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Mailtraq User Guide - Features in the Mailtraq email server

1. Another important use for News To Mail gateways is to mirror a mailing list and this is described shortly Each gateway posts messages to the specified e mail address but only if they pass the filter Unlike the filter on article downloading the entire message is available allowing the use of the body and size criteria for example 145 The News System 146 Configuring a News To Mail Gateway Mail To News Gateways News To Mail Gateway ki Ei Froperties i i 7 The News To Maill Gateway sends messages posted and downloaded to thie group to the speciied address E Mail Address to post to johnistenderson cam To Field for messages john enderson cor Message Filter Any Hoody SparcStation Edit Filter He cae Only messages that are downloaded or posted locally are posted to these gateways Messages posted from Mail To News gateways are excluded otherwise it would not be possible to mirror mailing lists This gateway allows users to post messages to news groups as though they were e mail addresses The e mail address is made up from the news group name and the Mailtraq domain For example at the familiar Enderson Enterprises the newsgroup uk adverts would be uk adverts enderson com The News To Mail Gateway tab News Group Properties The newsserver Object Mailing List Mirroring News and Mail Gateways News Group uk adverts computer El Ea _ l The g
2. Active Connections E Active Connections This section describes some of the different types of objects you will find in the console Each object type is represented by a different icon graphic and you can access the context menu for that object by right clicking on it s icon The Active Connections object is used to show all the current communications tasks and services Both services to which other clients connect and clients which are connected to other services are shown here 45 The Console The Active Connections list Remote POP3 Mailboxes na Remote POP3 Mailboxes 46 si enderson pop3 isp com Another item which is shown here are monitors which watch other objects such as disk directories for activity The Inbound and Outbound routers are examples as are the mail gateways Name ConmectedTo Status oo OOo o oT SMTP Server accepting connections gt 17 19 07 POPS Server accepting connections gt 17 19 07 NNTP Server accepting connections gt 17 19 07 HTTP Web Server accepting connections gt 17 13 07 Mail Router In Idle 17 19 07 Mail Router Dut Idle 17 19 07 Ts SMTP Client mail i p co uk Sending ENDRESSO0E6 5022 17 33 26 ts SMTP Client mail i p co uk Sending ENDRESSO0E8 4322 17 33 26 ts SMTP Client mail i p co uk Sending ENDRESI02B 2 4 17 33 28 ts SMTP Client mail gp co uk Sending ENDRESSO0EC 3922 17 33 30 a NATP Client News isp co uk news
3. configured appropriately Unless you are experimenting with Mailtraq you will probably want to have it load automatically in some way The Installation Wizard Mailtrag Installation Fa start automatically Do you wish to have Mailtrag start automatically each time Mailtraq you load Windows Neseeccccssccssecsecsescesscesccssesesenscsesusesenscssessssenecssssensenessossenessers p 4 Start when user logs in Recommended for single user machines Start when Windows is loaded Recommended for multi user environments Previous lt Finish Cancel Mailtraq provides two options M Start when a user logs in In a Windows NT system or a networked Windows 95 machine you may have to log in enter a user name and password before being able to use Windows Other systems may not need a user to log in at all in which Mailtraq starts when Windows is loaded E Start when Windows is loaded With this option Mailtraq is loaded as a system service as soon as Windows is started For a multi user environment where it is possible that nobody will be logged in to the host machine this is the most appropriate option This facility is handled differently by Windows 95 and Windows NT Under Windows NT Mailtrag will appear as a service in the Services applet accessed from the Control Panel 25 Installing Mailtrag 26 Quick Start Guide This chapter provides a deals with a number
4. f Message Trigger Scheduled Last Execution OF Cancel The Trigger Automatic Scripts can be triggered either by the receipt of a message that matches a given filter at a certain point in the Mailtraq routing process or at a scheduled time Scripts triggered by the receipt of a message have a number of options Firstly you should specify when the message trigger should take place This determines at what point during the message handling process Mailtraq examines it s list of scripts and triggers them WE Inbound Mail Delivery This takes place immediately after a message is received for example from a gateway or receipt via SMTP This stage only occurs once per message and it takes place before the message is routed i e the message recipients will not have yet been altered according to the various routing configurations in Mailtraq 246 Using Scripts WE Outbound Mail Delivery This takes place just prior to the message being delivered Again this only happens once per message and it only takes place if the message actually leaves the Mailtraq server This means that delivery to local addresses do not trigger scripts with this option M Mail Routing This can take place several times per message For example a message can be routed to it s recipient which may in turn forward it to other addresses for which the message will again enter the routing stage Messages being distributed via a
5. name is not case sensitive Records do not have to share the same set of fields so it is in no way inefficient to use different field names in different records value The string of data to be written into the database The string should not be longer than 200 characters and it should not contain line breaks For these reasons it is not possible to store messages or parts of messages in the database It is however possible to store the value of header fields in this way This function checks whether or not the given database table and record exist exists DBRecordExists database record database The name of the database to examine record The record to search for in the given database exists The result is true if the record and database do exist and false if either is missing This function removes the specified record from the specified database Mailtrag System Access Syntax DBDeleteRecord database record database The name of the database to delete a record from record The name of the record to remove If this record does not exist no action is taken Mailtrag System Access Mailtraq provides a means of accessing the system configuration by representing all the system settings as a hierarchical tree of keys similar to the system registry Each key contains a number of variables that represent configuration settings The current contents of any variable can be read with the GetSystemVar function and w
6. 0 34l 26 03 98 Clear POP3 Tags In the Mailtraq Console when a Remote POP3 account is selected a list of the messages that were in the mailbox is displayed in the list window Each message will be tagged according to what was or will be done with it For example messages that have been downloaded will appear as fetched while messages that will be downloaded during the next collection are tagged as download If you delete a message in this list it will be marked as delete and during the next visit to that mailbox the message will be erased z Mailtraq Console File View Options Actions Tools Windows Help BIBO PEJA EXA Active Connections a Properties Administration Topics This chapter discusses the management and administration of Mailtraq s user accounts and the creation of mail slots and a number of administrative issues The following topics are covered Managing Users Managing Mail Slots Event Logging Event Reporting The Mailtraq Database 121 Administration Topics Managing Users In Mailtraq a user is someone who uses the services Mailtraq provides owns mail slots and can access news groups The number of users you can have will depend on your licensing scheme User accounts are configured from the Users entry in the Options menu of the Mailtraq Console File View Options Actions Tools Windows Help Server Incoming Mail Outgoing Mail
7. 159 Mailing Lists 1 160 Digests the full address of the mailine list as the value When the message is sent back to the mailing list with the Sender field set to the list moderator the message will be accepted gt Note you should not disclose the address of the moderator as it is relatively easy for users with this information to post unmoderated messages to the list When a message is distributed by the list the Sender field is set to the address of the list thus hiding the identity of the moderator Subscribers may choose to receive their mail either as an ordinary message a copy of the message posted to the list or in the form of a periodic digest A digest is a collection of several messages in the body of a single e mail Mailtraq provides three formats of digest to suit the variety of mail clients in use The plain text option simply appends the message bodies together Unfortunately this will result in the loss of any attachments and often makes it difficult to distinguish the individual messages Using the MIME standard the other two digest formats will maintain the individual messages Most mail clients will show these as separate sub messages The difference between these two formats is the MIME type used and your choice will depend on which type is beset supported by the mail client The default is Multipart Mixed which has the widest support Multi purpose Internet Message Enhancements i
8. Identify the Internet Domain for which this names and aliases to identify this server Domain Mame enderson com Domain 4lases and other machine names enderson isp com gt netserver localhost 192 100 100 102 127 0 0 1 H Mail Server Name Enderson Mail Server uo _ Creal You may not actually have an Internet domain name at all For example your service provider may give you just one or more mailboxes with addresses such as enderson isp com Clearly you are not responsible for all mail addressed to isp com In this case you should provide Mailtraq with some domain name that is only used within your network such as enderson isp com and simply make sure that mail addressed to enderson isp com is dealt with as a special case Telling Mailtrag about how to recognise mail for your organisation is practically the only piece of essential configuration you need to do Everything else you can configure as you go along All the remaining issues relating to e mail will be discussed in Chapter 6 If you don t have a permanent telephone connection to your Internet Service Provider you will need some way of connecting to them The Internet is a huge web of telephone lines and network cables connecting What is Mailtraq the many thousands of machines together In order for you to be a part of this web you simply need one connection between your network and a machine that is already a part of this web
9. Message Envelopes Message Headers Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Mail Routing and Mail Exchanges The Post Office Protocol Choosing between SMTP and POP3 Mail Gateways 7 Mail Slots An Overview of the Mail Slots The Post Master Mailbox Aliases Mailboxes 53 54 57 59 60 66 68 69 10 al T2 14 16 78 18 8l 83 84 85 85 87 Mailing Listsand Archives s s s e s se e ewe de ew Il Pecountine and Mail Groups s s s s s emt be oe adsa OZ 8 Mail Delivery 2 2 ee a Overview of Mail Delivery 0a a a a a a ee ee ee ee ee 96 The Inbound Router 4 4 a a a aaa a OT The Outbound Router 0 a a a a a ee ee ee ee es 09 The SMTP Service 2 a a a a ee ee ee ee ee 112 The POP3 Seryic gt wo s ne ss a Eee eR Ree wD ew Ee 14 Remote POP3 Collection lt lt s e ss sas caa nadaa aag a 14 9 Administration Topics ee ee ee T Manainn Users s o s s e smog amp 4b amp we a n poa ee ew p a LAA Managing Malolo s amp a wt owe ka ee ee we we 2 Event Loe p Be ee bee eee ee ee ee eee oe ee Be IO EVGNUMGOONS 4 6 a a 4 amp 4 ee ee eo ee oe me ee amp wy Doe The Mailtrag Database s e gt s wb ewww ee wee we de we 1D 10 The News System 2 2 200000 00 0 2 0 00 2 187 Introduction to Internet News ee ee ee ew ee 138 News Collection 2 2 ee ee ew wee ee ew ew we 139 News and Mail Gateways 2 ee ee
10. News Newsgroups Dial up Remote POPS Services Web Crawlers Scripts and Templates The Users dialogue allows you to add and remove users based on your licensing scheme and configure the Guest user account which is used in cases where the current user has not yet or cannot log in The User Manager dialogue Licensed users may use the Web Administrator to access their mail and mailslat 2 settings In addition individual users may have differing news group access Username Description Add admin Administrator FF johns John Smith Copy FF alexw Alex Winters choeh Chloe Hall estherm Esther McCarthy jamesw James Woods Properties janeh Jane Hammersmith ___ E a Lana Cimnenn x i Gue Licensed for 30 users you may add a further 5 users r Help Done 122 Managing Users Users accounts are necessary to provide control over what services and facilities people can access in Mailtraq Users can control many aspects of their mail slots directly via the Web Administrator Specifically user accounts provide control over Access to the Web Administrator Ownership of mail slots Access for reading and posting to news groups Use of the Web Proxy facilities User Account The properties dialogue allows the user s identifier username and their Properties full name to be set along with a password and the home page The other
11. On the other hand take the delivery report mentioned above If the message was simply custom text written by the administrator then information specific such as the failed message to whom it was sent and the nature of the problem could not be included Mailtraq provides a solution to these in the form of Templates These are messages which combine Mailtraq s scripting language with plain text The format of the template is very straightforward it is plain text with the scripting parts enclosed within braces the and characters Here is an example of a template Thank you for submitting your message Header Subject This message has been distributed to the mailing list The template is plain text except for the Header Subject part When the template is actually used this will be replaced with the result of the script In this case the function Header returns a header field from the current message Another function will be needed to select the current message but this will be discussed shortly For more Using Templates Using Templates comprehensive details on any of the functions in Mailtraq refer to Chapter 17 So if this template is triggered by a message with the subject line Help Please then the body of the message generated by the template will contain Thank you for submitting your message Help Please This message has been distribute
12. We are still trying to find a location for xl Cri In the above illustration the message being read was originally sent to the mailing list newsletter Since that mailine list is moderated by John Smith he receives the message first This explains the appearance of the moderate button which would only appear for un moderated messages lt Show Message Headers lt Delete this message Accept this message sent to a moderated mailing list Configuring Mail Slots The Show Headers button on the message viewer toggles whether or not the message headers are visible If the mail slot has been designated as a moderator for a mailing list then unmoderated messages will be posted to it If a message is waiting for moderation then the Moderate button will appear When you click on this button the message is posted back to the mailing list from the moderator mail slot and will subsequently be accepted The message is then deleted automatically from the mail slot Configuring Mail Slots Mailbox Properties You can configure a mail slot by following the Properties links from the directory When you make changes you must remember to click on the Apply button to actually apply them otherwise the changes will have no effect You must also use the Apply command before the security timeout expires or the changes will not be accepted Remember that the properties a user may
13. With systems that have large numbers of mail slots mail groups can be an effective way to organise them Another important use of mail groups is mail slot accounting Settings such as the maximum amount of mail that can be stored in a mailbox are applied to the mail group rather than mail slots individually Mail slots in that group are then subject to those settings Mail Slots are the mail receivers in Mailtrag Mail handled by Mailtraq must either end up in mail slots or be forwarded to another mail server There are three basic types of mail slot wa Mailboxes D Mailing Lists al Public Archives WE Mailboxes These are used to store mail for users Mail can be accessed from these objects via POP3 using mail client software and using the Web Administrator 47 The Console 48 WE Mailing Lists These mail slots distribute mail to their subscribers In fact mailing lists are very powerful and perform many tasks other than simply forwarding mail They are described in detail in Chapter 11 Mail that is waiting to be distributed in the form of a digest will be stored in the mailing list until delivery time Public Archives These mail slots store messages for public access They are often used in association with Mailing Lists and are also discussed in Chapter 11 The messages contained in the archive can be viewed with the Web Administrator but are most often retrieved by sending special messages
14. john enderson com john lists enderson com The first example is the most basic form the command can take The sender is simply subscribed to the mailing list The second example also subscribes the sender to the list but alters their initial flags to those shown The flags are described along with the set command later The third example shows the subscription by proxy form of the command where the subscription is created from the parameters The only required parameter is the subscriber s e mail address You may optionally include 165 Mailing Lists 166 Unsubscribe Status Set the name of the subscriber but it must be enclosed within quotation marks If you include a second e mail address it is taken as the Reply To address This command simply removes a subscriber from the mailing list As with the subscribe command it can apply either to the sender s subscription or the subscription specified Unsubscribe Unsubscribe john enderson com The above two examples show the normal and subscription by proxy form of the Unsubscribe command The status command returns a message describing all the information available on the subscription This information would include the current subscription settings If a subscription is not specified then the sender s subscription status is returned Only an administrator can request the status of another subscriber s account This command alters the
15. philip thomson Another example might be taking responsibility for another address such as having the alias webmaster if it is your responsibility to manage the web pages gt Note If you have a mailbox called webmaster and have another mailbox with webmaster as an alias then they will both receive a copy of any mail written to the web master If not properly managed this can be a serious security problem For example a user simply has to add an alias to watch all mail sent to another mailbox For this reason the option to configure the aliases using the Web Administrator can be specified for each user Mailbox Properties Ei POPS Mailbox Mail Aliases Message Expiry Gateway Messages addressed to the aliases below will also be sent to this mailbox Aliases for this mailbox se coca Mailboxes The Mailbox Properties Dialogue Accessing Mail from Clients Mailboxes A mailbox is simply a location in to which e mail messages can be stored Users may access the mail in their mailboxes from their mail client software using POP3 Mailboxes also have a number of options that make them very versatile Mailboxes can forward messages to other addresses automatically reply to the sender store a message in an external text file and automatically delete messages after a specific age Mailbox Properties Ei POPS Mailbox Mail Aliases Message Expiry Gateway by any Wi
16. string that appears before the symbol Syntax username UserOf string string Any text string containing an e mail address username The user part of the e mail address HostOf This function takes an e mail address and extracts the host part the string that appears after the symbol 290 Syntax NameOf Syntax SameAddress Syntax String Manipulation host HostOf string string Any text string containing an e mail address host The host part of the e mail address This function attempts to extract a person s name from the given string This is intended to be used in conjunction with the From field where there are a number of common formats which Mailtraq can interpret such as John Smith lt johns enderson com gt johns enderson com John Smith and so on In both cases the result would be John Smith name NameOf sfring string A text string taken from the From field of a message header name The extracted name which will be the e mail address if a name could not be found This function takes two e mail addresses and determines if they are the same taking into account the domain aliases boolean SameAddress emaill email2 emaill An e mail address email2 Another e mail address boolean The result of the comparison 291 Scripting Function Reference Database Functions In order to assist the development of powerful scripts Mailtraq p
17. that command News Server Properties News Server Properties dialogue News Server Properties Connection Properties account name and password betore articles Some news servers require yau to supply an J can be accessed C No Authorisation for this server w Account Password Authentication Account Jenderson Password XXEKRENM ENE Number of parallel connections 2 Number of connection attempts i 0 Collection Method NEWNEWS Help Mailtrag allows you to select the collection method since different news servers will provide better performance for some methods but not others You can use the table below to select the method to use NEWNEWS XHDR XOVER GROUP Reliability Excellent Average Average Poor Article Duplication Excellent Excellent Excellent Poor Server Efficiency Varies Varies Excellent Excellent Bandwidth Used Good Good Poor Excellent 143 The News System You can use the event logs to see if the command is supported On YOU NewS Server The Default News Server We recommend using the NEWNEWS method unless it is not supported The NEWNEWS and XHDR commands return a list of articles The XOVER command returns additional information for each article all of which is discarded The GROUP command is somewhat misleading as in this case no command is used at all Mailtraq simply requests articles based upon their number knowing what the last article number it downloaded was
18. Carbon Copy Recipients CGI Clearing Host Assignments Clipboard Configure Columns Confirming Subscriptions Console Control Messages Control Panel Crawlers See Web Crawlers D Database Location of Database Default News Server Delivering Service Providers Delivery Hops Delivery Reports Detailed Message Descriptions Dial Up Networking Direct Connections Gettign On Line Leased Lines Overview Dialogues Archives l Automated Scripts 116 125 111 131 67 164 s 39 163 40 134 144 100 130 55 13 wd 53 07 169 248 321 Dial Up HTTP Service Import Mailboxes Inbound Mail Policy Mail Groups Mailboxes Mailing Lists News Group News Group Subscriptions News Server News To Mail Gateway Post Master Scheduled Dial Up Scripts and Templates Server Properties Service Manager User Accounts User Manager Web Crawler Web Crawlers Digests Digital Signatures Directory Visibility Distribution List Domain Name Server See Domains Domains About Aliases Dies wo ee Primary Domain Dragging Mail Slots DUN See Dial Up Networking Dynamic IP Addresses Dynamic Routing Table E Editing Web Pages 322 61 68 127 99 23 87 s 2 141 140 143 146 85 62 247 x wo 222 123 122 182 181 160 114 84 183 154 10 17 77 18 43 314 110 185 E Mail Addresses Introduction Message Envelopes Message Headers Smart Hos
19. and not all the fields listed will appear in every message Fields beginning with the symbol refer to special properties for the message These fields are described below minrcpts The minimum or maximum number of recipients in the delivery maxrepts envelope not the addressees described in the header fields minsize The minimum or maximum size in bytes of the message This Aiie includes the message body priority Set to High to match high priority messages body Scan message body for matching text The Inbound Router In the criteria value you can enter any text and Mailtraq will scan the related fields for it You can also use wildcards described above Neither type of matching is case sensitive When multiple criteria are used there are a number of options to determine how the results of these criteria are combined There are four options Any The message will be selected if it passes at least one of the criteria All The message will be selected if it passes all the criteria None The message will be selected if it does not pass any of the criteria Not All The message will be selected if it does not pass all the criteria When only a single criteria is used All or None will determine if the message is filtered in or filtered out Dealing with Some mail servers and mail applications are not equipped to handle large La rge Messages messages efficiently Large messages also consume large amoun
