vthrc@uqvax.cc.uq.oz.au (Danny Thomas) (10/04/90)
I have been looking for Mac (and PC) software to install on our LocalTalk
network for internet mail. Our link to the world is an IP-only gateway
[PCRoute] to the university network. I'm including a list of the non-
commercial mail software I am currently aware of along with some
discussion of features I would like. Comments, additions and corrections
are welcome for summary and reposting.
The situation here is roughly a dozen macs, three PCs and a low volume of
email - though this may change when a system is installed and convenient
to use. Most macs only have 1M and there are quite a few floppy Mac+s.
Purely local mail is not considered important, but it may have its uses.
Normally straight text will be sufficient (I trust any reasonable client
will map non-ASCII mac characters appropriately), but it shouldn't be too
difficult to enclose binary files. It would be nice to have a centralised
address directory to make additions and changes easier to distribute, but
we could use a simple text file accessible over our network, with people
copying and pasting addresses from it into their own directory.
We are using a PC running Vance Morrison's PCROUTE 2.1 as the gateway
between our LocalTalk network, and the university's ethernet world. While
it *only* handles IP traffic (no AppleTalk encapsulation) it is sufficient
for our immediate needs, and I've just got it to work with two LocalTalk
interfaces - half a MultiGate, but at a much lower cost. To put things in
perspective, in Australia a FastPath sells for around $5000 and a
MultiGate for $6000. We had an XT and TOPS FlashCard sitting around, so
the gateway only required the purchase of a PC ethernet card. I haven't
yet checked to see whether it is acting as a bridge between the LocalTalk
nets, but that isn't important as the second port is a connection for a
completely distinct research unit. We may also add another ethernet
interface, so we'd have one ethernet line to the campus network, bridging
to 2 separate LocalTalk nets along with a local ethernet net. PS are there
any PD drivers for PC FlashCard/AppleTalk cards? Designing such a card is
simple enough and it would be a lot cheaper to make them than the A$350-
A$450 they retail for in Australia.
To put things in context: the reason for having a mail server is because
your own computer is a personal machine - it isn't always available to
accept forwarded mail, e.g. switched off or crashed, or it might not have
the resources (disk space/background activity) to adequately handle mail.
It might even lack the network connection to do so directly. The POP
protocols were developed to support a sufficiently available and
"powerful" server handling mail for a network of personal computers, which
can connect when the user wants to check/read/post mail. Some of POP3 was
specifically designed so that only one copy of mail to/from newsgroup
distributions was passed around and stored, but that isnUt important in my
situation (yet), so POP2 would suffice, but it seems that there are many
more POP3 clients. Perhaps POP3 is more widely installed on campus
computer centres as it is here, whereas neither Mac server I have supports
it. I would also prefer to run the server locally, for reasons including
it won't cost us anything to run (except disk space),
cf running on a host from the computer centre, when it would also be
particularly tricky to allocate funds to the accounts that will
need them, without tying up money needlessly in dormant ones, and
to manage this funding allocation on a continuous basis
it is easy to add users, etc., since administration would be local
Of course, there can be problems with a local mail server, or at least one
not dedicated to serving, in losing too much responsiveness and being
susceptible to crashes precipitated by the foreground application(s).
At present I have MailStop/POPMail installed. Although it hasn't been
seriously used, I haven't had any problems with the MailStop server but
POPMail is the only client I've got that will work with it. I really would
prefer a client application rather than a HyperCard stack, particularly
for the floppy-based Macs. I also find the limitations of HyperCard 1.x
annoying.
I would also be interested to hear whether it is worthwhile to
consider commercial packages, e.g. QuickMail. Our local dealer got in
contact with the Australian QM reps who had not had any(?) other inquiries
about interfacing QM to VMS/Unix/SMTP mail. Some mail packages are
relatively cheap, but what about the gateway I'd need? Do these packages
offer much more? (going through internet mail places its own limitations
in adding functionality, I believe). BeaverGate claims to act as an
SMTP/QuickMail gateway, and may work with TOPS InBox as well.
