behind the firewall
> > and uses a local IP address.
>
>     OK.
>
> >
> > So, up until today, I haven't been using Mercury as a 'real' server
> > at all, at least not to the internet.  And there have not been any
> > problems delivering mail, since with outgoing mail, I'm just a
> > client to ATT's smtp server.
>
>     How does mail to postmaster@mydomain.com get handled?
>
> At present, it doesn't, because there is no mydomain.com.  Just the
> local IP address.  Inside the lan, postmaster@192.168.1.24 works.  See
> my question below, please.
>
> >
> > It ran a long time like that -- get 'em in with POP3, let the users
> > access with IMAP, send 'em out using the ATT SMTP.
> >
> > Now, the first thing that happened is that ATT decided to require
> > SSL connections to their POP3 and SMTP servers.  So I had to upgrade
> > to the current version of Mercury.
>
>     Ok, that's seem like a good idea.  Since all connections are
>     authenticated then they do not have problems with the bad guys
>     working their servers for outbound mail.
>
>
> >
> > The second thing they did is to require verification of email
> > addresses to be used in the From: part of the header.  So, for every
> > user replying to messages using an off-site mailbox, I had to go to
> > their website, register it, and confirm, if I wanted to send using
> > their SMTP server.  Although irritating, all is well and good.
>
>     Why in the world are they doing this.  All it does is annoy the
>     customers, has little or no affect on spammers.
>
>
> I couldn't agree more.  What are the odds of someone sniffing an SSL'd
> connection?  On the other hand, it would block someone's compromised
> box if it forges the headers. 

But the spammer would not forge the From: address, they would simply use the valid e-mail address.  In any case when someone complains about spam to Yahoo/AT&T and provides the outgoing headers it's easy to trace back to the sending system.


> Recently we have been getting some bounce messages on one of our
> accounts.  Viewing them in detail, it looks like they were sent from
> boxes all over the world, to boxes all over the world, using the
> unfortunate salesman's address as the sender.  That's what they are out
> to block, I guess.  I can guarantee that none of those messages left his
> machine, because his only way out of here is through Mercury and thence
> through a very picky firewall that logs everything.  Not to mention all
> the other layers of protection in place, and there are multiples of
> those.  Gotta love Winderz!
>
>
>
> >
> > The bad part of this is that under these conditions, any address not
> > previously registered results in a response,
> >
> > 553 From: address not verified; see http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/manage/sendfrom-07.html<cr><lf>,
> >
> > which response causes Mercury to crash.
>
>     That I cannot understand.  This response line looks quite normal
>     except for the trailing comma.  Do you have a MercuryC session log
>     showing this crash?  I would like to see this for review.  
>
>
> I added that comma, sorry.  The line is pasted from a log.
>
> I don't have a log from when it crashed, or nothing got saved to it
> when it did crash.  Later on when the system isn't under use I will
> attempt to reproduce the crash with all logging turned on and see if I
> can turn something up.  It runs fine as long as I don't reproduce that
> condition.  So I'll get back to you on it.
>
>
> >
> > Anyway, I can get around that.
> >
> > But today I decided I wanted to start a little mailing list.  I've
> > done it before, and I've got everything working now, using the
> > remote servers.  Except this one thing:
> >
> > The From: address is the postmaster's address.  And, I wanted to
> > make the mail coming from the list read, From:  the mailing list
> > email address.  I coulda sworn that's what it was before (a few
> > years back), but I'm greying and my brain is calcifying, so I'm
> > probably wrong about that.
>
>     It's never been the mailing list.  The To: field is the mailing
>     list and the sender field should be as well.
>
>
> OK, thanks.  It was another program I was thinking of that allows you
> to do that (but it's old and doesn't do SSL). 
>
> The memory is the first thing to go, and I can't remember what the
> other thing is. 
>
>
>
> >  
> >
> > Right now the postmaster's address is a local account, "admin",
> > aliased to admin@192.168.1.24.  (The IP of the machine running
> > Mercury.)
>
>     This address should be admin@[192.168.1.24] and this IP should be
>     in the domains list as well.
>
>
> OK, I'll change the postmaster address. Should I delete the alias then?  The IP is in the domains list.

The IP should be listed as [192.168.1.24]