20. isp co uk Downloading 271 of 2717 from comp lang pasc 17 33 32 a4 NATP Client news isp co uk news isp co uk Downloading 244 of 764 from comp os ms wind 17 33 32 ts SMTP Client mail gp co uk Sending ENDRES302D1 6 17 33 32 a POPS Client Connecting to enderson pop3 isp com 17 33 55 The illustration above shows the Active Connections window with a number of tasks in progress You can cancel any of these tasks by right clicking on them and selecting the Close option gt Note Mailtraq will usually continue the task until it is safe to suspend Sometimes the task cannot be closed while Mailtraq is waiting for a network response For these reasons you should not expect an immediate reaction from Mailtraq The Remote POP3 Mailboxes represent accounts that have been configured with other POP3 Mail Servers Mail can be downloaded from each account and placed in mail slots in Mailtraq or processed in other ways as with mail arriving from any other source Refer to page 114 for details on the remote POP3 collection facilities Mail Groups _ accounts marketing _ projects distribution C management Mail Slots ty piercemi 5 info al prices TA mailserver NeWSSErver postmaster The Console Objects These objects are used as containers for mail slots They represent logical groupings rather than any formal ownership and a single user s mail slots may appear in several different mail groups
21. lt INPUT TYPE edit NAME colour VALUE colour gt lt P gt lt INPUT TYPE submi t gt lt FORM gt lt TABLE BORDER 1 gt lt TR gt lt TD gt Cu1tivar lt TD gt Region lt TD gt Colour lt TD gt Price lt TD gt Stock lt TR gt winelist DBListRecords C wines For winelist wine Do cvar DBReadC wines wine Cultivar reg DBReadC wines wine Region col DBRead wines wine Colour If wildcardMatch cvar cultivar amp wildcardMatch reg region amp wi ldcardMatch col colour Do lt TR gt lt TD gt Cvar lt TD gt reg lt TD gt col lt TD gt DBReadC wines wine price lt TD gt DBRead wines wine stock lt TR gt lt TABLE gt 261 Templates lt BODY gt lt HTML gt The illustration below shows how the page is viewed from a web browser The first image shows the page when first visited and the second page shows the two criteria altered and the Submit Query button pressed The wines tpl template y4 Netscape Wine List y Netscape Wine List File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help n viewed f om a Web re Location http localhost wines tpl Fil Location http localhost wines tpl cultivar amp region ia amp colou Browser Wine List Wine List Cultivar F Cultivar f Region Region Fia
22. subscribers with the moderated flag set must have all their messages verified before they can be distributed by the mailing list Mailtraq provides a facility in the Web Administrator to help with this process When reading mail from the moderator s mailbox using the Web Administrator messages awaiting moderation have additional button which allows the moderator to accept the message automatically forwarding it to the mailing list and deleting it from the mailbox The digest control facility allows you to configure the automatic list digest system Digests are simply collections of messages posted to the list in the form of a single compound message Two of the digest formats supported by Mailtrag are MIME Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions which means that many mail clients will be able to interpret them as message collections Digests can be generated periodically and users who do not need to be kept as up to date as other subscribers may prefer this method as it results in fewer e mail messages arriving in their mailboxes 207 The Web Administrator Configuring the Mailing List Digest service Mailing List Templates Archives 208 he Netscape sales settings File Edt View Go Bookmarks Options Director Window Help ole Z Maitrag Web Administrator Aaminisirator Main Menu Mailslots Mailing List sales Sales Team Digest Control i Enable digest service M Distribute diges
23. will push to current line 5 into position 6 271 Scripting Function Reference Syntax MsgAddLine Syntax MsgDeleteLine Syntax MsgGetLineCount Syntax MsgGetSender 278 MsgInsertLine index string index The line position into which the string will be inserted string The line to be inserted This function is similar to MsgInsertLine except that the given string is added to the end of the current message body MsgAddLine string string The line to be added to the message This function removes the line specified by the given index from the current message body MsgDeleteLine index index The index of the line to be removed starting from 0 This function returns the number of lines in the current message body Use this function to identify the range of valid line indices For example a value of 5 indicates that the message lines from 0 to 4 are valid lines MsgGetLineCount lines The number of lines in the message body This function returns the sender value from the current message envelope This is not the same as the Sender or From fields of the message header See page 71 for details on the message envelopes Syntax MsgGetRepts Syntax MsgSetRepts Syntax PostMessage Message Handling Functions sender MsgGetSender sender The sender value taken from the message envelope This function returns a list of th
24. 59 18 Send Report Now e orea The following reports are available E Dial up Report This report includes details on every Internet dial up including the amount of time spent on line and the purpose of the dial up The report also provides a sum total of the on line time for that period This is configured in the Dialup properties in the Options menu M Delivery Failure Report This report provides information on every delivery failure generated by Mailtraq because it was unable to successfully send a message The individual failure reports are returned to the message senders but this report can be sent to an administrator summarising all the failures during the reporting period 132 The Mailtrag Database This is configured in the Outgoing Mail properties in the Options menu M Mail Barring Report This report contains details on every message that was refused based on the mail barring policy in the Incoming Mailproperties Options menu The report also identifies the barring rule used The report is also configured in the Incoming Mail Policy W Mailing List Subscription Report This report contains information of every mailing list subscription and unsubscription including details on subscribers who were removed by the Address Check messages The report is configured from the Mailing List Properties dialogue M Archive Requests Report This report provides information on all the message requests
25. Boolean pop3 fetched Boolean pop3 download Boolean Applicable Directories Any Directory Any Directory Any Indexed Directory Any Indexed Directory Any Indexed Directory Any Indexed Directory POP3 Collection POP3 Collection POP3 Collection POP3 Collection Description The file size in bytes The file creation date The subject line from the message The addressee of the message The sender of the message The unique serial number of the file Flag indicating if the message was erased Flag indicating if the message is marked for deletion Flag indicating if the message was downloaded Flag indicating if the message is marked for download Syntax Message Handling Functions gt The POP3 Collection Directories contain the message previews and are in the mail pop3 account where account is in the username host format value GetDirField path filename field path Full path of the directory which may be relative for database directories filename The filename in the specified directory field The name of the field to examine Message Handling Functions SelectInMessage Syntax These functions are used to access and modify the current message The current message depends on the type of script being executed and the context of the function In scripts triggered by the receipt of messages then the current message will initially refer to the trigger With templates the current message w
26. Document Done F 201 The Web Administrator 202 As an example a user may wish to have aliases that include a different spelling of their name to deal with common errors Another use may be to receive mail under different roles e g webmaster if they are responsible for the organisation s web pages Aliases can also be used to form user groups Several mailboxes may share an alias in which case each mailbox will receive a copy of any mail sent to that alias As an example several mailboxes may share the sales alias rather than having a central sales mailing list gt It is very important to note however that aliases duplicate mail allowing it to be sent both to the named mailbox and any mailboxes with a matching alias Users can take advantage of this to receive copies of mail intended for others If this is likely to be a security problem the feature should be disabled for non administrators Configuring Mail Slots Mailing Lists Mailing lists can also be configured through the Web Administrator with many similar options as mailboxes The Mailing List Properties Menu File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Maitrag Web Achinistrator Adminis alor Main Menu Mailslots sales Sales Team Configure the mailing list subscribers and properties Select one of the options below to configure the corresponding properties Mailbox Description Configure the des
27. In most cases the part of the Internet that you connect to will be your Internet Service Provider from now on your ISP In most cases you connect by having a machine on your network dial a telephone number provided by your ISP Although you can have another piece of software actually initiate this connection most users let Mailtraq handle this Mailtraq connects to the Internet using Windows Remote Access Service RAS In both Windows 95 and Windows NT this is often called Dial Up Networking DUN The two terms are interchangeable at least from Mailtraq s perspective For simplicity we ll refer to this as DUN throughout this document Since we are discussing acronyms another one to be aware of is TAPI Telephony Application Programming Interface TAPI is the set of communication services that include RAS DUN and it is used to ensure that different software applications can share telephone related devices Mailtrag is TAPI compliant in the sense that it only uses TAPI services specifically DUN with regard to your modem If you are using other modem software which is not TAPI compliant then you may experience problems sharing the modem between Mailtragq and the other software One solution is to provide a separate modem for that software or run it on a different computer 13 Introduction Configuring Dial Up Networking You can still create a dial up connection in the Install Wizard 14 Dial
28. When an article is posted by a user with Mailtraq it determines which server it should be uploaded to by cross checking the recipient groups with the current subscriptions If necessary multiple copies of the message will be uploaded If the article is posted to a group that is not currently subscribed to then Mailtraq will send the article to the default news server News and Mail Gateways 144 News To Mail Gateways Because news articles and e mail messages are very similar Mailtraq takes advantage of this by providing the means to integrate the two types of messaging Gateways allow e mail messages to become news articles and vice versa This facility allows Mailtraq to post articles to users in the form of e mail Each gateway can filter out messages they are not interested in and this can be a useful way to watch a news group For example you may wish to receive via e mail any message posted to uk adverts with the word News and Mail Gateways SparcStation appearing in it This is certainly easier than reading all the p pp B y g articles each day Configuring News Group uk adverts computer News To Mail Properties Download Mail Gateway Hews Gateway aa News a This gateway allows all articles posted to this Group Properties e news group to be forwarded to the list of email addresses Address Filter bg johnst enderson com j ny Hoody Spa ly Edit Delete Add E orea
29. a period of inactivity as a safety precaution Windows can also be configured to do this The actions that take place when you use the Go Online command are determined by the settings in the Actions tab of the Dial Up Properties dialogue as shown below 59 Internet Dial up The Actions tab of the Dial Up Properties Internet Dial up HEJ Dial up Connection Actions Schedules Schedule Options ou These options determine some of the automated characteristics of the dial up Service W Auto Finger on connection Current Dialup ISP Line 1 W Select Next Alternative on failure Dialup Reporting He Crea The Select Next Alternative on Failure option allows Mailtraq to automatically change the Current Dialup to the next available option when a dialup cannot be completed If your service provider has more than one telephone line you can configure a separate DUN connection for each and automatically switch to an alternative using this method Scheduled Dial Up 60 Mailtraq provides a comprehensive scheduling facility to manage automatic dial up connections and disconnections You can configure these from the Schedules tab of the Internet Dial up properties dialogue as illustrated below Scheduled Dial Up Configuring Dial Up Internet Dial up E Ea Schedules Dial up Connection Actions Schedules Schedule Options fou can schedule regular dial ups that automat
30. a real time view of exactly what is happening You can view messages in mailboxes e mail being delivered messages 39 The Console being retrieved from POP3 accounts and even news articles arriving in news groups The console operates completely independently of the other Mailtraq services This means that you can view mailboxes read news articles etc without interfering with the tasks being carried out simultaneously by Mailtragq Accessing the Console 40 The System Tray Icon You can open the console at any time while Mailtrag is running There are three ways to do this The System Tray Icon You can double click on the icon or right click and select Mailtraq Console The Mailtraq Console loader By default this is installed in the Start Menu within the Mailtraq group and is given the keyboard short cut of CTRL ALT M The Mailtraq Console Applet You can run the Mailtraq Console applet which appears in the Windows Control Panel When Mailtrag is running an icon will appear in the System Tray appears on the Task Bar Occasionally when Mailtrag is running as a system service an icon will not appear even though Mailtraq has been started This is because the application that provides the system tray Windows Explorer is a normal application and is started and stopped as users log in The Mailtrag Console Applet The Windows Control Panel showing the Mailtraq Console applet Access
31. activity that it is responsible for It cannot detect other applications using the connection such as web browsers or FTP programs unless they are using Mailtraq as a proxy If you have the Query Connect Disconnect option enabled from the Schedule Options tab on the Dial Up properties dialogue then a window will appear shortly before the connection is automatically disconnected From this window you can have the automatic disconnection canceled or temporarily suspended About Mailtrag View Event Log HM ailtrag Console Finger all Automatic accounts Finger an account Collect POPS Mail Collect News Schedule a Connection Now Go Offline Hangup All Connections Cancel Automatic Disconnection k Shutdown Server A55 10 17 63 Internet Dial up Schedule Options The Scheduled Dial Up Options Enable POP3 News Collection during this schedule Enable schedule only if outbound mail is waiting 64 If you cancel the disconnection either from this window or from the Cancel Automatic Disconnection command then the connection will become manual and will no longer be subject to the schedule options such as whether or not POP3 collection is enabled A number of options are available for the scheduled dial ups which can be configured in the Options tab of the Schedule Settings dialogue shown below Scheduled Dialup Settings ax Connection Settings Schedule Date and Time Options fo
32. all its mailboxes and any authorised mail client that supports POP3 can be used to retrieve mail Mail Clients will need to be configured with both the name sometimes called the account and password of the mailbox The password is set in the mailbox properties available from the context menus in the Mailtraq Console If the password is left blank then Mailtraq will accept any password provided by the mail client You should not use any of the additional security and authentication methods supported by the mail client Such facilities may include Secure 113 Mail Delivery Sockets Layer SSL and Secure Password Authentication SPA You can however use Digital Signatures as these are not affected by the mail delivery mechanisms Remote POP3 Collection This facility allows Mailtraq to retrieve messages from another POP3 server and insert them into the mail router This can be used as an effective alternative to mail receipt via SMTP although there are a few disadvantages During message delivery the message s envelope is used to determine where it is sent Once a message is placed into a POP3 mailbox the envelope is usually discarded This can make it very difficult to continue the delivery process when a message is retrieved via POP3 Mailtraq provides a number of ways to determine where the messages are sent to but it is important to consider these carefully The Remote POP3 accounts are configured fr
33. application with the given parameters The Execute function will suspend the script in which it is used until the application terminates Conversely the ExecuteAsync function allows the script to continue immediately Although it is possible to send information to the executed application via the command line parameters there is no means for the application to pass information back to the script However it may be useful for the application to store information in an external file in a known location perhaps one passed as a parameter which the script can then read from If you choose to use this method then you should not use the ExecuteAsync function as you cannot be certain the application has completed writing it s output file by the time you read it Execute application parameters application The full path name of the application to execute parameters The parameters separated by spaces passed to the application These are the same as the command line parameters that might be given if the application was executed from the Windows Shell This example runs the Notepad text editor assuming that Windows has been installed into the c windows directory and gives it the name of the file to open A more effective text editing example is given with ShellExecute Execute c windows notepad exe c windows temp info txt 305 Scripting Function Reference ShellExecute Syntax
34. arLimitMembership Type String Boolean Boolean List List List List String Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Purpose of Variable Mailbox POP3 Password Mailboxes Enable Disable the storing of mail in mailboxes Mailboxes Enable mailbox forwarding Mailboxes Mailbox forwarding address Mailboxes Archive membership Archives Archive administrators Archives Mail Slot aliases Add a new list subscriber by specifying their e mail address Lists Enable the default message Archives Include dates in the index Archives Include the sender in the index Archives Include sizes in the index Archives Limit Administration Archives Limit Membership Archives arRequestByProxy AutoresponderText DefaultMessage Description DigestSize Digestlime ExpireForward ExpireHours Filter GatewayDirectory Maintainer mbAutoresponder mbExpireForward mbExpireMail mbExpiryNotify mbGateawyKA9QQueue mbGatewayKA9QPegasus mbGatewayKA9QRoute mlAddTag mlAddTagFile mlAnonymous mlConfirmSubscription mlDigest mlDigestContents mlDigestSize mlDigestTime mlEvenDistribution m Moderated mlProxylsAdministrator mlReplyToAuthor Boolean String String String Integer Integer String Integer String String String Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Ma
35. authors In both cases the setting simply affects the default action taken by the mail client and it should be possible to override this Anonymous Lists The anonymous list option hides the identity of the original message author by making the message appear to be created by the list itself Access Control This facility allows you to control how subscribers access the mailing list and what options and controls are applied to them Configuring the Mailing i Netscape sales settings File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help List Access Control ool A Maitrag Web Administrator A chains ator Main Menu Mailslots Mailing List sales Sales Team Mailing List Access Control Enable subscription by mail Enable subscription by proxy Proxy must be a subscribed administrator Subscribers must use their passwords when accessing and altering their settings r r r l Subscription by mail must be confirmed through a reply message r Postings are moderated by ET V o o oo Default Subscriber Properties Settings acquired by new subscribers Guest Subscriber Properties Settings implied by users who are not subscribers Apply Reset Cria 206 Digest Control Configuring Mail Slots The Subscription by Mail system is described in detail in Chapter 9 However one important setting here is the Moderated by option When message moderation is enabled
36. can be ignored This is useful for the addresses extracted from the To header as it can deal with messages addressed to several people but it is not appropriate for routed mail such as messages distributed by mailing lists Another option is to assume that recipients are local This process simply changes the recipient s address to a local address i e user some other domain becomes user yourdomain com This option does not deal with messages that are addressed to several people some of which are not local The final option is to forward the non local recipients off site By not modifying the recipient address in any way the messages are simply routed as normal If the address does not refer to the local domain it is placed in the outbox and will be delivered along with other outgoing mail Message Filtering Remote POP3 Collection Apart from the opportunity to leave mail on the server the other important advantage of collection via POP3 is the ability to selectively retrieve messages You may choose to filter out messages either to leave them for another user to download or in order to ignore unwanted mail WV Enable Filtering Any Subject Make Money Return Path hotmail com Maximum Size 2048 kb If filtering is enabled then only messages that match the specified filter and smaller than the specified size will be automatically retrieved Although you may wish to erase messages that are exclude
37. determines when the These are the limits placed on the mailboxes mailbox counters are reset and when the inthis group Mailboxes are identified by the accounting report is issued message sender Current Period 7 W Maximum numbersize of messages sent Accounting Period 100 messages per period Dail Monthly Recweseeeree C Weekly Annually 8192 kb per period Next accounting period starts on 1024 S kb per message 26 March 1938 Ei 00 20 23 Warn on exceeding limit at ie W Maximum mailbox size 2048 kb W Send a report to fiohns e a e cen If a message is sent to a mailbox that is approaching its group specified capacity a message can be sent to the mailbox to warn the owner When 93 Mail Slots the capacity is actually reached no further messages will be stored within it and messages will be returned to their sender 94 Mail Delivery This chapter covers the mail delivery process both within Mailtraq between Mail Slots and the delivery of mail between Mailtrag and other Internet mail servers The following topics are covered An Overview of Mail Delivery The Inbound and Outbound Routers The Delivery Services SMTP and POP3 Actively Collecting Mail from POP3 servers 95 Mail Delivery Overview of Mail Delivery The Mail Router showing the flow of 96 As discussed earlier in this manual there are only two things Mailtraq can do with a messag
38. ee ee ee ee M The Mailtraq News Server 2 1 ee ee ee eee ee ee 150 11 Mailing Lists What is a Mailing List Mailing Lists in Mailtraq Subscription by Mail Message Templates Public Archives 12 The World Wide Web What is the Web The Proxy Server Web Crawlers The Web Server CGI and Templates 13 The Web Administrator Accessing the Web Administrator User Access and Control The Directory Reading Mail Configuring Mail Slots Accessing Web Sites System Administration 153 154 155 161 168 169 175 176 178 180 183 185 189 190 191 192 194 195 PAW 214 14 Network Services 2 ee ee ee ee 221 The Service Manager 2 1 ee ee ee ee ee ee ee 222 Firewalls sa seep 4 eo ee ae ewe ao we we a amp 224 The Mailtrag Services s s Baw s Oe ae HE nyered a ZO 15 Scripting aoe eee bo wee ee eeu es eueeeeee wea ee COD Whatis SChphne e s 4 s se a taadas gla aea a a 290 What do you need to know a a 1 a a a ee ee ee ee 237 Tbe Scup ne Lang ape s s s s s a sda ww ee nE s l Working with Scripts 6 6 a a a a ee ee ee ee 245 Using Scripts a a a amp amp 4 ce amp ee wi ew e ace ew ee w 246 16 Templates ee AG ee eee wee aaa GE DOD Introduction to Templates 4 oe 4 ee Roe ww 254 Using Templates e 4446 a s ssas 4 we bow we oe 4 a WD Trigger Messages 2 2 1 ee e