DESIRABLE CLIENT FEATURES (other than obvious)
One feature I particularly want for the clients is an automatic check for
new mail. A lot of the people here will get little if any mail to start
with, and are simply not going to find it rewarding to check an empty
mailbox every day; tardy replies aren't going to encourage active
correspondence either. The check could run under MultiFinder as part of
the client (as in Eudora) or as a stand-alone application (as in
MailStop's NAG), but I would prefer an INIT that would occupy even less
memory and wouldn't require the application nor MultiFinder to be running.
Ideally the server would try to notify the listening INIT only when mail
arrives, and since it could be based on AppleTalk wouldn't require MacTCP
to be present. Since neither mail nor even subject would have to be
transmitted, the INIT would not require knowledge of the user(s) mail
passwords. Another advantage of using a specific listener rather than
regular queries, is a reduction in network traffic to the server that
could otherwise weaken its responsiveness. Neither of those automatic mail
checks allows multiple mailboxes to be queried, as would be required for
the several shared macs we have. I don't think it would be necessary to
look at a mailbox more than once an hour, particularly since the mail
system is not intended for local use.
DESIRABLE SERVER FEATURES
One limitation of MailStop is apparent lack of support for aliases. The
email address I want to deploy is user@vthrc.uq.oz.au, where vthrc is a
sub-domain on campus (we may well have a few Suns soon, so it can't just
be a host name). This seems to work OK, but it would be nice for the SMTP
component to be told to treat pop_server.vthrc.uq.oz.au as equivalent,
where pop_server is the name of the Mac running MailStop. This allows for
people (or software) incorrectly interpreting the SMTP header in mail from
us and sending to pop_server. I don't want to have the host as part of the
address, to allow for changes since the situation will be fluid for quite
a while.
It should be possible for users and/or postmaster to redirect mail,
e.g. while person is away
I'd prefer mail to unrecognized users to be accepted from the
forwarding SMTP host so I could deal with it, and if not handled promptly
(say a day) would like the server to automatically return it to the sender
with an error like "user not known in this domain", as would normally have
happened. Here I'm thinking of handling the situation of either an
accidental misspelling, or mail from people unfamiliar with the address
but making a stab at it.
I would also like to be able to select at least two levels of logging
detail from recording every transaction for those problem times, e.g.
during installation when things don't seem to work, to simply listing the
status of each mailbox. I would like to use that status check regularly to
see whether any mail is sitting unread. One approach with a POP server is
to add more commands, but then you not only have a non-standard server,
but also need a special client to use them [or use telnet]. To find out
which accounts have uncollected mail you could query each account in turn,
but then the postmaster has to have all the passwords (at least with POP3)
although a macro could be used for convenience. I think a simpler approach
might be to modify the server and make the various logging reports
accessible through (pseudo, read-only) accounts linked to the postmaster's
password, as MailStop's log currently is accessed. So to get a list of the
undelivered mail I'd simply query the account "pm-unread" using the normal
postmaster password, and that could be done from any standard client.
Another pseudo-account might be "pm-unknown-users", and another might be
"pm-account-activity" with a line for each account like "thomas: 15 in, 2
unread, 17 sent". NB I don't think MailStop's log reports unknown users,
it only records the SMTP arrival, whereas smtp_recv's log is explicit.
MAIL SERVERS I'M AWARE OF
MailStop 1.0.1 from University of Minnesota boombox.micro.umn.edu
/pub/POPmail/macintosh/MailStop. I'm not sure whether source code is
available. Runs in the background under MultiFinder and can coexist with
AppleShare and the QuickMail servers. There are apparently no immediate
plans to offer POP3 functionality, though a POP3 client application might
be released in the future. It accepts mail via SMTP and offers a POP2
server for client macs and PCs. It doesn't dispatch mail itself, but
provides clients with the address of a SMTP relay host. Clients can run a
small (64K) application under MultiFinder called NAG to alert them when
mail arrives; it is impractical to keep a transaction log when any clients
run NAG. Our trial installation seems to work OK under System 6.0.3 on an
SE/30 with Virtual increasing memory from the 2M to 4M, but it hasn't been
tested under heavy load.
BeaverGate 0.85 from University of Toronto
available via anonymous ftp madhaus.utcs.utoronto.ca; filename is
/pub/beaver-0.85. The documentation says they are "evaluating the legal
issues involved" in distributing the source. The component programs
(smtp_recv, smtp_send and the QM bridge) will run under MultiFinder, but
general issues of performance/reliability cause a dedicated server to be
recommended.
