Duly noted, I'll let you know when this work starts, and hopefully can add you as tester.
First I have to translate an upcoming release of the webmail product we use.
In another topic (What Spec Machine do you have Mercury on) Peter Strömblad replied:
[quote user="Peter Strömblad"]
Absolutely not a silly question.
We compose the mailboxes as
mXXXX###, where XXXX is the customer number, and ### is a running ID.
Using this as email addresses makes very little sense, though you're
correct, any domain hosted on each instance of Mercury can use this
combination as a valid address. We do not expose this to the end-users,
we expose all through aliases. Sure this fact is somewhat a thorn in
the eye, but it is merely a technical problem - until some vicked
person decides to abuse our system. The alias is composed as the
customer wants the address or adresses formed. Some prefer initials,
some other have full names etc. By doing this scenario, it is very easy
to explain that a mailbox (referred to as a maildrop in the RFCs) can
host any number of addresses, just as a traditional mailbox along the
road. We also use the aliases for off-site routes, aka relays, with
valid local domain address, routing the mesage off host. It also makes
it easy to connect several customer domains into just one maildrop. It
is very popular here to have domains under .se, .eu, .com and so forth,
having them all point to the same maildrop for each individual.
When a customer wants a mailing list, for ex. info@domain.com
routed to a party of three, we do set this up as a mailing list. Naming
the list as XXXX.info (where XXXX again is the customer number) with
real address XXXX.info@domain.com and do set up an alias relaying info@domain.com to XXXX.info@domain.com.
[/quote]
You say above: "We do not expose this to the end-users,
we expose all through aliases." Do you mean here that you give them the username mXXXX### with the appropriate password and the associated email-address, never telling them that mXXXX### prior the @domain.com is also the emailaddress?
It seems a very easy manner of establishing groupwise separation of usernames. Clustered by domain.
Until recently I managed 2 domains on my M/32 setup. As of coming
weekend there will be at least 2 (and maybe even 3) more to be
integrated.
My 2nd question is: can the current usernames be altered without loss of data/emails (eg. in IMAP accounts) so they can be clustered as well?
Sorry to curse in church .... we tell them the following, according to MS-Outlook Express vocabulary when setting up a mail account on the client PC:
User information:
user info: Personal Name,
e-mailaddress: === the alias address of preference, composed as: whatever@theirdomain.com
Login-Information:
Username: mXXXX###
Password: ******
Serverinformation:
Inbound email (POP3): mail.theirdomain.com
Outbound email (SMTP): mail.theirdomain.com
Advanced settings, tab 2 - outbound server:
Check, "The outbound server (SMTP) requires authentication
Advanced settings, tab 4 - Advanced:
Outbound server (SMTP): 26,
many ISPs in Sweden block port 25, 26 is to my knowledge unregistered as to be an alternate smtp-port from back in early 90's
So, to answer your 1st question: We never tell our users that there are many other ways of addressing their maildrop since this information is not to be used.
To your second question, you can alter usernames and rename the maildrop directories to match. I'd take a file backup first using ntbackup och pkzip first, and also shut down Mercury in parts. Since you will need the UI to alter the local userbase, shut down all processing windows, when working with the userbase. In the end restart Mercury without loss of maildrop data. However you can't concatenate IMAP folders. I think you can move the .cnm files manually, and they will show as new unread mails at the new imap folder.
Peter,
In above mentioned reply on the original topic you mentioned "the Pascal source for one of them (a somewhat older version) is downloadable from this site". I downloaded this but i can't make head nor tail of it. How can i use this? Can you help me (and others) on my/our way?
You need to be a bit more specific - the source reads a database consisting of users, domains, aliases and relays - It makes a composition of the relays and aliases and writes this to the alias.mer file, it also reads the users from database and writes the pmail.usr file. I haven't shared the database table structure, nor the stored procedures - the source was to give a hint on how to write the pmail.usr file, create the local maildrop and password file, and the alias.mer file.
So i need to create my own database (in MySQL/Access/Excel?) But what can this source do with it. I know next to nothing about databases and other sources to communicate with them. Is there a program or something in which to manage the users, domains, aliases, passwords etc?
Peter,
Any chance that you could share this web application to the community.
I think it may be a usefull tool for us all. Most of us handle more
domains on our mailservers.
No, not in its current state. I am going to take the app to sql-express and from native asp to .NET, during the fall - and then most likely share it.
If others are interested in joining in on development, contact me privately.
My expertise is in another line of business so i can't assist on this but i'm looking forward to it.
Thnx anyway.