39. file is reached the EOF function will return true The same file can be opened by more than one script and more than once in the same script 269 Scripting Function Reference Syntax handle OpenFile path path This identifies the file to be opened by its filing system name handle This identifier is used in subsequent references to the file and should be released using CloseFile The null value is returned if the file could not be opened CreateFile Creates a new and empty text file for writing The function returns a handle which identifies the file and is valid until it is released with the CloseFile function New files can only be written to as the file pointer is always at the end of the file This file cannot be opened by any other scripts until the handle has been released Syntax handle CreateFile path path This identifies the file to be created by its filing system name handle This identifier is used in subsequent references to the file and should be released with CloseFile The null value is returned if the file could not be opened AppendFile This function is similar to OpenFile except that the file is opened for writing and the file pointer begins at the end of the current file content Syntax handle AppendFile path path This identifies the file to be opened by its filing system name handle This identifier is used in subsequent references to the file and should
40. have the same filename before the extension as the txt file and have the following format hostname of sender sender s e mail address recipient s e mail address further recipient addresses This can be described in BNF as wrkfile hostname CRLF sender CRLF recipients hostname hostname of sender The Mailtrag Services sender e mail address of sender recipients recipient recipient CRLF recipients recipient CRLF e mail address of recipient newline One or more recipients may be listed as shown in these example files Single Recipient Example Multiple Recipient Example enderson com mail widgetmakers com johns enderson com widgets widgetmakers com janes enderson com johns enderson com janes enderson com The txt file should contain a complete e mail message in RFC822 format including headers an example of which is on page 57 Pegasus Mail Pegasus messages are stored in a single file with the cno extension These files include the message envelope in addition to the message itself E CNO Files The cno file must have the following format F sender s e mail address T recipient address C carbon copy recipient address B blind carbon copy recipient address more recipient lines message text 1 BNF Backus Naur Format is a formal specification language for defining syntax 231 Network Services 232 More than one T C or B line may be given co
41. into which the current list item will be placed during each cycle Note that you should specify the variable s name not the variable itself This is done by providing a string such as name instead of name content The expression to be evaluated during each loop cycle result A concatenation of each cycle s evaluation 266 Examples Language Constructs The examples below shows each of the constructs in use Note how the Do function is used to group statements together num 10 whi le num gt O Do num num 1 MsgAddLineC Line descending num Repeat Do num num 1 MsgAddLineC Line ascending num Js num lt 10 ForC Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri day If day Fri MsgAddLineC Day day MsgAddLine End of the week day Another example of the For function is demonstrated below For each recipient of the trigger message a reply is posted to the sender 267 Scripting Function Reference gt Note that the original sender must be stored in a variable before the loop as the expressions within the PostMessage function are executed in the context of the new message sender GetMsgSenderQ For GetMsgRcptsQ rcpt PostMessage rcpt sender Do SetHeader Subject Thank s for your message Your message was received by rcpt Define This function creates a new user defined funct
42. it is not viable to provide visual cues for everything it does It is also possible that you will want to examine a past event more closely in order to identify problems or ensure that events took place as expected To solve these problems Mailtrag provides a comprehensive event logging facility Mailtraq logs many different types of events everything from transaction messages to mail routing decisions Every event is listed immediately in the on screen Event Log through the remote event logging service and optionally on disk Logging events is an essential part of system administration often providing the only information to explain why something didn t work correctly and to help correct it You should enable the on disk logging even if you don t think it will be an issue as it will always be after problems occur that you will need the valuable information the logging system provides On Disk Event Logging Configuring the On Disk Log Server Properties Dialogue Event Log File Logging Method Event Logging This facility is configured in the Server properties accessed from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console Server Properties E E3 Server Administration LAN Logging Startup Online The log keeps a detailed record of everything that Mailtrag does rou can provide remote real time access to the log through the Log Service W Store Log in an external file C MAILT RAG LOG TT
43. know how to deliver the message but how does a mail server decide where to deliver it Each server on the Internet will have a number of rules that help it decide this To help these servers they can also look up the Mail Exchange for a given address 6 Mail Routing and Mail Exchanges All hosts on the Internet are defined by their unique IP address Each IP address consists of four numbers in the range 0 255 separated by dots e g 192 100 100 102 These numbers are difficult to remember so each host is also given a textual name also called a Domain Name Servers on the Internet that can translate names to addresses are called Domain Name Servers DNS These machines can also provide other types of data for hosts such as a list of designated Mail Exchanges A Mail Exchange MX is a mail server configured to accept mail for a given domain and mail can be sent to these servers using SMTP Another way to get mail to its recipient is to pass the message on to a Smart Host This machine will store the message and then do the MX lookup and subsequent delivery itself Most Service Providers will supply a Smart Host to simplify your configuration However since Mailtraq can use a Smart Host Mail Exchanges and routing tables you may decide which methods to choose Since Service Providers have to handle messages for a large number of customers their machines occasionally become overworked In these cases Mailtraq can bypa
44. line 65 Internet Dial up Dial Up Schedule Options These options are available from the fourth tab of the Dial Up Properties dialogue which is shown below The Schedule Options Internet Dial up z3x tab of the Dial Up Dialup Connection Actions Schedules Schedule Options P roperties dialogue 172 You can specify various options specific to G the scheduling service Automatic scheduling takes place when new mail arrives in the outbor i Query Connect Disconnect M Warn on Missed Schedules Auto schedule when outgoing mail is waiting m Schedule within Minutes Automatic Schedule Schedule Now Settings He Corea Query If this option is enabled then a window will appear shortly before a Connect Disconnect scheduled dial up takes place asking the user to confirm An example of such a window is shown below Offering the user the Mailtraq Dialup Service Ea option to cancel AQ ie A dial up connection is scheduled to begin shortly Click Cancel to prevent this connection from taking place connection Continue If neither button is pressed then the connection will continue automatically when the progress bar has elapsed 66 The user can be given the option to postpone or cancel a disconnection Warn on Missed Schedules Auto Schedule when outbound mail is waiting Dial Up Schedule Options Shortly before the connection is automatically disconnec
45. made to the archive and is configured in the Archive Properties dialogue The Mailtrag Database The Mailtragq Database contains all the Mailtraq files This includes the configuration messages articles cache files and so on In fact a Mailtraq installation is defined almost entirely by its database If you move the database to another machine all the configuration will remain intact The only information stored outside the database is the user interface 133 Administration Topics Database Location 134 Network Drives settings and the files such as the log files where the user has specified their location Normally the database will be placed directly below the directory containing the Mailtraq program files However if you wish to move the data to another location you can specify the database path by changing its reference in the Windows Registry Mailtraq uses the registry value HKEY LOCAL MACHINE Software Fastraq Mailtraq DatabasePath C Program Files Mailtrag to locate the database during startup The path stored in this registry value is the directory under which the database directory can be found For example if the registry value contained c program files mailtraq then the database would be stored in c program files mailtraq database You can use the REGEDIT EXE program which is part of Windows to edit the registry values The files in the database should never be edit
46. mailbox Enable limits on messages sent by the mail slot address 301 Scripting Function Reference POP3 Collection Account Properties pop3accounts acc 302 InheritAccounting LastPeriod MailboxLimit Name NextPeriod Parent Reportlo SendLimitMessages SendLimitMessageSize SendLimitVolume SendReport SendWarning Warning ount Variable Active Account Password Local LastAttempt LastCollection LeaveOnServer Boolean DateTime Integer String DateTime Integer String Integer Integer Integer Boolean Boolean Integer Type Boolean String String Boolean DateTime DateTime Boolean Inherit parent s accounting settings Date this accounting period began Maximum size of the mailbox Mailgroup name Date of next accounting period ID of parent mailgroup Address to which the report is sent Maximum number of messages per period Maximum individual message size kb Maximum volume of mail kb per period Send a report by mail Send a warning message to the mail slot when limits are being reached Send the warning when the volume messages reach the given percentage of the limit These variables provide access to the POP3 Collection facilities The accounts are referred to by a key created by combining the user name and the POP3 server with the symbol e g enderson pop3 isp com Purpose of Variable Enable disable account The POP3 account username host format The login passwo
47. mailing list will always pass through the router at least twice M Mail Storage This takes place just prior to the message being stored in a user s mailbox or archive This is useful in that at this stage the final recipient of the message will be known as no further routing will take place M Inbound News Delivery This takes place when a news article is downloaded from another news server or when a user posts a message from a local news client At this stage the news article has not yet been stored in a news group or placed in the outgoing news folder 241 Scripting Modifying the Trigger Message The Message Trigger 248 Properties E Outbound News Delivery This takes place just prior to a news article being uploaded to a remote news server There is also a check box Script will modify the message Many scripts are intended to alter the message that triggers them in some way as does the earlier example Mailtraq needs to know if your script might do that otherwise it will not wait for the script to complete before continuing with the message delivery Automated Script ci Script Properties Message Trigger Scripts can Pre process 4 message or use it to execute a procedure where the message represents the parameters C Filtered f All Messages Execute script during W Script wall modify the message When this options is not selected the Handoff to script o
48. menu 33 Quick Start Guide Creating a Mailing 34 List Mailing Lists simply forward the messages sent to them to a number of other recipients Mailing Lists are described in detail in Chapter 11 This example will show how to create a basic Distribution style list 1 Click on the File menu and select New Mailing List The Mailing List Properties dialogue will appear Hailing List Properties General Digests Aliases Addresses List Subscribers Access Messages iP Mailing lists can be used to distribute messages Ce to subscribers at any address The maintainer will receive delivery and transport messages List Mame sales Description Sales Team Maintainer fiohns f Distribute incoming messages to all subscribers f Distribute evenly between subscribers Owner Local Directory Visibility Administrator bd Public Anybody bd e oea 2 Inthe List Name edit box enter the identifier for the mailing list the name that appears before the symbol in the e mail address The name must not contain spaces or quotation marks You should use only letters and numbers if possible 3 Enter the full name of the list in the Description edit box 4 In the Maintainer property enter the name of a mailbox where you want any administrative messages sent When for example mail cannot be delivered to one of the list members a message will be sent to this mailbox Creat
49. messages to the archive Again Mailtraq examines the Sender and in the absence of that field the From field This is done because most mailing lists and all the Mailtraq mailing lists set the Sender field to the address of the list itself By simply adding this address to the administrators list the archive can then accept any message distributed by that list By making the archive a receiving subscriber of the mailing list it can be used as an effective way to archive the list messages for public access Configuring Mail Slots Reading News The Web Administrator provides a primitive interface to the news groups stored in the Mailtraq database It is primitive in the sense that it does not provide many features that you may expect to find in news clients such as article threading and searching However this does provide a simple means to access the news groups without having to install and configure a news client Mailtraq will use the news group access controls specified in the user accounts when offering news groups for reading An example of such a list is displayed below Selecting a News he Netscape News Groups Eile Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Groups lola 2 lele Maitrag Web Adhunisirator Guest Main Menu Read public news lists and forums J comp os ms windows networking tcp ip E microsoft public internet news E uk adverts computer Generate
50. null value is returned Nulls are equivalent to the number zero or an empty string depending on the comparison being used Data Types Lists The Scripting Language Even the best programmers produce semantic errors so the key is to test all your scripts thoroughly before using them Mailtraq has no real concept of data types All values are stored in a similar way and their interpretation depends on the context in which they are used For example if you compare the value 1 0 to 1 Mailtraq will examine both values determine that they are both numbers and compare them numerically thus indicating that they are equal If you actually intended to compare the string representations in which case they are clearly different then you need to explicitly use the StrCmp function see page 287 Mailtragq will first try to compare values in their numerical form and only if one of the values is clearly not a valid number will it perform a string comparison Other than numbers and strings which are just a series of characters expressions can also evaluate to true and false called Boolean values For example the greater than operator a gt b will return true if the first value is greater than the second and false otherwise In Mailtraq these values are represented as the strings TRUE and FALSE Lists are not really part of the scripting language but they are used so often that it is worth unders
51. of common tasks that you are likely to want to perform early using Mailtrag The step by step tutorials will help you configure users and mail slots This chapter Covers Creating User Accounts Creating Mailboxes Creating Mailing Lists and adding Subscribers Creating Archives 27 Quick Start Guide Multi User Networks 28 If you are installing Mailtraq in a single user environment then you can skip this section When configuring mail slots you should leave the Owner property set to the Administrator gt You can only configure a multi user system if you have purchased a multi user Mailtraq license To prepare Mailtraq for a multi user environment you will need to configure the user acounts This is done in the User Manager accessed from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console File View Options Actions Tools Windows Help Server Incoming Mail Outgoing Mail News Newsgroups Dial up Remote POPS Services Web Crawlers Scripts and Templates When you click on the Users option the dialogue below will appear This is the User Manager and user accounts can be created and deleted from here Creating a User Account Multi User Networks User Manager HEJ Licensed users may use the Web Administrator to access their mail and mailslot q settings In addition individual users may have differing news group access Username Description Add admin Ad
52. requesting them Other than these three types of mail slot there are also three special permanent slots 1 mailserver NeWSserver postmaster E Postmaster This is similar to an ordinary mailbox but it is where Mailtraq will send various reports and notices and it a requirement of the Internet that mail addressed to the postmaster be accepted and read by an appropriate administrator Outgoing Mail fl Outgoing Mail The Console Objects M Mailserver This object simply processes commands within messages For example to join a mailing list called newsletter you would send a message to mailserver with the line subscribe newsletter in the message body The mailserver object is discussed in more detail with regards to mailing lists on page 130 HM Newsserver This object simply takes an e mail message and passes it to the news service Refer to page 92 for more information This object stores the messages waiting to be delivered to other mail servers Messages wait here until a connection is made to the appropriate mail server and then they are sent and finally removed Messages are not erased until they have been safely transferred to some other location whether to another mail server or returned to the sender because of problems Before a message can be sent Mailtraq must decide where to send it How Mailtraq determines this will depend on the routing tables Sometimes Mailtraq
53. second line of the text file DeleteFi leC c testl txt This function returns a list of filenames in the given directory It is also aware of the Mailtraq database and able to return filenames from the archive volumes which are used for mail slots and POP3 collection accounts Ifa fully qualified path is given then Mailtraq will return the file list obtained from the filing system If a relative path is given this is resolved starting with the location of the Mailtraq database list GetDirectory path path The path of the directory list A list of filenames found in that directory 273 Scripting Function Reference 274 Examples These examples show the function being used with a normal filing system directory a directory in the Mailtraq database and an archive directory list GetDirectory c windows temp list GetDirectoryC mai 1 outbox list GetDirectory mail inbox johns list GetDirectory mai 1 pop3 enderson pop3 1sp com GetDirField This function obtains the value of a field in the directory record for the given file The field must be one of those described below some of which are only applicable to certain file types and some are only available to files from within the Mailtraq database The available fields are Field Type size Integer date DateTime subject String to String from String serial String pop3_ erased Boolean pop3 delete
54. specific set of parameters This uses the GET command CGI and Templates To permit the user to specify the parameters you should use HTML forms With this method you can select between the GET and POST types of request For example lt FORM method POST action cgi database tpl gt in combination with the appropriate lt INPUT gt tags can be used to pass user set parameters to the template Page 229 provides an example of forms but this subject is not within the scope of this book 187 The World Wide Web 188 The Web Administrator This chapter introduces the Web Administrator which provides remote configuration and access to mail and news from any machine on your network using a web browser This can serve as a management tool for administrators without physical access to the server machine and as a means to give users control over their mail slots The following topics are covered Accessing the Web Administrator User Access and Control The Local Directory Reading Mail Configuring Mail Slots and other Administration Issues 189 The Web Administrator Accessing the Web Administrator 190 Before you can use the Web Administrator you will need to configure an HTTP Service with the Web Administrator option enabled All pages on the Mailtraq Web Server are accessed through a web browser by referring to the network name of the machine running Mailtraqg In earlier examples the network name
55. subscription settings for the sender s account or another account if specified The command is followed by one or more flags or settings Subscription by Mail Command Description Set mail Enable ordinary message receipt Set nomail Disable ordinary message receipt Set digest Enable receipt of the periodic digest in the MIME format Set digesttext Enable receipt of the periodic digest in the plain text format Set recbin Indicates that the subscriber is prepared to accept Set norecbin messages with MIME binary non textual attachments Disables receipt of binary attachments Set public Permits the subscriber s name to appear in the members Set nopublic list Set conceal Hides the sender s identity from posts to the mailing lists Set noconceal Disables the effect of the conceal command Set name John Smith Changes the name assigned to the subscription Set password jmith Changes the subscriber s mailing list password Set rec john rec enderson com Changes the Reply To address for the subscription Suspend and Resume These commands are used to temporarily disable and re enable the receipt of mail or digests Subscribers should be encouraged to use this command when they will be away from the list for a long period to prevent the build up of unread mail for them Members This command requests a list of all the subscriptions with the public flag set Normally this would only consist of administrators but can also be
56. tabs allow news group access to be specified and the privileges when using the Web Administrator to be set Configuring the User User Properties EE Propertie s Properties News Groups Web Services f Licensed users may log on via the Web Administrator and may use their account to read Hews Login User Mame liohns Full name ohn Smith Password Web Home Pages c web homepages johns E e oea The home page is a directory under which web pages and related files can be stored which can be accessed by using the standard homepage URL 123 Administration Topics The Web Administrator See Chapter 13 for details on the Web Administrator Setting the Web Administrator Privileges 124 http servername username where servername is the network name of the Mailtraq Host When a user visits the Web Administrator they will initially be treated as a Guest and consequently be subject to the privileges set in the Guest user account until they log on with their username and password When a user visits the Directory option in the Web Administrator they will be able to see any mail slot with Public visibility Once a user has logged on they will also see any Protected mail slot and they will see any mail slot that they own They will also be able to modify the properties for their mail slots based upon the privileges set in the User Properties s