" 1. A QuickMail Bridge for sending and receiving e-mail to and from
TCP/IP based networks, such as the Internet. The bridge uses the TCP/IP
SMTP protocol to deal directly, as an equal, with all other nodes on the
network. No local host is required.
2. An SMTP receive and SMTP send program. These are used by the
QuickMail bridge, but also can be used independently. The SMTP receive
program accepts mail using the SMTP protocol and puts it into a folder.
The SMTP send program checks a folder for files, and sends them using the
SMTP protocol. You can use these two programs to implement your own SMTP
bridge to your favourite mail package, or to build your own mail package.
3. A sockets interface for MacTCP(tm). This can be used by program
developers writing or porting their own TCP/IP based software. The SMTP
receive and SMTP send programs are two examples of programs we have
written using this sockets interface. Provides SMTP services."
I've just gotten BeaverGate and the SMTP facilities would probably
work with TOPS Inbox that was part of our upgrade to PC/Mac TOPS 3.
MAIL CLIENTS I'M AWARE OF [I can't really offer any comments yet]
POP2 HyperCard stack: POPMail 1.6a from the University of Minnesota
boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/POPmail.... This is a companion to the MailStop
POP2 server including extensions to encrypt the password during network
exchanges. There is a PC implementation available.
POP3 Application: Stanford's MacMH 4.0 (I believe a PC version is
available). This is not free, nor is source code available, but a low cost
licence is available for universities. The documentation is available from
jessica.stanford.edu.
POP3 Application: Eudora 1.1 by Steve Dorner from ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
/mac/eudora. Source code is available as a compressed tar archive. Also
works with comms toolbox. Can periodically check server for mail.
POP3 Stack: HyperMail 1.0b2 from lilac.berkeley.edu as MacPOP.
Also available is the source code for a UNIX POP3 server, popper.
POP2/POP3 stack: Mews 1.4 by Chris Keen and Charles Lakos available from
ftp.utas.edu.au /pub/mac. I don't know whether source code is available.
Also handles net news.
Thanx,
Danny Thomas,
currently vthrc@uqvax.cc.uq.oz.au, though you could try
thomas@vthrc.uq.oz.au if the pop2 server's still going
Vision, Touch and Hearing Research Centre,
c/o Department of Physiology and Pharmacology,
University of Queensland, AUSTRALIA 4072 61-07-377-2799jwn2@qualcomm.com (John Noerenberg) (10/05/90)
> DESIRABLE SERVER FEATURES > [A thoughtful, but lengthy description of useful server features] Almost everything you desire is possible if your gateway machine is running Sendmail. Of course this presupposes your gateway is running under UNIX. You *could* do this with A/UX on a Mac, if you don't want to invest in some other UNIX box now. In fact, UMinn's gateway is a Mac II running A/UX (Dave Johnson will correct me if I'm wrong :-)). In your list of known POP3 clients, you omitted MIT's TechMail. It is a very well executed Mac application (as opposed to a Hypercard stack). It is PD and sources will be available with V2 due sometime this fall. You can get it via anonymous ftp to net-dist.mit.edu in /pub/TechMail. I've been using TechMail here at Qualcomm without any major snafus. Cheers, jwn2
wezel@bio.vu.nl (Jos van Wezel) (10/06/90)
In article <1990Oct4.210925.14006@qualcomm.com> jwn2@qualcomm.com (John Noerenberg) writes: > >In your list of known POP3 clients, you omitted MIT's TechMail. It is >a very well executed Mac application (as opposed to a Hypercard stack). Except that the current Techmail wants the 109/tcp port number, which is set aside for POP2 servers. Maybe the upcoming sources will relief this. It is definite trouble to run a POP3 server on the POP2 port as there are very good POP2 clients too. Another botch is the 32K limit on messages. Maybe we were wrong, but about 4 or 5 pages (hexcoded) of wordprocessor output is the most you can send away. Then there is the simple password encryption used by Techmail. This is not standard and effectively means you cannot use other POP3 clients on its server. True, it has a very nice Mac appeal and gives nice printouts. However I found the new Eudora (1.1) as good in those respects. But I do hope the next release improves these misses. Jos van Wezel Computergroup, Biol. Lab., VU, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.