>
>
>
> > It might be all bolluxed up that way, but it's been
> > working.  It allows me to get the mail, and it heeds the warning
> > about making the postmaster a remote mailbox.  And it never ever
> > loops or anything.  I get the admin mail using IMAP on the same
> > machine.  Here's why I did that: "The postmaster account is usually
> > an alias to a real user on your system, and this is the expectation
> > within Mercury. Enter in this field the username of the user on the
> > machine where Mercury is running who is to act as your postmaster.
> > While it is permissible to have a non-local address as your
> > postmaster address, we strongly recommend you do not do this, since
> > it can create real problems and mail loops when the remote machine
> > is unreachable."
> >
> > Now, I could get around this whole deal if I expose the box to the
> > internet and set it up to run  MercuryE and deliver mail directly.
>
>     I doubt if this would help all that much.  You are already sending
>     using MercuryC so sending via MercuryE would not change all that
>     much.  That said, I'm not at all sure that would help since I'm
>     quite sure AT&T (Yahoo) is already blocking port 25.  
>
>
> No, I have a commercial account and can host servers if I want to.
>
>
>
>     I would recommend you get a GMail account and point MercuryC at the
>     GMail SMTP host As long as your really do not abuse the server with
>     MBytes OS mail you could make the same SSL connection to GMail as
>     you do to your ISP and GMail does not even look at the From:
>     addresses.
>
> (b) -SMTP STARTTLS -
>
>   Server host name: smtp.gmail.com
>   Server TCP/IP port: 587
>   SSL/TLS: via STARTTLS
>   Enable server certificate fingerprint tracking: checked
>   SMTP Authentication: Login to the SMTP server using POP3
>   username/password (the GMAIL-POP3-definition has been chosen)
>
> (c) - SMTP via SSL -
>
>   Server host name: smtp.gmail.com
>   Server TCP/IP port: 465
>   SSL/TLS: via direct ssl connection
>   Enable server certificate fingerprint tracking: unchecked
>   SMTP Authentication: Login to the SMTP server using POP3
>   username/password (the GMAIL-POP3-definition has been chosen)
>
>
> Now there's an idea I hadn't thought of.  Thank you!
>
>
>
>
> > But first, I expect I will have to learn how to set up the
> > postmaster and domain name properly.  Then, if one of my neighbors
> > in the same netblock gets hacked, I will end up in a black hole, and
> > our business emails won't get delivered.  And then all of my
> > trusting users will come after me with pitchforks, daggers, and
> > flaming arrows for sure.
>
>     You got it.
>
> > Plus, I'd have to add a nic to give access from the lan, or else go all
> > out and register a domain and set the thing up as a real server. Which I
> > could do, done it before, but I've been trying not to have to admin a
> > Windows server on the internet if I can avoid it. (I have a real job
> > here, too!)
> >
> > So, my questions are: Did I completely misunderstand the
> > instructions about the postmaster account?   Could I run into
> > problems if I set up an external email account as postmaster, and my
> > connection to the internet fails?  Is there any way to get the list
> > address as the From: address on outgoing list messages?
>
>     You must set the postmaster account to one of your local users.
>     This is what you have done.  However mail sent from the outside
>     world must be able to be received by postmaster@mydomain.com and
>     this is something you have not done.
>
> >
> > Sorry for being so windy, Thomas.  Your insightful help on this
> > forum is golden, and I appreciate it.  Thanks!
>
>
>     So now my question: If I keep the box behind the nat'ed firewall on
>     a private IP, etc, how to I get mail from the outside to be
>     received by postmaster@mydomain.com, unless I set that address to
>     an external email address against the advice given in the help
>     file?  I'm a little cornfounded on the way this all gets used.  I
>     can understand completely how it would be used if dns points
>     mydomain.com directly to my machine.  But what if there is no
>     mydomain.com?  My guess would be that in this case I must use the
>     external email address.  But I'm not sure what problems will ensue
>     from that.

The Firewall server/router/whatever on the outside world will have an IP address.  For example the Mercury/32 server for tstephenson.com is actually a WinXP W/S running on 192.168.1.2.  I have the router set to pass ports 25, 587, 143, 110 and 85 to this W/S.  If you send mail to postmaster@tstephenson.com if connects to the MX host mail.tstephenson.com on IP address 209.128.94.2 (the router IP address) and forwards it to port 25 on the Mercury/32 system.  You can do the same thing with your system.  


>
> There are other ways to skin this (mailing list behind a nat router)
> cat, but if it is possible I'd sure like to do it with Mercury on this
> box.
>
> Thank you for your most generous assistance.
>
>

OK, thanks, I understand.

I've been having frequent crashes today, and not caused by an error returned by the ISP's server.

I can't find anything in the logs, I have all logging turned on.  Dr. Watson is unhelpful except to mention MercuryD unless you feel like calculating memory offsets.

I've turned off AVG to see if that affects the behavior. I'll test it by hitting it with multiple users in the lan to see if that's what's crashing it.

Later, I'm going to try not using SSL and see if that fixes it. 

Fallback from there is to use the older version if that doesn't work. 

I'll let you know what I come up with.
 

It's not AVG.

It might be operations done with IMAP that are causing MercuryC to crash.

The crashes today seemed to coincide with IMAP usage.

And just now I thought I'd give it a workout by using a Tbird client on IMAP to pull a bunch of messages off the server and stash them in a local directory.

MercuryC appeared to lock up while checking the POP3 mailbox at the ISP for mail on that account while the IMAP transfer operation was happening.  Dr Watson mentions MercuryC.  The GUI for MercuryC said it was checking status of unread messages or something like that.  And it left a .lck file in that mailbox directory.

I hope that information is useful.  Next, I will try it without SSL in the equation anywhere and see if I can get it to crash.