57. the Archive index 5 send 5 add 1998 Price List add Prices Price List digest 5 9 template Prices Price List This requests a list of all the messages in the archive Provided the sender is a member and not an administrator message number 5 is returned Even if the sender is an administrator the message number 5 is returned Submits a new message to the archive with the subject line reading 1998 Price List and assigns a new serial number as the filename Submits a new message to the archive with the subject line reading Price List and assigns the filename Prices to the message It can subsequently be retrieved by referring to that name Ifa message already exists with that filename this will replace it This command requests a single digest consisting of all the messages 5 through 9 This adds a new template to the archive with the template itself consisting of the submitted message body The subject line is set to Price List which is how the template will appear in the index The filename Prices is assigned to the template 173 Mailing Lists 174 The World Wide Web This chapter discusses the Web related features provided by Mailtraq including the Web Proxy and the Intranet services The following topics are covered What is the Web The Proxy Server Web Crawlers The Web Server CGI and Templates Although these facilities have little in c
58. the currently configured Web Crawlers accessed through the Options menu in the console Mailtraq will only display the web sites that have an appropriate visibility configured For example until the user has logged in they will only be able to see Public web crawlers sites 212 Accessing Web Crawler Sites Searching Web Sites Accessing Web Sites When the user clicks on the link to the listed web site cralwer the web browser will follow that link to the specified site which may result in the browser leaving the Web Administrator However if the browser is configured to use Mailtraq as its web proxy then it will request that page from Mailtraq and if the page is held in the cache Mailtraq will be able to provide it without going on line This allows Mailtraq to scan web sites and download the pages in advance providing access to them through the web proxy facilities If the page is not available Mailtrag can go on line asking the user if configured a Netscape Web Sites File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help lt ola 42 Maitrag Web Acministrator Guest Main Menu Web Sites Browse web sites that have been downloaded and or indexed Enderson Web Site Search CNN News Search MSNBC News Search Mailtrag Home Pages Search Generated by Mailtrag 0 8 7 73 on Monday April 6 1998 14 98 55 Cra Document Done M7 The Web Crawler can also monitor loc
59. the user is permitted to alter them would allow them to capture mail sent to other addresses This option allows the user to change the textual description of their mailbox This only affects how the mailbox is listed in the Web Administrator the Mailtraq Console and any public lists issued Configuring Mail Slots Setting the Mail Slot EEE File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Description Maitrag Web Achninistrator Administrator Main Menu Mailslots Mailbox Johns John Smith Mailbox Description Set the description of this mail slot It should either be descriptive of the slot purpose or if the object is the primary mail slot for a person it should be the person s name Mailbox Description John Smith Apply Reset Generated by Mailtrag 0 8 7 72 on Friday April 3 1998 20 19 46 Gaa Mailbox This option allows users to have mail sent to their mailboxes Forwa rding automatically forwarded to other addresses Un check the Store in mailbox option to have the mail passed on to the listed recipients without keeping a copy in the mailbox Configuring the e Hebei Mailbox Ssa File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Mailbox Forwarding jja 2 amp 2 ala facility Mailrag Web Adminisiralor Ackninistrator Main Menu Mailslots Mailbox Johns John Smith Mail Forwarding Use this facility to forward messages or copie
60. them with the Do function as described on page 252 Syntax PostMessage sender rcpts content sender The value to place in the envelope s sender field repis The e mail addresses to which the message is to be sent content The expression to be executed in the context of the new message Examples The example below returns a message to the sender of the trigger message indicating that the e mail address they used was not found Note that the MsgGetSender function is executed in the context of the trigger message while the SetHeader function which is part of the content parameter is executed in the context of the new message PostMessage postmaster MsgGetSenderQ Do SetHeader Subject Address Unavailable MsgAddLineC The address you specified was not found MsgAddLineC Your original message is quoted below MsgAddLine MsgAddLine OriginalMessage 25 The example below shows how the value of the content parameter is added to the new message Here the content of the text file is read and forms the body of the new message Note that While returns a 280 LoadMessage LoadHeader Message Handling Functions concatenation of its contents and since the Read function does not return the line break it must be added explicitly handle OpenFile c message txt PostMessage postmaster johns whi leCNot EOF Chandle Read
61. those services not discussed elsewhere in this guide including the TCP IP proxy tunnel and mail gateway services M Scripting This chapter introduces and defines the Mailtraq scripting language and includes a number of script examples and how to automate tasks with the system E Templates This chapter covers the automatically generated e mail messages and how to customise and extend them with the scripting language M Scripting Function Reference This chapter is a complete reference for every scripting function provided by the standard Mailtraq function library What is Mailtraq Mailtraq is a Messaging Server It sends receives and processes messages both E Mail and News Clients and Servers What is Mailtraq Mailtraq deals with two types of messaging E Mail and News E Mail is the well known mechanism which is very close to its traditional counterpart ordinary mail The only real difference is that e mail is nothing but digital information Just as with mail the messages are posted by you and then carried around the Internet by electronic postmen and delivery vans eventually finding their way to the intended recipient s mailbox As with ordinary mail the messages are posted and then passed around the Internet from one service to another eventually being delivered to the recipient whereas news is simply posted on a notice board for anyone to read E Mail and news are exactly the same with th
62. to copy for BounceOption create The rules used for the Mail Sorting facility The maximum size of incoming mail to accept or the size which mail is broken into Specifies the way Mailtrag handles Internet Dialup dialup Use DUN to connect direct Permanent connection sync Synchronised Times virtual Virtual Network none No Internet Connection Enable Disable the option to copy outgoing mail to a local mailbox 297 Scripting Function Reference 298 Mail Slots mailslots slot OutgoingForwardUser RASEntry RASScheduleEnable RemoteSMTP RemoveMailslot SenderBarring SenderBarringMessage SenderBarringRcpt String String Boolean String String W List String List The username to forward copies of outgoing mail to Current DUN connection Enable Disable dial up schedules The outbound mail server Delete the specified mail slot List of sender addresses to bar The reason to give when an address is barred List of recipient addresses to bar These variables provide access to the Mail Slots in Mailtrag Mail Slots are referred to by their name identifier For example mailslots johns description may return John Smith Note that many variables only apply to certain types of Mail Slot Variable Password StoreMail EnableForwarding ForwardTo Members Administrators Aliases AddSubscriber arDefault arlndexDate arlndexSender arlndexSize arLimitAdministration
63. which provide the hierarchical structure under the Mail tree are used for logical grouping and to apply the accounting controls to the mail slots they contain 125 Administration Topics 126 Creating Mail Slots Importing Mailboxes To add a new mail slot or mail group select the mail group under which you wish to add it and select the mail slot type from the New option in the File menu View Options Actions Tools Windows Help a S Deer Maibor Mailing List k Run Script Mail Archive Close Console Alt F4 Mail Group Shutdown Server Finger Record Web Crawler You can easily change the mail group in which a mail slot or group appears by dragging it between owners If you are migrating from another mail server or already have a list of mailboxes you wish to create this can be a quick and effective way to get started You will need to have a text file containing a list of at least the mailbox identifiers Mailtraq can also extract full names and passwords providing the text file is in a comma separated format and each row contains details for one mailbox The Import Mailboxes dialogue Managing Mail Slots An example is shown below johns John Smith js321 janes Jane Simpson js123 chloeh Chloe Hall ch332 estherm Esther Mccarthy em227 janeh Jane Hammersmith jh833 janniced Jannice Dubcek jd234 juliej Julie Johnson 33423 katep Kate Pearson kp844 kev
64. will not be able to determine where to send a message until it has a dial up connection and it can look up a Mail Exchange from a Domain Name Server DNS 49 The Console To show the progress of each message a different icon is displayed at each stage as illustrated below The stages tbound a T Un routed message mail routing G Route selected but no Mail Server yet Ll T Mail Server selected G 5 Delivery Failed will try again later 5 Very long delay sender notified Once a message has had a route assigned to it even if you change the routing tables the messages may not be updated You can clear the routing assignments with the Clear Host Assignments command from the Outgoing Mail context menu my Outgoing Mall Clear Host Assignments Properties ns Subscriptions The News Subscriptions contain both local news groups and J Subscript subscriptions to news groups on remote news servers One level below the Subscriptions spy Local Groups subscriptions object are the news servers news isp co uk gt comp lang c _ fps developments These objects refer to the servers from which Mailtraq will collect news _ 2 uk adverts computer The first news server will always be Local Groups which contains the groups that are maintained only on this server When a news group is selected the List View will display the news articles currently stored by Mailtrag The inf
65. 0 8 7 72 on Saturday April g 1998 02 18 43 Receive Binaries Send Binaries Digest multipart digest Digest text plain Public Listing Conceal Apply Reset NMOOOSsSOOOOOssO Caa Document Done The left window pane shows the current subscribers You can click on the column headings to sort according to that column and if there are more subscribers than can be shown in one page the page control icons will appear The right window pane shows the details of an individual subscriber To select a subscriber click on the icon To delete one or more subscriber check the Delete boxes in the rightmost column and then click on Delete Selection en changin e individual subscription settings don t forget to use When changing the individual subscript ttings don t forget t the Apply button to save the changes 204 List Settings Configuring a Mailing List Distribution Type List Maintainer Configuring Mail Slots This facility allows you to configure the general mailing list settings E Netscape sales settings File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help gfo A 2 Maitrag Web Administrator Adranisirator Main Menu Mailslots Mailing List sales Sales Team Mailing List Settings Mailing List Description Sales Team Distribute messages to one subscriber at a time List Maintainer the person who receives error messages postmaster De
66. 00 108 i dne1 isp com das2 isp com Move Down Add Delete Address Spec ee IW Use Me Host Lookups Local Area Network DNS Machines drs1 isp com dns2 isp com Cache for 30 3 days Keep trying every eo minutes for up to E hours notify after 24 hours W Fallback on the default smart host if this route fails Filter Help OK Cancel Normal routes consist of a list of mail servers to attempt delivery to MX Routes however create the list of mail servers during delivery by obtaining a list of MX hosts from the specified DNS Machines The MX 109 Mail Delivery 110 Parallel Mail Delivery Routes are cached in the Dynamic Routing Table It is important to enable the Fallback on Smart Host option for MX Routes as Mailtraq is not always able to retrieve MX records for a given e mail address Setting the option to fallback on the Smart Host means that the currently configured Smart is implicitly added to the list of mail servers for the route Once a mail route has been assigned to a message that is the only route it can use It is possible to clear the assigned routes manually through the Mailtraq Console by selecting Clear Host Assignments from the Outbox context menu During delivery the messages are tagged with each host in their mail route in turn Once all routes have been exhausted the message is delayed for the specified period before the process starts again with the first mail se
67. Colour t Colour Red Submit Query Submit Query Cultivar Region Colour Price Stock Cultivar Region Colour Price Stock Cabernet Sauvignon Bulgaria Red 6 25 15 Cabernet Sauvignon Bulgaria Red 6 25 15 Shiraz Austraia Red 5 504 Shiraz Australia Red 5 50 4 Pinotage South Africa Red 5 25 6 Sauvignon Blanc France White 5 00 7 Cria Document Done A Cria Document Done 262 Scripting Function Reference This chapter provides a complete reference for all the functions available in the Mailtrag Scripting Language Functions added by plug ins should be documented in the accompanying literature To ease reading all the functions are identified by a pair of empty parentheses following them For example the function While will always be written as While 263 Scripting Function Reference Language Constructs 264 Do Syntax i In the Mailtrag Scripting language functions can be passed as parameters and they will be executed only when a result is required from them Mailtraq doesn t have any language constructs built in but all of these can be handled with the use of functions as parameters For example most languages have a while construct which repeats the expressions it contains until the evaluator becomes false Mailtrag instead provides a While function which takes an expression which it repeatedly evaluates Where a single parameter is available and you wish to pass several function
68. Example CallDLLFunction 306 This function is very similar to ExecuteAsync in that it is used to run a program without waiting for it to terminate However this command concentrates on files or documents rather than the applications used with them Essentially the given parameters are passed to the Windows Shell to be handled rather than by calling the application directly This also makes it possible for the Shell to select an appropriate program to run for a given filename For example given the filename of a text document the Shell may open it using Notepad or Wordpad You can also run specific programs using this function but you do not need to know their filenames providing the Shell can locate them ShellExecute filename parameters filename The filename of the document to be opened or the application to be executed If the filename is an application in the Windows Path you do not need to give a full path name for it parameters Optional parameters given to the application eventually called by the Shell This example is similar to that shown in Execute The advantage is that you don t need to know where the text editor is located or even what text editor has been registered Note that the Shell will select an application based upon the file s extension i e txt in this example If you wish to edit a text file that does not end in this extension you will need to specify the application as s
69. Files f KASO Queue Mode i Pegasus Gateway Gateway Directory to place message files in mailkkadq F Real Fath T i a Mailtraq supports three output formats KA9Q Route KA9Q Queue and Pegasus The KA9Q Route option simply appends messages to a file named after the mailbox The KA9Q Queue and Pegasus modes create a separate file for each message in the specified directory The only difference between these two modes is the filename KA9Q files end in txt while Pegasus files end in cnm Mailing Lists and Archives These two types of mail slots share many properties with mailboxes They accept mail addressed to them and they can even use aliases to accept mail that is not addressed to them However these two objects are discussed in detail in Chapter 11 9 Mail Slots Mailing List Properties z Mailing List Properties Dialogue General Digeste Aliases Addresses cts Subscribers Access Messages iP Mailing lists can be used to distribute messages eo to subscribers at any address The maintainer Will receive delivery and transport messages List Mame projects dep Description Projects Department List Maintainer postmaster K f Distibute incoming messages to all subscribers f Distibute evenly between subscribers Owner Local Directory Visibility Administrator Protected LAN hi e J Accounting and Mail Groups If you manage e mail for a large organis
70. If the message is accepted it will be sent to all the appropriate subscribers Mailtraq does this by creating a duplicate of the original message and changing the envelope recipients Mailtraq may also depending on the configuration alter various header fields as appropriate The result is a single message addressed to a number of people which is why you will see only one message in the outbox During the delivery of the message Mailtraq may split it into multiple messages depending on how outbound mail is routed As discussed on page 109 you may enable MxX resolution where messages are sent to the recipient s designated mail host Without MX resolution a single message will be sent to your smart host but with MX resolution enabled Mailtraq may have to deliver 156 The List Maintainer Even Distribution Mailing Lists in Mailtrag a large number of messages Usually this is comparatively inefficient depending on the mail hosts involved and can result in more time being spent on the delivery process What happens when a subscriber closes their e mail account without first leaving the mailing list The correct procedure is for the mail server responsible for their account to return a delivery failure report This is usually sent to the message envelope s sender If the message were sent from the mailing list you would expect the mailing list to be the sender However this would mean that the delivery re
71. James woods Accounts Department nExt 145 243 Scripting Using Scripts Manually Executing a Script Automatically Executing a Script 244 In the next section we will examine how to install and use this script Scripts can be called manually by the user automatically either scheduled or as a result of some trigger or they can be embedded in templates The templates are discussed in the next chapter and the following sections will examine the manual and automatic execution of scripts You can execute any script using the Run Script command from the File menu of the Mailtraq Console You can also execute a script while Mailtrag is running by running a script file from the Windows Explorer Files with the extension mtq are associated with Mailtraq s scripting service and when you double click on such a file in Explorer Mailtraq will be sent a message telling it to execute the script View Options Actions Tools Windows Help New b Delete Del Properties Alt E nter Close Console Alt F4 Shutdown Server This way of executing scripts is not very useful as the purpose behind scripts is the ability to repeat them If you visit the Scripts and Templates dialogue from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console you will find where the scripts are configured The Scripts Tab Scripts and Templates The Automated Scripts Tab Scripts and Templates Using Scripts In the Scripts tab you will see a
72. Mail Extensions Part Two Message Header Extensions for Non ASCII Text September 1993 K Moore University of Tennessee This document describes the means by which information types and formats are identified in MIME messages 319 Bibliography RFC2068 dratt barber nntp 320 Hypertext Transfer Protocol HTTP 1 1 January 1997 R Fielding J Gettys J Mogul H Frystyk T Berners Lee U C Irvine Digital Equipment Corporation MIT LCS This is the standard for HTTP version 1 1 which is the basis for Web File transfers Mailtrag supports HTTP 1 1 but also makes some client requests in the form of HTTP 1 0 Common NNTP Extensions S Barber Academ Consulting Services This Internet Draft provides details on many of the current extensions to the NNTP system RFC977 All the extensions implemented by Mailtrag are documented in this draft Index A Accounting Active Connections Address Re Writing Administration Administration Topics Web Administrator Advanced Routing Table Aliases Announcements Archives ADD Command DIGEST Command INDEX Command Introduction SEND Command Article Threads Automated Scripts Automatic Schedules Autoresponders B Bandwidth Barring Bouncing Break Into Partials Browsers s JDL 92 45 102 121 124 110 85 161 172 172 171 169 171 147 246 68 89 142 99 313 107 108 177 C
73. Miailtrag User Guide Trademarks Conditions of Use Credits Mailtrag is a trademark of Fastraq Limited Microsoft Windows the Windows logo and Windows NT are registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation Netscape and Navigator are trademarks of the Netscape Communications Corporation Mailtraq is supplied with a license and may only be used in accordance with that license or a written agreement from Fastraq Limited You may install the Mailtraq Software and make a single backup of the software but the backup copy may not be used simultaneously with the installed Mailtraq software The Mailtraq Software is protected by International Copyright Law Copyright 1996 1998 Fastraq Limited All Rights Reserved Project Manager Developer Elric Pedder Documentation Editors Daniel Lyon Janet Brink On Line Documentatin Jim Hill Original Artwork Marilyn Heeger Thanks Mailtraq project Alan English David Zymous Allan Reynolds Duncan Dewar Andrew McKay Edmund Broadley Ann Marie Joiner Edward Betts Anne Pollard Edward Laauwen Barry Salter Emma Kane Ben Smithurst Ben Vincent Bob North Brenton Milne Brian Orpin Carl Whalley Chris Coward Chris Malme Christopher Bone Christopher Partington Colin Kelly Colin Mansell Darren Meldrum Dave Wheeler David Barfoot David Hughes David Symons Frank Murray Geoff Percival George Poulson Hugh Spencer Ian Thomas Jason Coombes Jasper Metselaar Jim Hill John Blackmo
74. Str TimeToReal UserOf While WildcardMatch Write G Gateways KA9Q Mail To News News To Mail Pegasus Go Offline Command Go Online Command H Home Pages Hops Host Assignments HTML HTTP GET Command Overview POST Command PUT Command HyperText Markup Language See HTML HyperText Transport Protocol See HTTP 278 305 308 289 287 289 292 267 286 274 230 146 144 231 232 67 39 184 111 176 228 187 177 187 165 323 Idle Timeout Importing Mailboxes Inbound Router Installation Wizard Internet Connection Internet Service Providers ISDN K KAIQ L Large Messages Latency Leased Line List Commands Members Resume Set Status Subscribe Suspend Unsubscribe List Mirroring List View Local News Groups Local Router Logging Method M Mail Barring Mail Exchange 324 63 67 s 126 97 107 16 39 EARANN al 91 230 107 108 111 142 aD 167 167 166 166 165 167 166 147 43 148 98 129 101 About MX Lookups MX Resolution Routing Mail Forwarding Mail Gateways Mail Gateweys Mail Groups Mail Hops Mail Routes Mail Slots Aliases Archives Auto Expiry Introduction Mailing Lists The newsserver Ownership Postmaster The mailserver Visibility Mailbox Providers Mailboxes Mailing Lists Announcements Contr
75. Up Networking File Edit View Go Favorites Connections Help E J D w ie ca B aaax Address I Dial Up Networking J 59 Make News ISP Line 1 ISP Line 2 3 objectis Your ISP will have provided details for configuring a DUN connection and you should have already done this before configuring Mailtraq By now you should have at least one entry in your DUN or RAS phone book that will connect your machine to your ISP All you need to do is tell Mailtraq which of your phone book entries it can use You will have been asked to select one entry in the Installation Wizard but you can configure others from the Dialup Properties from the Options menu in the Mailtrag Console For each entry you must also provide an account name and password even if you have already entered these elsewhere Whenever Mailtraq needs to go online it will simply initiate one of these connections Additionally if it detects that one of the connections is active then it will make use of it Installing Mailtrag This chapter covers the installation of the Mailtraq server and the most essential configuration Mailtrag helps users get started by providing an Installation Wizard to assist with the most important configuration options providing step by step instruction and ensuring that the basic configuration settings will be effective Essential Configuration As mentioned in the introduction in order to get Mailtr
76. Web Acminisiralor Administrator J Main Menu Mailslots Mailbox johns John Smith Mailbox Message Expiry W Enable Message Expiry Expire after 46 hours Notify the message sender when their message expires M Forward expired messages to ianes enderson com Apply Reset Grial Document Done Ea Mailbox Aliases Setting the Mail Slot Aliases Configuring Mail Slots You can also notify users when the messages they sent have been expired which is an important part of the principle that e mail never simply be lost Having expired messages forwarded to someone else can be a useful way to ensure that the mail sent to certain mailboxes is always read as soon as possible for example forwarding mail in an important mailbox to a colleague if it hasn t been read within a certain period This facility allows users to easily configure their mailboxes to receive mail under several identities without having to centrally control the feature in for example the Address Re Writing system Netscape johns settings File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help lt al 2 Maitrag Web Adhainistrator Administrator Main Menu Mailslots Mailbox johns John Smith Mailbox Aliases Aliases are alternative names by which this mailslot can be reached More than one mailslot may share an alias Aliases johnsmith john smith smith webmaster Apply Reset Fray
77. access are determined by their settings in the User Manager available from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console The owner s of mailboxes and those with System Administration privileges can modify various day to day mailbox settings in the Web Administrator 195 The Web Administrator 196 Configuring the Mailbox Properties The Mailbox Description Netscape Mailbox Configuration File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Maitragq Web Administrator Achnisirator Main Menu Mailslots johns John Smith Configure the mailbox properties Select one of the options below to configure the corresponding properties Mailbox Description Configure the descriptive name of the mailbox Mailbox Forwarding Configure forwarding of messages to other mailboxes Select whether or not to store messages that are forwarded from this mailbox Auto Responder Configure an automatic reply to mail messages For example a vacation or away message Mailbox Password Change the password used when collecting mail from this mailbox Auto Expiry Control when messages in the mailbox are automatically deleted Mailbox Aliases Select alternative names by which the mailbox can be addressed frig Document Done The options that can be set here other than the Mailbox Aliases will not influence any other mailbox settings It is important to note that the Mailbox Aliases if
78. ach time the content is evaluated the result is appended to the function result This is similar to the while do construct found in many languages result While continuation content continuation An expression evaluated just before each cycle which will terminate the loop if the result is false content An expression which is evaluated each cycle loop with the result being appended to the function output result The concatenation of the result from each cycle This function is very similar to the While function with the exception that the continuation expression is evaluated at the end of each cycle The loop is terminated when this expression returns true This is similar to the familiar repeat until construct found in many languages 265 Scripting Function Reference Syntax result Repeat content continuation content An expression which is evaluated each cycle loop with the result being appended to the function output continuation An expression evaluated after each cycle which will terminate the loop if the result is true For This function iterates through each item in the given list setting the given variable to the current item each cycle It is a looping function similar to While and Repeat where the content expression is evaluated each cycle Syntax result For list varname content list A comma separated list of items to be iterated through varname The name of the variable
79. acter To use the parts of the original addresses that were matched by the wildcards you can use the placeholder For multiple wildcards you can use the placeholders 1 through 9 103 Mail Delivery The table below illustrates a few examples Wildcard Expression Replacement Expression Example enderson com enderson2 com john enderson1 com to john enderson2 com host enderson com host enderson com john host enderson com to john host enderson com enderson com 1 2 enderson com john sales enderson com to john sales enderson com All the rules are applied in order which means that if an address matches more than one wildcard expression then both rules will be applied gt Note since the address re writing is part of the Inbound Router it is possible for the same message to have the re writing rules applied more than once For example using the rule enderson com host enderson com could be applied twice rewriting john enderson com to john host host enderson com Message Sorting This facility changes the message recipients based upon message filters Message filters are able to match messages based upon a set of criteria such as the message size or subject or the presence of keywords in the message body 104 The Inbound Router Message Sorting Inbox Properties E Ea Inbound Mail Policy Undelivered Mail Baring Rewriting Sorting Options r This sorting method re addr
80. address or they can be routed based upon who the message is addressed to Since the message envelope is usually lost when the message is stored in the 115 Mail Delivery 116 Use these header fields to identify recipients Use the ENV extension mailbox Mailtraq provides a number of options to determine the recipients This option allows Mailtraq to select the message recipients by searching for e mail addresses in the specified header fields These fields are listed below one per line Normally Mailtraq would extract the e mail addresses from the To and CC header fields However there is a problem with this method While these fields indicate to whom the message was written for they do not necessarily indicate to whom this specific message is addressed Consider for example sending a message to a mailing list The To field would therefore show the name of the mailing list Unfortunately once the message is distributed by that list the To field continues to point to the list Clearly sending that message to the contents of the To header is not the required action Some service providers add a field to the message header showing the message recipients If your service provider supports this then simply enter this field name and no others into the list Mailtraq supports the Demon ENV extension to POP3 which allows the original envelope to be retrieved This command is currently only used by a small n
81. ag up and running and carrying messages safely there are actually very few things that must be configured Everything else can be refined over time while Installing Mailtrag the system is actually in use The Installation Wizard makes sure you give Mailtraq the most vital details and provides enough configuration to get the system operational with as little effort as possible This chapter will concentrate on the Installation Wizard You should refer to the following chapters for help with the other systems configuration You don t have to use the Installation Wizard at all if you do not wish to do so but you must ensure that the issues discussed in the previous chapter are configured before you begin using Mailtraq If you skip the Installation Wizard the default settings will be applied The Installation Wizard The host machine is the 16 machine on which Mailtrag is to be run Instructions on how to begin the installation process can be found with the distribution CD The first stage of the installation process is to install Mailtraq on to the host machine This involves steps such as entering the registration details selecting a destination directory and selecting the components of Mailtrag to be installed The second stage of installation involves the initial Mailtraq configuration The Installation Wizard can assist by asking a series of questions and then performing the essential configuration
82. aken from the From field When subscribing by proxy it is not possible to extract this information from the message so it can be given explicitly Mailtrag will assume that the first parameter is the Sending address If another parameter is given and it looks like an e mail address it will be interpreted as the Reply To address If a parameter is provided within quotation marks it will be interpreted as the subscriber s name 163 Mailing Lists 164 Confirming Subscriptions Secure Lists Subscription Commands Here is an example command sent to mailserver subscribe new products john enderson com john lists enderson com John Smith Here is the same command sent in the subject line to new products subscribe john enderson com john lists enderson com John Smith Occasionally users will subscribe to mailing lists without providing a correct return address This may be due to an error on their part or perhaps a malicious attack on your system By confirming subscriptions each subscriber s address can be verified The confirmation process works by returning a message describing the confirmation process to the new subscriber The message subject line is set to the subscription command but with an authenticator attached The message asks the recipient to simply reply if they wish to join the list When the reply is received the command will be accepted only if a valid authenticator string is a
83. al from separator The string that separates the parts of the original string index The offset of the partial to return Example The examples below show extraction using a single and multiple character separators The index begins at zero Params Mon Tue wed Thu Fri 2 wed II a Params A B C D E 2 ListCou nt This function is used to determine the number of items in a list Lists are used frequently in the scripting language but are nothing more than a string containing items optionally surrounded by quotes separated by commas Syntax count ListCount isi list A list of items separated by commas count The number of items in the list Listltem This function extracts a single item from a list excluding any quotes if they exist The item numbering starts at O Syntax item Listltem list index list The list of items index The offset of the required item in the list item The returned item from the list 286 StrCmp Syntax DateTimeToReal DateToReal TimeToReal String Manipulation This function compares two strings and returns an integer value indicating which is the greater alphabetically If the first string is less than the second the result is negative If the second string is greater the result is positive greater than zero The result is only zero if the two strings are the same This function should be used in preference
84. al web sites such as those provided by the Mailtraq web server The advantage for this is that the sites as with any web site can be indexed and the user can search for keywords When the user clicks on the Search link they will be asked to enter one or more keywords Mailtraq will then scan its index of that site for matching keywords and display links to the pages it has found 213 The Web Administrator Mailtrag can only provide the searching mechanism for web pages that it has crawled b s Netscape Web Search of x File Edt View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Searching for keywords in a Web Site Maitraq Web Admimisiralor Guest Main Menu Site List Web Search Search indexed web sites for keywords or phrases Enter a list of words to search for science Search 18 matching documents were found 1 MSNBC Can this man simplify science Atte Awww msnbc com news l 43808 asp Harvard University evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould Can this man simplify science 2 MSNBC Clinton urges renewed war on cancer REED www msnbc com snews 1 43 714 asp Clinton urges renewed war on cancer President tells scientists his plan would cut smoking deaths President Clinton 3 MSNBC New Dolly may be only months away Atte Awww msnbc com news l 43668 asp New Dolly may be only months away Cloning pioneer looks to silence critics with another animal 4 MSNBC Looking into cos
85. an themselves be parameters to other functions Unlike many languages when passing a function as a parameter you are not passing the result of the function but the function itself These parameter functions are executed only when a result is needed and can be repeatedly executed if necessary In Mailtrag functions are identified by textual names followed immediately by parameters enclosed within parentheses There should be no space between the name of the function and the opening parenthesis 235 Scripting 236 Operators Variables and even if no parameters are being passed a pair of parentheses must follow a function name Another important part of the scripting language is the operator Operators are actually quite similar to functions in that they are given parameters and return a result However in order to make them easier to read operators are placed between their parameters instead of prefixing them The statement 1 2 3 4 5 shows a number of operators in action The scripting language also includes variables These are portions of data into which the results of functions and operators can be placed Mailtraq often also inserts data into predefined variables before scripts are called Variables do not have to be declared before they are used they are simply created when first referenced For example the statement x 1 2 results in the variable x holding the value 3 Var
86. an have any number of commands in a single control message to mailserver providing each is on a separate line in the message body Control Messages to the List Subscribing Subscription by Mail You can also send the control messages to the mailing list itself but this is not as versatile as sending them to mailserver You can only place the command in the subject line of the message and with the exception of subscribe and unsubscribe the command must be prefixed with an This identifies the command from a normal message Naturally you don t need to specify the name of the mailing list when doing this To subscribe to a mailing list you simply need to post a subscribe control message as described above In order to subscribe other people to a list you will need to append their details to the command This is called subscription by proxy and must be enabled in the mailing list properties For example sending the command subscribe new products john enderson com to mailserver will add john enderson com to the new products list When you send a normal subscription message Mailtraq extracts your subscription details from the message headers The sending address is set first to the Sender field if present or alternatively the From field The Reply To address is taken logically from the Reply To field if present or alternatively the From field The subscribers real name is also t
87. aq 0 8 2 54 id FSTR97196A94 a O Mon 26 Jan 1998 15 00 57 0000 _ O Header Fields A E a a ae l md Received from post 10 mail demon net 194 217 242 154 VY by punt 2 mail demon net id aa0616787 26 Jan 98 14 01 GMT PN Le Received from smartdrive demon co uk 194 222 222 105 by post mail demon net LO id aa1025750 26 Jan 98 14 00 GMT k Received from 110ct 100 100 100 9 by smartdrive co uk S with SMTP Mailtraq 0 8 3 56 id SMRT971748D182 A Mon 26 Jan 1998 13 57 01 0000 Ym g From Dan Lyon lt dan smartdrive co uk gt S To Elric Pedder lt elric fastraq co uk gt PN Subject Example Message ao i Message ID lt SMRT971748D184 smartdrive co uk gt i Date Mon 26 Jan 1998 13 54 24 0000 gt X MSMail Priority Normal g X Priority 3 aN Ko X Mailer Microsoft Internet Mail 4 70 1161 he MIME Version 1 0 ee A Content Type text plain charset ISO 8859 1 ee i oe C A Content Transfer Encoding 7bit oe I X Hops 2 p 5 This message contains an example of tk nee headers found in an e mail Notice a received headers one added f s has carried the m 13 Introducing E Mail Simple Mail Transfer Protocol 14 SMTP is the Internet standard for e mail transport and this is how Mailtraq handles mail delivery While SMTP may be a very simple protocol it has been proven through many years of use and it provides a remarkably reliable transport service T
88. articles to the news server and Mailtraq will either store them in local groups or forward them to other news servers The NNTP Network News Transfer Protocol service provides access to the news server for the news clients and can be configured in the Services dialogue accessed from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console News readers will normally have access to the news groups listed in the properties for the Guest user Users in the Options menu If the news reader supports user password authentication very few news readers do not then the user can log on to their user account and access the news groups listed there The Mailtraq News Server The illustration below shows the User Properties for the Guests Setting News Group User Properties HEI access in the User Properties Mews Groups web Services P roperties dialogue You may configure which news groups this user can read and post to Limit read access to these news groups wildcards service alt Limit posting to these news groups wildcards local se oea The standard wildcard list format is used see page 77 for more information on wildcards By prefixing a line with a tilde it can be excluded from the list In the above example the users are able to read any groups except those starting with service and those starting with alt Posting News Users may post articles with thei
89. ated by the sender If you wish to collect mail instead of receiving it from your service provider how do you stop it sending the mail anyway This is done by deciding which machines can use the service and denying that service to your service provider s machines This is handled most effectively through a firewall discussed on page 192 Introduction Service Provider receives messages for your domain Service Provider continuously attempts to deliver mail to your machine lt You can also collect mail upon demand in cases where your machine cannot have mail sent to it Service Provider holds your messages in a mail store Service Provider attempts to deliver messages directly but also stores messages for collection as an alternative Internet E Mail You are probably quite familiar with e mail addresses They are in the Addresses form user domain If you think of the e mail address as being the address on an ordinary envelope the user part is the name of the recipient and the domain part is the geographical address The Postman who is delivering your letter doesn t know anything about the person mentioned on the envelope but he probably knows how to find the address Once the letter gets pushed through the door it is up to the people inside who hopefully know the recipient to select who will read it This is similar to how mail delivery works on the Internet The domains are the pla
90. ateway allows email messages to be ne automatically pasted to the news group W Enable Mail to News Gateway The email address of this gateway is uk adverts computer enderson com we cren This special mail slot is another gateway to convert e mail messages to news articles Unlike the normal Mail To News gateways the newsserver will forward mail for any news group You will need to use the Newsgroups header in the same way as an ordinary news article Multiple groups can be specified by separating them with commas Both the Mail To News and newsserver gateways cannot authenticate the article senders Therefore only the news groups specified in the default user settings can be posted to There is a particularly important aspect common to both news groups and discussion forums users frequently reply to each other s messages creating discussion threads Almost every news client takes advantage of this by grouping threads together in some way greatly enhancing the readability of the news group However this is often a feature left out of mail clients and many news clients cannot process e mail 147 The News System Creating a New Local 148 News Group Mailtraq provides an effective solution by allowing a mailing list to be mirrored in a local news group This has other advantages too For example all users on a local network can access the mailing list whenever they wish reducing the volume o
91. ation with a large number of users even the task of finding mail slots can become complex Once you have more than a few mail slots it may be easier to group these together in some logical fashion Mail Groups also have another purpose they allow you to perform basic accounting tasks You can create a hierarchy of mail slots by placing mail groups within other mail groups Each mail slot is subject to the immediate group in which it is located Each mail group can impose limits on its mailboxes such as the number and volume of mail sent out and the volume of mail stored within the mailbox Itis also possible to keep records on the mailbox usage 92 Accounting and Mail Groups Mail Group Properties Mail Group Properties EE Dialogue Mail Group Mail groups allow you to create logical groups of mail slots and manage mailbox accounting on 4 group by group basis Mail Group projects Description Projects Department Enable Mailbox Accounting ee e a If you decide to enable accounting on a mail group you can have a summary of the mailbox usage for that group sent to an e mail address at regular periods This may be an effective way to monitor the use of your system and to charge people for their use of your system The Mail Group Mail Group Properties 3x Mail Group Properties 7 x Accounting Opti ons Mail Group Accounting Mailboxes Mail Group Accounting Mailboxes The accounting period
92. ave a look at error handling There are generally two types of errors in most programming languages syntactic and semantic Syntactic errors are problems with the syntax of the script Essentially the syntax is what the script looks like as opposed to what it does For example if you leave out a comma between two parameters it is a syntactic error Mailtraq can spot syntactic errors easily because it has a set of rules to follow and as long as a script passes these rules i e looks correct then even if it doesn t work at least Mailtrag can execute it Mailtraq cannot execute a script that has syntactic errors and to help you identify them it provides a graphing tool In the Scripts and Templates dialogue available from the Options menu in the console you will find a Graph button for both templates and scripts This facility will take a script and draw it as Mailtraq has interpreted the script Places where Mailtraq has become confused because of syntactic errors are highlighted with the word lt ERROR gt Semantic errors on the other hand cannot be spotted by Mailtrag Such errors would include for example requesting a message line that does not exist The script looks as though it is OK but when it is actually used no line would be found and is therefore an error Mailtraq does what it can to keep operating so invariably semantic errors are simply ignored If you refer to a message line that doesn t exist a
93. barring applies to the message envelope not the headers It is perfectly feasible for the envelope s sender to be different to the From header When selecting addresses to bar based on mail you have received you should use the Return Path header if it is displayed Alternatively you can examine the Mailtraq logs to determine the sender s address Mail Re writing is an opportunity to change the recipient of a message based upon a set of rules For example you might want all mail that was addressed to enderson1 com to be sent instead to enderson2 com Another example might be to change all mail addressed to host enderson com to be sent to enderson com but with the name host appended to the user name Address Re Writing Inbound Mail Policy The Inbound Router Inbox Properties EIEI Undelivered Mail Baring Fe writing Sorting Options In some environments it may be useful to alter 7 certain email addresses based upon user defined expressions Rewrite mail addresses with these expressions Address Expression Address Spec Replacement Add E ea This is achieved using a series of rules defined using wildcards and placeholders Each rule consists of a wildcard expression to match the original address and a replacement expression to provide its new address The wildcard character represents zero or more characters while the wildcard character represents a single char
94. based upon the data you enter Internet Service Provider Profiles Domain Name and Aliases The Installation Wizard Remember that you can change any aspect of the Mailtrag configuration through the console after you have completed the installation You will not be tied to the settings you enter in the Installation Wizard The Installation Wizard has profiles of many Internet Service Providers These profiles supply Mailtraq with information such as the names of mail hosts web cache services and domain name servers If your service provider is not listed you should select the Not Listed entry rather than a similar service provider Your ISP s technical support service will also be able to provide this information This stage of the Installation Wizard involves setting the Domain name that Mailtraq will manage There are two purposes for this Firstly Mailtraq must be able to recognise the mail that is it s responsibility Any e mail address that Mailtraq does not recognise will be sent to another mail server Secondly Mailtraq must be able to sign messages it generates with a domain that other mail servers will be able to recognise should return messages need to be sent 17 Installing Mailtrag 18 Outbound Mail Delivery Mailtraq Installation X host name and aliases e What is the network name of your host Mailtrag lt gt Enter the aliases alternative names For your host for a exam
95. be moved in this manner This view shows the contents of the currently selected object in the Tree View An example of this is where the current object is a mailbox In this case the List View will show the messages contained in the mailbox 43 The Console Selecting objects using the Marquee method Changing the List View 44 style The illustration below shows a mailbox and how the familiar explorer marquee selection method can be used to select multiple messages From o ooo oo Subeta ooo oo DaterTime Size J Mary Tyler Fw Document Review Sat Jan 24 24264 4 Dean Ackland Fw Document Review Sat Jan 24 1201 Pf Gordon James Gratt s Courier Service to be changed Sat Jan 24 ess Jeremy Whatson Cuperting Courier Service Details Sat Jan 24 Ps Cupertino Weekly Catalogue Catalogue Number 55 Sat Jan 24 P Jane Hammersmith Christmas Party Sat Jan 24 The illustration above shows the Details view style You can change this for each type of object from the View menu 1 The example below shows the same mailbox displayed in the Small Icons style In any style other than Details only the caption beside the icon is shown You can change this with the Configure Columns item in the View menu Mailtraq Console Ioj xi File Options Actions Tools Windows Help m v Show Toolbar a amp x a Show Toolbar Captions a c List Details a 14 Mary Tyler 4 Dean Acklan
96. be released with CloseFile The null value is returned if the file could not be opened 270 CloseFile Syntax EOF Syntax DeleteFile Syntax File Handling Functions This function closes a file previously opened with OpenFile AppendFile or CreateFile Once a file handle has been closed the handle no longer has any meaning and should not be used Mailtraq will automatically close any open files at the end of each script although it is good practice to explicitly close any files opened for clarity Further when a file is open it cannot be deleted or emptied with CreateFile CloseFile handle handle This is the file identifier returned by a call to OpenFile AppendFile or CreateFile This function End Of File returns whether or not there is any further data available from the given file Only files opened with OpenFile can be used with this function Normally this would be used in a loop in conjunction with the Read function to retrieve all the contents from a file boolean EOF handle boolean true if there is more data to be read or false if the end of the file has been reached handle The file identifier obtained from an OpenFile call This function erases the specified file if it is not currently open Note that the parameter passed is the name of the file not a file handle DeleteFile path path The filing system name of the file to be deleted 27 Scrip
97. ber to that mailing list The problem is that if this address was extracted from the To header the message would be sent back to the mailing list and end up in an endless loop To solve this problem Mailtraq must be configured with a set of rules to ensure that messages to these addresses are correctly handled Alternatively all mail downloaded from a POP3 server can be forced into a single mailbox If you can overcome these problems then collection of mail via POP3 may indeed be viable SMTP is generally regarded as a more robust protocol than POP3 One reason is that if a problem occurs SMTP tells the client the nature of the problem POP3 can only indicate success or 19 Introducing E Mail failure There are defined standards for how to handle the different responses that SMTP generates such as returning a delivery failure report to the sender of the message or trying an alternative delivery route However once a message is downloaded via SMTP it is taken out of the mail server s queue and is no longer available Using POP3 it is possible to analyse the message headers and select only mail addressed to a specific person leaving the other messages for someone else to collect Below is a table comparing the facilities that these two protocols offer Feature SMTP POPS Unwanted or mis addressed mail can be returned to the sender Y N without downloading Mail can be refused based upon recipient or sender Y Y Mail
98. by breaking a connection once the message size has exceeded the specified limit and remembering to refuse the message next time it is offered This is not a foolproof method as the only information Mailtraq has to go on is the message envelope However since the envelope includes the sender s identity the worst that can happen is that other messages from that sender will be barred Mailtraq will only refuse the first message whose envelope matches that of a previous oversized message Preventing Duplicate Downloading with POP3 The POP3 Service Configuring Mail Clients The POP3 Service If your Internet Service Provider offers mail via both SMTP and POP3 and you have chosen to fetch it using POP3 then you are likely to receive duplicate messages arriving through SMTP Since there is little difference between the connections originating from your service provider and other machines it is not possible to simply have an option in Mailtraq to deal with this Instead you must configure a firewall on the SMTP service that denies access to your Internet Service Provider As long as you have defined the IP addresses for your local area network described on page 193 you can simply select the Local Area Network Only firewall option The Post Office Protocol version 3 is the most widespread Internet standard for e mail software to retrieve messages from a mailbox held on a mail server Mailtraq can provide POP3 access to
99. by the list sent to a different mailbox You have now created a subscription for the Mailing List Click OK to keep the new subscriber or click Cancel to erase it and discard the settings By default messages sent to this mailing list will now be sent to this subscriber in addition to any other subscribers configured You may modify the subscriber settings at any time by selecting it from the Mailing List Subscribers tab and clicking on Properties Creating an Archive Creating Mail Slots Archives are similar to mailboxes but instead of accessing the messages it contains from a mail client users can send e mail requests to retrieve them 1 Click on the File menu and select New Mail Archive The Archive Properties dialogue will appear Archive Properties HEJ Archive Members Administrators Auto Expiry Aliases Messages sent to the archive are stored and can be retrieved by control messages Archive Name products Archive Description Product Lists Permit Requests by Proxy Default Message Messages Reply To Owner Local Directory Visibility John Smith ha Public Anybody ta e oea 2 Inthe Archive Name edit box enter the identifier of the archive This is the name that appears before the symbol in the e mail address The identifier cannot contain any spaces or quotation marks and should consist only of letters and numbers if possible 3 Ente
100. can be refused based upon other header fields N Y Mail can be refused based upon message size N Y Mail can be left on the server after downloading N y 1 Mailtrag does provide facilities to defend against oversized messages by disconnecting the download after the message size has exceeded the set limits and barring the message next time delivery is attempted 2 Not all POP3 servers support this feature 80 Mail Gateways Mail Gateways Another method for delivering mail on Local Area Networks particularly those without TCP IP installed is the use of shared directories also called gateways Mailtraq supports a number of gateways including Pegasus and KA9Q The idea is that a program writes the message to a specific directory which is monitored by another program It is also possible to write simple custom e mail software that can communicate using this method as it is usually far easier to implement than the TCP IP solution 8 Introducing E Mail 82 Mail Slots This chapter explains Mailtraq s concept of Mail Slots which are the recipients of e mail in a messaging system The Mail Slots include Mailboxes Mailing Lists and Archives The following topics will be covered in this chapter The Post Master Mailbox Aliases Mailboxes Mailing Lists and Archives Accounting and Mail Groups 83 Mail Slots An Overview of the Mail Slots 84 Ownership Visibility Mailtraq s e mail s
101. can configure the other properties of the user account at any time by selecting the user account in the User Manager and clicking on Properties These properties are discussed later in this manual You should add all the users you wish to configure in the same way as described above Use the Copy button to create a duplicate of the currently selected user account Since the user details should be unique this is only useful if you wish to set the other user account properties such as the news group access Creating Mail Slots Creating Mail Slots In Mailtrag a Mail Slot is a recipient of e mail messages That is if a mail slot called johns is created then mail sent to johns yourdomain com will be handled by that Mail Slot Mailtraq offers three types of mail slot in addition to three special mail slots the postmaster mailserver and newsserver described later The three types are Mailboxes Mailing Lists and Archives Mailboxes are folders in which e mail messages are stored for users to collect with their mail clients 3 Quick Start Guide Creating A Follow these steps to create a new mailbox Mailbox 1 Click on the File menu and select New User Mailbox View Options Actions Tools Windows Help User Mailbox Ta Properties Alt Enter Mail G Run Script all Group Finger Record Close Console Alt F4 Shutdown Server Web Crawler The Mailbox Properties dialo
102. ceholders and to represent a series of unknown characters and a single unknown character 34 respectively Note the placeholder represents one or more matching characters Syntax match WildcardMatch string expr string The string to match expr The wildcard expression to use when matching string match A boolean value true or false indicating whether the given string matched the wildcard expression 284 Example SubStr Syntax Params String Manipulation This example shows a variety of wildcard expressions in use true_match wildcardMatch The quick brown fox quick J false_ match wildcardMatch The quick brown fox Rare eke 5 true_match wildcardmMatch The quick brown fox rfo This function returns a substring taken from the given string The position and length of the required substring are given as parameters sub SubStr string index length string The string from which a substring is to be extracted index The offset of the first character to extract from the string The index starts at 0 for the first character length The number of characters to extract This function divides the given string into parts according to the given separator and returns the indexed part 285 Scripting Function Reference Syntax part Params string separator index string The text string to extract a parti
103. ces on the Internet to which mail can be delivered and each domain is responsible for getting messages to the people there 10 What is Mailtraq Depending on your organisation and your Internet Service Provider you may be responsible for an entire domain or perhaps several domains For example Enderson Enterprises may have obtained the domain name enderson com from their service provider Thus they will be expected to receive mail for people enderson com for example john enderson com Mailtraq will need to know your domain name to determine which messages it is responsible for It will also need to know about all the other domains for which it is responsible For example the service provider may actually provide an account called enderson isp com and Enderson may have purchased the name enderson com in addition to that account They will therefore receive mail addressed to either Further they may have other names used only within their organisation for example a separate name for each machine Until Mailtrag has been given these names it won t know what to do with any mail it receives These names can be entered when asked by the Installation Wizard and they can be set in the Server Properties available from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console 11 Introduction 12 Setting the Local Domain and Aliases Getting On Line Server Properties El x machine is responsible and any machine
104. cility considerably improves the performance of news download A fair portion of the time spent downloading articles is actually taken by the news server searching for the requested article This adds to the latency of the connection By having Mailtrag download several articles at once the bandwidth available to your Internet connection is used more efficiently gt Note that the more connections are used the more memory is consumed by Mailtrag Additionally less bandwidth becomes available for other connections such as mail and web so a sensible balance should be selected The Collection Method is another important setting Before Mailtraq downloads articles from a news group it must determine which articles to download It does this by obtaining a list of the articles and making its selection from that Since Mailtraq is essentially trying to keep up to date the best method is to simply ask for a list of articles that have arrived since it last checked This is called the NEWNEWS method However this is not the most efficient method for many news clients who need enough information to allow the user to select articles This is usually done with the XOVER command which sends an overview of the News Collection articles Consequently many News Servers are optimised for the XOVER command Ifa server is not optimised for NEWNEWS it can be a great resource drain For this reason some servers do not permit clients to use
105. cking on the service in the Active Connections list The Mail Gateway is not a TCP IP service but instead monitors a directory for new files When a message is placed in the directory being monitored Mailtraq reads the file and processes it as an incoming mail message To add a new service click on the Add button and select the type of service from the popup menu that appears Post Office Protocol POPS Network News Transport Protocol NNTP HyperT ext Transport Protocol HTTP Gateway Services KAIO Pegasus TCPVIP Proxy Tunnel Remote Logging Service k User Information Server Finger When you click on the Properties button the service s configuration dialogue will appear The TCP IP services share many attributes which will appear in several of the configuration dialogues If this option is selected then when Mailtraq is loaded the service will be automatically started Any service can be started from the Tools menu of the Console 223 Network Services Port to listenon Unless you are providing an alternative or proxy service you should use the standard ports shown below Service Recommended Port SMTP 25 POP3 110 NNTP 119 HTTP 80 or 8080 for the proxy Finger 19 Remote Logging Any port over 5000 Proxy Tunnel Any port Mail Gateway N A Firewalls A firewall is one of the most basic forms of security for services and is an effective access control method It is als
106. criptive name of the mailbox Subscribers Add and remove subscribers and Alter subscriber properties and access permissions List Settings Configure List Name Distribution Type List Maintainer Reply and From Fields Access Control Configure Subscription by Mail List Moderator Guest and Default Subscribers Digest Control View Digest Contents Configure Digest Settings and Deliver the Digest Templates Edit the Subscription Unsubscription Acknowledgement and Help templates Change Mailbox Aliases Select alternative names by which the mailbox can be addressed Caa Document Done 203 The Web Administrator Subscribers This facility allows you to manage the subscribers of a list and alter the individual subscription settings Managing the Mailing 4 Netscape Mailing List Subscribers File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help List Subscribers ola 2 Maitrag Web Administrator Administrator Main Menu Mailslots Mailing List Mark James Email sales Sales Team nag Configure the mailing list subscribers Reply To marki Details Name Email Join Date Last Post Delete Jane Simpson janes 28 0198 28 0198 E Password 48652 Suspended Recipient Sender Admin Moderated Barred Digest John Smith johns 28 01 98 23 01 98 E Kate Pearson katep 28 01 98 28 01 98 E r Mark James markj 23 01 98 23 0198 Delete Selection Reset Generated by Matitrag
107. d 4 Gordon James 4 Jeremy Whatson Cupertino 8 Cupertino Weekly Catalogue 4 Jane Hammersmith 4 Information Desk Customise Configure Columns marketing projects D janes johns p mattk 9 philipt amp projects dep John Smith 7 objects 0 selected 7 0 46 26 03 98 08 00 to ISP Line 1 Z You can also rearrange the order of the columns in the Details view simply by dragging the column headings as illustrated below Changing the column order by dragging the column headings The Console Objects Date Time Size I Mary Tyler k Fw Document Review Sat Jan 24 24264 Dean Ackland Fw Document Review Sat Jan 24 1201 i Gordon James Gratt s Courier Service to be changed Sat Jan 24 9133 4 Jeremy Whatson Cupertino Courier Service Details Sat Jan 24 20462 4 Cupertino Weekly Catalogue Catalogue Number 55 Sat Jan 24 27636 Jane Hammersmith Christmas Party Sat Jan 24 579 Changing the column order in this way does not affect which column will be used as the caption in the other list views that must be done with the Configure Columns option As with the Tree View you can access a context menu by right clicking on an object in the List View You can also access these same commands from the File Menu when the object is currently selected gt Note The date column for a message shows when it arrived in the mailbox not when it was sent The Console Objects
108. d by Mailtrag 0 8 7 73 on Monday April 6 2998 13 33 59 Cela The articles are shown in the order that they appear in the database If more articles are available than will fit on the page the page navigation icons will appear 211 The Web Administrator Reading News Articles bte Netscape Newsgroup comp os ms windows networking tcp ip File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help 2 Maittraq Web Acministrator Guest Main Menu News Groups comp os ms windows networking tcp ip CCDD From Subject Date Y E ME2000 Re Network Naming Standards References 01 20 08 E Jay Re 100Base T w o hub Sun 5 02 44 E Ben Jos Re Winsock 2 Problem Sun 5 02 44 E Kenny Mac printing on NT network Sun 5 02 44 E ME2000 Re Network Naming Standards References Sun 5 02 44 Re 100Base T w No hub i From Jay m Date 5 Apr 1998 01 26 48 GMT Both 10 100 cards may be set for auto sense speed In that case each machine is expecting the other to specify the speed of the link Set at least one of them to be 100 meg only Cral Document Done The top frame shows the list of articles while the frame below shows the contents of the current article To select an article to show in the lower frame click on the article icon in the article list Accessing Web Sites The Web Sites option allows users to access other web sites through Mailtraq The list that appears represents
109. d by the filter automatically it may be more useful to leave them on the server until they are expired by either the server or by the Delete After setting When the POP3 client connects to the server it first builds an index of the messages available These are displayed in the Mailtraq Console Messages that are not automatically downloaded can be tagged for later download This can be done either by selecting the message and choosing Download from the context menu or by using a summary message In the POP3 account properties you may specify that a summary message be posted to an address The summary consists of a list of all the messages that were not downloaded with a short preview of each message The recipient of the summary can reply to the message the response going to the mailserver object indicating which messages they wish to have downloaded 119 Mail Delivery The Preview Window POP3 Collection Preview Window 120 At bie 428 Cupertino Weekly Catalogue Catalogue Number 55 16654 Download Remote POP3 Mailboxes 2429 Gordon James Details for new courier service 8948 Download ad enderson pop3 isp com Dean Ackland Fw Document Review 44818 Download Delete Mailboxes 31 Sales Intemational Get Aich Quick 3732 Delete H admin z me View Message Preview H accounts Delete Del marketin z 9 j Mark for Download Hs Remote POP3 Collection 4 objects 1 selected gt lt
110. d to the mailing list Most templates can be used under a variety of conditions For example a Welcome template might be used by several different mailing lists How do you tell which list it is being used for Mailtraq communicates this information to the template by setting various variables prior to actually executing the scripts in a template For example one of the templates supplied with Mailtraq is called list_welcome and this is the Mailing List Welcome message In order to determine which mailing list it applies to Mailtraq sets the variable List to the name of the mailing list The example below shows how this could be used to provide the mailing list description welcome to GetSystemVar mailslots List description Here the GetSystemVar function is used to obtain information regarding the current configuration of Mailtraq If the name of the list was sales 253 Templates then the variable requested would be mailslots sales description which may contain Sales Team Trigger Messages Some templates will be used in response to certain messages For example the delivery_failure template is used to create a delivery report when a message cannot be successfully delivered When the template is executed it will have access to two messages the outgoing message which is created by the template and the incoming message which actually triggered the message In a t
111. do nothing e Initiate a dialup f Use alternate local server If the machine specified is not on the local network you can have Mailtraq start an automatic dialup schedule Mailtraq can also connect to an alternative service when it is offline The Remote Logging Service The User Information Finger Service The Mailtrag Services This service can be used as an effective outbound and inbound proxy An outbound proxy would be to allow local machines to connect to services on the Internet via Mailtrag Conversely an inbound proxy would allow other machines on the Internet to connect to services offered by machines on the local network other than the dial up machine This can also be used to redirect connections for services that are on non standard ports For example if you wish to have inbound mail handled by a machine other than the dial up host on which Mailtraq is running you can proxy port 25 to a service on the local network This example can be extended by having Mailtraq run on several machines each equipped with dial up facilities but where all the incoming SMTP connections are connected via a TCP IP tunnel proxy to the mail server Using this system incoming mail can be received when any machine running Mailtraq is on line This proxy is quite different to the proxy service offered by the HTTP service which can only be used to proxy HTTP connections This type of proxy can carry any single stream TCP IP se
112. e ee ee eee ee ee ee ee 256 Coniietrine Templates s 4 ss s seoa ned sod ww a s 298 Web Page Templates 00 a a a a a a ee eee ee ee 259 A Web Database a a a a a a eee ee ew ew we 261 17 Scripting Function Reference 2 2 aaa a a 265 Laonguace COnSIruCts s s s s sf fa faa d a poaa a s ZOO File Handling Functions a a a a ee ee ee ee ee l Message Handling Functions String Manipulation Database Functions Mailtrag System Access External Programs 18 Glossary 19 Bibliography vi Index 211 285 294 291 306 313 319 323 Preface E mail may seem a relatively new technology when compared to other forms of communication but many are surprised to discover that it has been in use for over twenty five years During early experiments with networking technology electronic messaging was one of the first useful innovations to be introduced For many years e mail was confined to academic institutions whose large scale networks were an ideal medium to develop the technology When the number of institutions implementing networks grew the concept of internetworking began to evolve Clearly an open networking standard was necessary to allow different networks to connect to one another and the answer was the Internet Protocol TCP IP The institution at the heart of this technology was the U S Defense Advanced Research vil Preface vill Proj
113. e enter a new password and select Apply to make the change Use this facility to change the mailbox password used when collecting mail via POPS4 Password Confirm e Apply Reset Cris Document Done May The password is case sensitive and will only be accepted if exactly the same text is entered in both edit boxes You should only use alphanumeric characters letters and numbers Other symbols may not 199 The Web Administrator Auto Expiry Configuring the Message Expiry for a Mail slot 200 work when typed in from different mail clients and some characters may be converted by the web browser This is an effective way to automatically manage mailboxes where mail is not collected by mail clients For example a mailbox may be used to keep a copy of all messages sent to a mailing list In order limit the number of messages stored they could be expired after a period To allow users to manage the auto expire feature of their own mailboxes this privilege must be granted in the User Account properties This option only applies to mailbox auto expiry as any user can control the auto expiry feature of their archives You may wish to apply an expiry policy of user s mailboxes to ensure that mail is not unnecessarily left in the mailbox taking up system resources and disk space As Netscape johns settings File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Director Window Help 2 Malirag
114. e exception of the delivery mechanism However Mailtraq s Mailing Lists enable messages to be distributed to any number of recipients and the list of recipients can be managed by Mailtraq What gap there is between these two types of messaging is bridged with Mailing Lists As with News articles the eventual readers are not necessarily known to the author However like e mail each message has a specific list of recipients to whom it is delivered they can in turn pass it on to others Mailtrag also provides a number of World Wide Web facilities reducing the need for additional software and making it possible to integrate them with the messaging services Mailtrag provides a number of services available to all machines to which it is connected whether on the local network or the Internet Introduction Where does the 1 mail go Mailtraq provides a number of services which are available to both the machine on which it is running and other machines on the network and Internet Several services can be provided at the same time and several instances of each service can be active at once The objects that connect to services are called clients For example if a user has written an e mail message and they press the send button it is sent by the e mail software the Client to the e mail server In this case the service being provided is called SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Several people cou
115. e it receives It can either deliver the message to a mail slot or to another e mail server The part of Mailtraq that makes the decision regarding what happens to a message is called the Router There are actually two routers in Mailtraq the Inbound Router and the Outbound Router The illustration shows how these routers fit into the Mailtrag e mail operation Mail Receipt v SMTP SERVER POP3 COLLECTION yo Mail Delivery SMTP Client m gt PENDING MAIL DELIVERY SORTING OUTBOUND ROUTER NEWSGROUP aN NEWS CLIENT News Collection MAIL TO NEWS GATE _ Non Local Mail i y LOCALROUTER lt lt gt MAIL SLOT NEWS T0 MAIL GATE lt Articles for Local News Groups Only NEWS SERVER OUTBOUND NEWS lt News Delivery News Client Locally Posted News Articles The Inbound Router But how does e mail actually get into the router There are only seven ways for this to take place 1 Messages are received via SMTP Messages are downloaded via Remote POP3 Collection Messages are imported from a gateway 2 News articles are downloaded and sent through a news to mail gateway 5 News articles are posted locally and sent through the news to mail ga
116. e message delivery successful Thus if the server machine fails halfway through receiving the message the client will know it has to try again some other way or notify the sender of the message about the problem There are also several opportunities for the server to refuse to accept mail This makes it possible to safely stop a message delivery without having to go through the possibly long process of receiving it As mentioned earlier the SMTP Server can accept several connections at the same time Each connection is handled as a separate independent task in Mailtraq each is handled by a separate thread Thus if a 15 Introducing E Mail connection is very slow for example if the client machine is many thousands of miles away this will not impede the performance of other channels of communication If either the client or the server fails to acknowledge or respond for a long period the other side will assume there is a fault and break the connection either trying again later or using an alternate route Ea la SMTP N Service provider delivers message to recipient s mail exchange PO P3 Recipient s service provider holds messages until collected Sending machine delivers message gt FF collects messages to it s service provider s mail server from their service provider Messages are transferred with SMTP and collected with POP3 Mail Routing and Mail Exchanges It is one thing to
117. e message recipients specified by the current message envelope The recipients are not necessarily the contents of the To or CC fields See page 71 for further information on the message envelopes list MsgGetRepts list A comma separated list of the message recipients Local recipients may not have the domain part of the e mail address specified This function replaces the recipients in the current message envelope with the given list Use this function in scripts that modify trigger messages in order to redirect them To add a recipient to the message simply use MsgSetRcpts MsgGetRcpts newrcpt Note that scripts with the handoff property set are also responsible for actually sending the current message as once the script has been executed Mailtrag will dispose of it MsgSetRepts rcptlist reptlist A comma separated list of the recipients to which the current message is to be sent This function is used to create a new message and send it to the specified recipients The content parameter represents the expression to execute in the context of the new message In other words when the content is 279 Scripting Function Reference executed the current message points to the newly created message prior to it being delivered The result from the expression is automatically added to the end of the new message body If you need more than one statement to be executed you should bind
118. e public or widget enderson com to discuss the project development The above two examples actually illustrate two distinctive applications of mailing lists In the sales enderson com list anybody in the world can post a message to the list The author of the message has no idea who will actually receive it or even if it is a mailing list at all and they don t need to know This level of abstraction can be very useful as if the person or people responsible for sales change you won t need to issue a new address to everyone You may choose to have the Sales mailing list sent to several people or perhaps to one person at a time spreading the volume of mail between everyone on the sales team These are all examples of a distribution list Another type of mailing list is the discussion forum An example of this is the widget enderson com list Here the subscribers write messages to the list and all subscribers receive the messages This is very similar to a news group but with the advantage of being able to control membership and management of the list A closed forum allows only the subscribers to post messages to the mailing list allowing the administrators to decide whom to admit Mailing Lists in Mailtrag What is Many list systems including Mailtraq allow users to become subscribers Subscription by through an automatic mechanism such as subscription by mail With a mail facility such as this in place very large
119. ects Agency The first internetwork was consequently called ARPANET More recently as the network s military origins were forgotten it has become known as the Internet Recently the Internet has become available to the public through Internet Service Providers ISP These are companies whose networks form part of the Internet and who can provide access to the Internet Customers usually connect to their service providers using the telephone network either with a permanently connected leased line or a dialup line such as ISDN or the ordinary household analogue system The majority of Internet users connect to their ISP through a temporary dialup connection They pay their service provider for their account the services provided with it and the telephone company for using the telephone line This is the cause of most of the problems related to the Internet today Firstly telephone connections were designed for carrying voice and not for digital data Although huge advances have been achieved recently with modems they are still only able to carry a relatively small amount of information Secondly while data is being carried someone has to pay for the telephone time although this varies considerably from region to region And finally temporary connections require additional management and administration Mailtraq was developed specifically to address these three issues Mailtraq provides a very comprehensive range of messaging serv
120. ed as a display in the subscriber lists but is not used anywhere else Subscribers also have two e mail addresses The normal subscription or Sender address is the address used to identify them In other words this is the address that they must post from in order for the mailing list to recognise them and decide whether to accept their message The other e mail address or Reply To address is the address to which messages from the mailing list are sent Note that this address is used to send messages that are being distributed not messages specific to the subscriber For example if the subscriber requests a status report as part of the subscription by mail facility then it is sent to their normal address not the Reply To address Subscribers also have a details field which can contain any short piece of information about them When Mailtraq creates the subscription itself it will use the contents of the Organization header field if it is available If the list is secure then each subscriber can also have a password The subscriber flags are a set of on off settings for a number of features The on line help will provide further specific details on these flags The guest subscriber accessed through Guest Properties on the Access Tab represents any user posting to the mailing list that is not currently a Moderating Messages Mailing Lists in Mailtrag subscriber The New Subscriber Propertie
121. ed whilst Mailtraq is running You can however insert messages directly into the inbound message router by placing them in the database mail pending directory You must use the Mailtraq message format described below You should avoid placing Mailtraq s database on a network drive Firstly network drives are almost always considerably slower and Mailtraq will generate a large amount of network traffic while it is operating Secondly if Mailtraq is started as a service it is likely to start before the network Mailtraq Message Format The Mailtrag Database drives are available If Mailtraq is started before the network drives are ready it will not be able to load successfully Throughout the database messages will be stored by Mailtraq Essentially the format is the combination of the message envelope and the message itself They always follow the same format The first line must begin with FROM followed by the e mail address of the sender The second line must begin with RCPT followed by the e mail address of a recipient This line must be repeated once for every recipient of the message After the message envelope the message itself header fields then body separated by a blank line follows Here is an example FROM johns enderson com RCPT janes enderson com RCPT alex widgetmakers com Subject New widget From John Smith lt johns enderson com gt To Alex Johnson lt alex w
122. eful to download groups that are more important before others Each group can have its priority configured and this will determine the order in which groups are downloaded high priority groups are downloaded first You can also configure which articles are downloaded in the Download tab of the News Group Properties When you first download articles from a group Mailtraq may have to do some catching up If it is not necessary to download very old articles a sensible limit should be set on the age of the articles Specifying how long to store the articles determines when articles are erased expired from the Mailtraq database If this value is set too high then the Mailtraq database may become unnecessarily large The article filter can be a useful way to select or exclude articles If a maximun line length is selected or if the filter is enabled then Mailtraq 14 The News System 142 News Servers will first request the article header then its body rather than making a single request This is slightly less efficient but is worthwhile if you plan to exclude a reasonable number of articles Note however that the filter can apply only to the message headers i e the body filter criteria will never match anything You may also configure how articles are downloaded from servers Mailtraq allows you to specify the maximum number of parallel connections to use when downloading from a specific group This fa
123. eives messages for your domain Service Provider continuously attempts to deliver mail to your machine Service Provider delivers to your machine Mailbox Providers The Service Providers that supply mailboxes from which you collect mail need special consideration In this case Mailtraq must be configured to connect to them and fetch new mail There are many advantages to this method but there are also many disadvantages Because Mailtraq initiates the delivery it is in control and decisions can be made about what to download As you will see later this can be very useful Unfortunately this method of delivery does not scale well when one mailbox has to be used for more than one person The obvious problem is deciding who gets which messages Mailtraq has a number of ways to deal with this issue but again it s a matter of careful consideration What is Mailtraq Service Provider receives messages for your domain You periodically collect messages from your mail store Service Provider holds your messages in a mail store Service Provider holds your messages in a mail store for later collection Dual Providers Some Service Providers offer both methods of mail delivery This is clearly the best of both worlds but a new problem is created As mentioned above the method of delivering mail SMTP is the same for the Internet Service Provider as for your machines e mail software Remember also that SMTP is initi
124. emplate you can use the functions SelectInMessage and SelectOutMessage to switch between them This is necessary because the message manipulation functions such as Header SetHeader MsgAddLine etc all refer to the current message 254 More Messages Trigger Messages You can also create new messages and load existing messages from the database However these messages only become the current message while the PostMessage or LoadMessage functions are in use This is better described with an example of how the functions are used Here is an example of the PostMessage function in use SelectInMessage Subject Header subject sender Addressof Header from PostMessage postmaster johns Do SetHeader Subject Message from sender sender sent the message subject n SelectOutMessage SetHeader Subject Your message subject In this example the subject and sender s e mail address is taken from the trigger message and stored in the variables subject and sender respectively A new message is then created with the PostMessage command The Do function within that then executes in the context of the new message Were the Header functions used within that they would have referred to the new message not the trigger This is why the data was taken from the trigger message fir
125. ent to another location If users are given the option to leave mail in their mailbox even after reading it you can be sure that many of them will simply never delete their messages While this may be quite appropriate in some cases it can also be an abuse of the service 89 Mail Slots Conf iguring Automatic Mailbox Properties 2 x Expiry for a Mailbox POP3 Mailbox Mail Aliases Message Expiry Gateway Messages that have remained in the mailbox for a specified period can be automatically erased or forwarded to another address V Enable Mail Expiry Expire after 7 days fo hours Notify Sender M Forward To Mailbox matk v e oea Another use of this facility might be where mail can be re routed if it hasn t been collected within a specified period Mail Gateways You can either store the message inside the mailbox or simply output the message to a text file that is external to Mailtraq This is necessary in order to use mail clients that do not support POP3 or networks that do not implement TCP IP This is also an ideal way to output messages for automatic use by other programs 90 Mailing Lists and Archives Configuring a Mailbox Mailbox Properties 2 Gateway POPS Mailbox Mail Aliases Message Espi Gateway iP Messages that have remained in the mailbox Eas for a specified pernod can be automatically erased or forwarded to another address IY Gateway to FASO and Text
126. ers to deliver news articles to each other When the USENET started this was a small and manageable quantity of information providing an effective means of group communication Now the USENET carries well over 45 Gigabytes of articles daily The USENET is made up of news groups over 25 000 covering various specific subjects Each News Service Provider will host many of these groups and will decide how long to store articles for each group Since it is usually unfeasible for users to download the entire USENET the News Servers supply individual articles on demand to News Clients Normally a News Client downloads an overview of all the articles in a group and then the user selects the articles they wish to read This works particularly well if the user is on line at the time but this can be an expensive approach Some software allows the user to mark which articles they wish to read and then downloads them in a single batch when the user next goes online News Collection News Collection While these approaches work well for single user environments they are less effective for networks where many users read the same groups Having to download articles in batches can also hinder reading especially if the user is likely to read a large number of articles from a group Mailtraq s approach is to download all the available articles from subscribed news groups as efficiently as possible Since Mailtraq does not first download an ov
127. erver consists of a number of services that work together to move messages around Mailtraq can only do two things with an e mail message deliver it to a local mail slot or send it to another e mail server This section discusses the first of these options The mail slots represent the user part of the e mail address the part before the symbol and are the names that Mailtraq uses to describe recipient objects A mail slot can be a Mailbox from which users may collect their mail a Mailing List for forwarding mail to a number of other recipients an Archive for storing messages for public access or a special object The special objects of which there is only one of each are the Postmaster mailbox the Mail Server interface and the News Server interface The two interfaces are discussed later while the Postmaster s mailbox is essentially the same as an ordinary mailbox except that it cannot be deleted and has few options Each mail slot other than the special objects has an owner and depending on your licensing scheme you may have one or more users which can act as owners Users can access and configure their mail slots through the Web Administrator Each mail slot also has a visibility option This determines whether the mail slot appears in the local directory service which is accessed again through the Web Administrator Setting this to private means that only the owner can see the mail slot Setting this to
128. erview of the articles and because it can download articles from several groups in parallel it is more efficient than most news clients Another advantage is that Mailtrag can download articles whenever it is online taking advantage of connections that are initiated for mail or web activity News clients can then connect to Mailtrag instead of the normal news providers as Mailtraq provides a fully functional News Server Ina multi user environment Mailtraq adds further advantages to this approach to handling news For example the administrator can control exactly which news groups specific users can read and post to Further local news groups can be created which are not official USENET groups and as such do not appear outside the Mailtraq network This can be a useful tool for company wide discussion forums and notice boards The first step in configuring a news system is to decide which groups to download Mailtraq can download articles from any number of news servers but each group can be downloaded only from one server There are two ways to subscribe to a group enter the name explicitly or search 139 The News System the list of groups available on the news servers In order to search the list a group list must first be downloaded from the server Subscribing to a News News Group Subscriptions ex Group Search for Groups on Server Subscriptions uk 50 groups Subscribe uk adverts 6 groups uk ann
129. esses mail based a upon the message headers and body Message Sorting Aules Recipients eeclAny Sender johns kevind 4 Any To we postmaster Recipients fiohns kevind Edit Add Delete e J Each entry in the sorting table assigns a set of recipient addresses to messages that match the given filter If a message does not match any of these filters it is not modified If the message matches one or more filters then the recipients will be set to the union of the matching recipients excluding the original recipients Message Filters Mailtraq uses Message Filters in several places throughout the system The filter is a standard mechanism by which certain messages can be included or excluded Essentially the message must pass a set of criteria Each criteria consists of a field and a value which is compared with the contents of that field 105 Mail Delivery 106 The Message Filter Properties Below is an example of a message filter Filter Message Sorting Filter Filter Settings This fiter can be used to select articles or a email messages Articles or messages with field contents that do not match any of the criteria are filtered out Filter Criteria Match All Clear Each field refers to a Header Field from the message being analysed The drop down list shows many of the most common header fields though it does not show all of them
130. estText sfModerated sfPublic sfRecBin sfRecipient sfSender sfSndBin sfSuspended Volume Mail Groups mailgroups group String Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Boolean Integer Mailtrag System Access Reply To address for subscriber Subscriber is classed as an administrator Mail from subscriber is always refused Subscriber wishes to remain anonymous Subscriber receives Digests multipart mixed format Subscriber receives Digests multipart digest format Subscriber receives Digests text plain format Mail from subscriber is accepted but held for moderation Subscriber wishes to appear in the membership list Subscriber accepts messages with binary attachments Subscriber receives mail Subscriber is allowed to post Subscriber is permitted to post binary attachments Suspended flag Number of messages posted These variables provide access to the Mail Groups which represent the logical Mail Slot groupings and act as an interface to the accounting facilities The Mail Groups are accessed with the group name Variable AccountingPeriod Description EnableAccounting EnableMailboxLimit EnableSendLimit Type Option String Boolean Boolean Boolean Purpose of Variable Length of accounting period daily weekly monthly annually Mailgroup description Enable the accounting settings Limit the size of the
131. ey Logging method Change daily one week cycle W Detailed message description in the logs He Crea This is the base file name for the disk based log If the Single File logging method is chosen then this will be the only file that will contain the log entries The logging method refers to how the log entries are stored in the log files If you use the single file option then the file will grow quickly and possibly consume an unnecessary amount of disk space An alternative is to rotate the log entries between several files providing a multi stage history of past events M Change Daily one week cycle With this option selected Mailtraq will create seven files one for each day of the week based upon the chosen filename For example the first event to be logged on Tuesday morning will result in the 129 Administration Topics 130 Detailed Message Descriptions in the logs The Event Log Window Tuesday file being erased and starting only with this event This option will give you a seven day history M Change Daily one month cycle This option is the same as the one week cycle except that the log file is changed every day of the month giving you a maximum 31 day history E Change Monthly one year cycle With this option selected Mailtraq will create twelve files one for each month of the year based upon the chosen filename This option gives you a one yea
132. f mail to be processed and allowing users to read articles available before they subscribed Mailtraq can achieve this with a combination of News To Mail and Mail To News gateways Mailtraq will ensure that messages do not go through both gateways and thus create a loop The example below shows how the mailing list widgets widgetmakers com can be mirrored as a local news group local widgets 1 Create the local news group calling it local widgets a ki x Search for Find Groups on Server Subscriptions Name Last Collection News Server 2 Subscribe intel microprocessors pe Thu Jun 26 1997 at 10 54 10 54 cs intel com j Intel motherboards Fri Jun 27 1997 at 21 35 21 35 s intel com Properties _Jlocal fps developments Thu May 29 1997 at 22 28 22 2 192 100 100 65 local test Local Group Local Host Defaults Joa ee ce gt Create a new news group Creating this news group will not result in a new Internet news group being created so it must either already exist on your ISP s news server or the group must be created as a local news group Help Name of news group local widgets F Done News and Mail Gateways 2 Adda News To Mail gateway that sends messages to widgets widgetmakers com also setting to To field to the same address Adding a Ziki N ews To Mail News Group Properties Mail Gateway News Gateway Gateway News To Mail Gateway 2 x th
133. f page A points to page B which in turn points to page C then C is two links away from A You could also say 182 Counting the Scan Depth for a Web Crawler The Web Server The Web Server that C is at depth level two This is an effective way to force the crawler to concentrate on a specific portion of a web site Setting the directory visibility as with mail slots determines which users will see the site in the Web Administrator The Web Server or HTTP Server provides the web proxy services described above It also provides access to the Web Administrator in addition to serving web pages for a local Intranet What the web server actually does is determined by the requests it receives If the web server receives a request for web pages on a site that is not local then Mailtraq will act as a proxy for that site Mailtraq considers the request local if the URL refers to a host that matches the domain or local aliases as specified in the Server Properties If a request is received for a page that is local Mailtraq will return the request if available from the local web pages 183 The World Wide Web Accessing the Web 184 Server Web Pages Home Pages The first stage in configuring the Web Server is to make the server accessible to other machines on the network You will already have given the machine running Mailtraq a local network name as part of the network configuration You should tell Mai
134. f the office until March 3rd and I ll get hack to you then If the message is urgent then please contact Jane Simpson janesfenderson com John Smith Pa Note The message can be either normal text or a message template Avoid using the and characters in messages that should not be treated as templates Apply Reset Cra Document Done This is particularly important if you don t plan to respond to the messages such as receiving answers from a questionnaire or users may send mail again thinkine that their messages have not been delivered 198 Mailbox Password Changing their Mailbox Password Configuring Mail Slots There are many cases where autoresponders are unnecessary and unwelcome For example you should never automatically reply to mailing lists Many list servers Mailtraq included can automatically remove recipients who inappropriately reply to messages It is also unlikely that you want your automatic response delivered to all the recipients of a discussion forum The mailbox password refers to that used when authenticating mail clients that collect mail via POP3 Access to the mailboxes through the Web Administrator is authenticated by the user account login 4 Netscape Mailbox Password T Afaitrag Web Administrator Aahunisir ator Main Menu Mailslots Mailbox File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directo Window Help Johns John Smith Mailbox Password Pleas
135. ges CGI and Templates through the URL http netserver username In order to give the user the opportunity to edit their own pages they should be given network access to the specified directory Editing Pages Either users may edit their home pages by directly modifying the files on disk or by using the Web Server upload facilities Mailtraq supports uploading pages with the PUT command Examples of editors that support this facility include Netscape Navigator Gold 3 0 and Netscape Composer CGI and Templates CGI or Common Gateway Interface is a standard for communicating information between the web browsers and the web server so that web pages can be created dynamically Mailtrag can use CGI in combination with Mailtraq Templates to create dynamic web pages Chapter 16 gives examples on pages 227 229 239 241 258 and 260 of such a system Mailtraq will treat any file with the extension tpl or mtq as a template and execute it accordingly These pages can be retrieved either with the GET command or the POST command To pass CGI parameters with GET they are appended to the URL also known as URL Encoded after the symbol Here is an example of such a URL http netserver cgi database tp1 db wines amp rec bot12 amp Fi eld region In this example the Mailtraq template is database tpl and the parameters db wines rec bot12 and field region are passed in the URL With more complex parameters the URL ca
136. gh the Web Administrator access the web through the Web Proxy and read news groups For each user in the Console a complete list of all their mail slots are shown in the List View You can change the ownership of mail slots by dragging them between different users 5 The Console 52 Finger Records fz Finger Records The Finger Records are used to retrieve information from various servers For example some service providers will offer a Finger service where users can get access to information about their mail store such as how much mail is waiting The finger responses are plain text and can be read by selecting View Record from the context menu of the finger objects as shown below Account Date Time Size View Record k Delete Del Properties Internet Dial up This chapter covers Mailtraq s Dial Up facilities which allow it to manage access to the Internet The following topics are included Configuring the Internet Connection Dial Up Networking Manual Dial Up Scheduled Dial Up Most installations of Mailtraq will be using the Internet for some services but without a permanent Internet connection Mailtraq provides a number of methods to connect to the Internet and supports connection via third party services such as dial up routers 53 Internet Dial up It is important to configure Mailtraq to use the Internet connection effectively For example if you ha
137. goff the system or login as another user 77 Directory Find people and services hosted here Read mail and administer your mail slots and subscriptions E Read News Sz o Web Sites Browse web sites that are hosted or cached here You can also search indexed sites for specific keywords 33 Document Done Browse news groups hosted here and read news articles User Access and Control Web Administrator Users are managed from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console You can specify what the user can access in the Web Administrator by checking flags on the Web Services tab of the user s properties Until a user logs in they are subject to the settings specified by the Default user This allows you to provide public access to certain news groups and mail slots When a user visits the Main Menu http lt server gt the options they will see are determined by the settings for the Default user also called the Guest user In order to access further facilities the user must log in Once a valid user name and password have been entered all the hyperlinks in the web pages generated by the Web Administrator will have 19 The Web Administrator Logging in to the Web Administrator The Directory 192 tokens identifying the current user These tokens are only valid for the current session and each one will expire after a given period If you do not use the Web Administrator for longer tha
138. group With an announcements list the subscribers expect only the administrators to post messages Lists such as these can be greatly enhanced with subscription by mail from an administrative point of view and for enticing users to join Many people who are considering joining such a list may hesitate at the idea of having to be approved or explicitly added by the managers There is a degree of anonymity associated with subscription by mail which many people will appreciate Another advantage is that users will feel that they can just as easily leave the list if they wish Subscription by mail is handled through the sending of control messages which are automatically processed In Mailtrag you can send such control messages either to the mailserver slot or directly to the list address Control messages consist of the command followed by any necessary parameters Control messages sent to mailserver must be in a certain format The command must appear either on the subject line or as a line in the message body The command must be the first word on the line and must be immediately followed by the name of the mailing list to which it is referring For example if your mailing list is new products enderson com then the name of the list is new products To subscribe to this list you might send subscribe new products as a single line in the body of a message to mailserver enderson com You c
139. gue will appear User Properties HEJ Properties Hews Groups Web Services Administrator and may use their account to read NEWS E Licensed users may log on via the Web Login User Mame fiohns Full name ohn Smith Password 2 Inthe Mailbox Name edit box enter the identifier which would appear before the symbol in the e mail address This must not include any spaces or quotation marks Unless you have specific reason to don t use any characters other than alphabetic letters and numbers 32 Creating Mail Slots 3 In the Name Description field enter the descriptive name of the mailbox If the mailbox will be the main mailbox for a user this should be the user s name 4 Enter a POP3 password This will be used when the mailbox owner collects messages from their mail client Note the password is case sensitive and the characters entered will be displayed as asterisks 5 Select the owner of the mailbox from the drop down list This will be a user previously configured in the User Manager If you are configuring a single user system you do not need to change this property The mailbox is now configured and you can click on OK to save the changes If you click on Cancel the mailbox will not be created and any settings will be discarded You can configure any of the other mailbox properties at any time by clicking on the mailbox in the Console and selecting Properties from the File
140. handle n CloseFile handle These function loads a message from disk into the current message and you can use the various message functions described above to access the message headers and body content Messages can be loaded either from the Mailtraq Database or from a text file stored elsewhere on disk Messages from the database must be given a path relative to the database root For example to load a message from the mailbox johns use the path mail inbox johns ENDRO1234567 You can examine the Mailtraq database to find the paths to use Files with the AFV extension are compound files and you can reference them as though they are directories as the example above shows You can use the GetDirectory function to obtain a list of files in any directory The LoadHeader function is the same as LoadMessage except that the message body is not loaded This is useful where the message may be very large but the content is not important To load a message from an ordinary text file simply use a fully qualified path For example c messages msg01 txt Note that you must use the 281 Scripting Function Reference Mailtraq message format where the message envelope is included with the message itself Refer to page 109 for details The last parameter to the function is the expression to execute in the context of the newly loaded message After this function has been called the message
141. he Mailtraq Console File View Options Actions Tools Windows Help Server Incoming Mail Outgoing Mail News Newsgroups Dial up Remote POPG Web Crawlers Users Scripts and Templates The Service Manager The Service Manager dialogue allows you to configure and add new networking services as shown below The Service Manager Service Manager EARS dialogue The service manager it used to configure the services that are provided by Mailtrag ou may have the same service more than once but TCP IP services may not share a port Service Port Location I Mail Server SMTP 25 gt Mailbox Server POPS 110 2 News Server NNTP 119 www Server HTTP a0 TCPIF Proxy Tunnel s Remote Logging Service gr User Information Service Finger Add Copy Remove H Each services has a port or location where it waits for incoming connections The TCP IP services have a numeric port most of which 222 Adding a service Modifying Services Enable at Startup The Service Manager are standardised For example applications will expect to find the SMTP service listening on port 25 No two TCP IP services may listen on the same port at the same time but Mailtraq does allows you to configure multiple services on the same port You can load individual services as needed from the Actions menu of Console and close them by right cli
142. he SMTP server listens on a TCP IP Port You do not need to know much about TCP IP to manage Mailtraq but it is useful to know that servers listen on ports and clients connect to those ports All the client needs to know is which machine to connect to and the port on which the service is available SMTP for example usually listens on port 25 No two services can listen on the same port but more than one client can connect to that port When an SMTP client connects to the server they start a conversation During this conversation called the protocol they exchange information and the messages themselves Following is a simplified example of this conversation Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Server Client Message Server Hello am the Enderson Enterprise SMTP Server Client Hello am the Jefferson Associates Message Transport Agent Server Okay we ll accept mail from you Client have a message from James Jefferson Server Okay we ll accept mail from him Client This message is for John Smith Server Okay we will accept mail for him Client Here s the message Server Okay correctly received and stored Client I m finished Server Good bye If you actually watch an SMTP transaction you will see that it is remarkably close to this SMTP also has many safety features For example notice how the server indicates that the message was correctly received and stored Until the client receives that notice it will not consider th
143. header but if this information is not part of the standard the header field is prefixed with an x 12 Header Field To From Sender CC Reply To Message Headers Purpose The person to whom the message was written not necessarily the recipient The author of this message The entity who is responsible for sending the message they may not have actually written it Carbon Copy recipients These are additional entries similar to the To field This field indicates where replies to the message should be sent For example if the message is a questionnaire the author may have no interest in the responses and so directs them to the analysis team Subject A brief one line description of the message Date The date at which the message was written Received This is the only field that normally appears more than once in a message Each instance provides details about one message hop during the delivery process These are also called the Trace Fields as they provide useful details on the message s traveling history There are many other fields that you will encounter but they are not covered in this document The official reference is RFC822 which you will find further details on in the bibliography An Example Message Return Path lt dan smartdrive co uk gt T a s j Received from pop3 demon co uk by fastraq co uk O XY showing the Message S with POP3 Mailtr
144. hine can have a number of TCP IP services each listening on a separate port For example SMTP receives connections on port 25 while POP3 receives connections on port 110 Remote Access Service This is a Windows NT facility for managing temporary network connections such as those handled with a modem The term is similar to DUN which is more related to Windows 95 A machine or application offering a service to which clients can connect A server waits for connections and is usually able to handle several simultaneous connections A Smarthost is a Mail Exchange that accept mail for any domain and then it handle the task of identifying the appropriate Mail Exchange for the recipient and passing the message on to it Most Internet Service Providers supply a smarthost so that mail clients do not need to handle MX Resolution and can therefore save on online time for mail delivery particularly when the appropriate Mail Exchanges are temporarily unavailable Most Service Providers limit access to smarthosts to their customers Mailtraq s SMTP Server makes the machine running Mailtraq a smarthost unless configured otherwise Simple Mail Transfer Protocol This is a communication protocol for sending e mail from one machine to another The protocol is initiated by the machine currently in possession of a message the SMTP Client that it wishes to send to another machine the SMTP Server The SMTP Server usually resides
145. hown below User Properties EEJ Properties News Groups Web Services You may select which settings and services an the User may access or modify Remote Configuration Privileges Sectccccouscee cdencccccsceccccececsecscscccuratcccuscececsecenecceaucccccascuccscscuccccucucccascuccecscucccscusceasd W Change Mailslot Descriptions W Configure Mail Forwarding W Configure Mailbox Autoresponder System Administration Privileges W Use the Web Proxy He Crea Managing Mail Slots Mail Slot Ownership of mail slots can be changed either by dragging them between Ownership users in the Users part of the Console or by changing the Owner setting in the mail slot properties as shown below Changing the Mail Slot Mailbox Properties 71x owner Mailbox POP3 Mailbox Mail Aliases Message Expiry Gateway P roperties Mail arriving in this mailbox can be retrieved by any Windows program that can access a POPS account Mailbox Name iohns Name Description of Mailbox ohn Smith POPS Password MRRREERE Local Directory Yisibility Private Owner John Smith Chloe Hall H Esther McCarthy James Woods Jane Hammersmith Jane Simpson Managing Mail Slots Each Mail slot appears in the Console under both the Mail tree and the Users tree This allows you to view the mail slot structure from two different perspectives The mail groups
146. hown in the second example Shel 1Execute c windows temp info txt Shel lExecute notepad c windows temp info msg This is one of the most important functions in the Mailtraq scripting language Using this function you can integrate Mailtraq with other C Prototype Pascal Prototype External Programs software or provide complex added functionality to Mailtrag that would not be possible with the scripting functions alone This function is also a key part of the Mailtraq Plug In mechanism CallDLLFunction simply calls another user defined function stored in a Dynamic Link Library DLL The user defined function must be exported from the library in the same way as any DLL function i e standard C type parameters Communication between Mailtrag and the DLL function take place through a shared block of memory allocated and released by Mailtraq The DLL function must return a single 32 bit integer which must contain zero and take two parameters a 32 bit integer defining the size of the memory block followed by a 32 bit pointer to the start of that block int FunctionName int size char ptr function FunctionName size Integer ptr PChar Integer stdcall gt Note the use of the keyword stdcall in the Pascal prototype Mailtraq passes the parameters given in the CallDLLFunction in the form of a null terminated string entered into the shared memory block When the functi
147. ia would be maxrcpt The SMTP Service The SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is the Internet standard for mail delivery Most mail clients on your network will probably be sending messages to Mailtragq through the SMTP service and it is likely that your ISP will be doing so to You can configure the SMTP service and Mailtraq s other services from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console I Mailbox Server PUPS 110 al News Server NNTP 119 The Latency is the amount of time taken for the data to be routed accross the network and for the remote server to process the information 111 Mail Delivery SMTP Services Services Dialogue Dealing with Large Messages 112 Service Mal Server SMIPI a 24 Mailbox Server POP3 10 al News Server NNTP 119 _Port Locatior Although you may have more than one SMTP service by specifying different ports other machines will always expect it to be on port 25 One problem with SMTP is that you cannot easily prevent oversized messages from being delivered Itis simply not possible to determine in advance the size of a message Therefore it is not possible to refuse to accept large messages However Mailtraq provides a facility that can be used to get around this limitation Kill messages larger than i O24 kb If the connection is cut during download SMTP clients should try again after a brief period Mailtragq takes advantage of this
148. iables can be used in place of constants anywhere in the scripting language For example the statement when following the previous statement results in the value 6 being stored in the variable y Expressions Constructs The Scripting Language An expression is simply a piece of the script which can be resolved into some value Functions operators variables and constants are all expressions Functions and operators take expressions as parameters and expressions can be assigned to variables For example myfunc l 2 myfunc2 x y x is a perfectly valid statement even though the parameters to myfunc vary considerably Constructs are used in most languages to control how and when expressions are evaluated They are noticeably absent from the Mailtraq scripting language but because you can pass functions as parameters to other functions the tasks normally handled by language constructs can be just as easily handled by special functions Examples of constructs would include if then else which will execute a statement only if a given expression evaluates to true and repeat until which repeatedly executes a statement until a given expression evaluates to false In Mailtraq the if then else construct is handled by the If function which takes two or three parameters The first parameter is the expression which will be evaluated in order to determine how to proceed If the expression evaluates
149. iate a DUN connection whenever it needs to connect to the Internet It can be configured elsewhere to connect at specified times and under specified conditions but it will only consider itself online when a DUN connection is active Most of these settings are configured in the Dial up properties available from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console This option should be used when your network is connected to a service provider via a leased line or when you have a network router and are not concerned about the dial up frequency Mailtraq will always consider itself online and will for example deliver outbound mail as soon as it is ready With this option selected Mailtraq will never consider itself online and will never attempt to go online through a Dial up connection if one 5 Internet Dial up Synchronised Online Times Configuring Mailtraq to ro synchronise it s on line 56 times with another system Virtual Network exists Use this option if you only wish to provide services within your local area network or provide a local Intranet This option allows Mailtraq to consider itself online at predetermined times Use this option when another system handles Internet connections at specific times or if you limit a dial up network router Synchronized Online Times 112 Use this form to indicate what times Mailtrag should assume that it has a network G co
150. ibuted Each of these templates can be enabled or disabled in the mailing list properties Templates are discussed in detail in Chapter 16 Public Archives Archive Properties dialogue Public Archives Archives have a variety of applications in Mailtraq Essentially they provide public access to the messages stored within them Instead of obtaining the messages through POP3 users request messages stored in the archive by sending a control message Control messages are handled in a similar way to the mailing lists They can be sent either to mailserver or directly to the archive Messages that are clearly not control messages are submitted to the archive for retrieval by others Archive Properties Ei Archive Members Administrators Auto Expiry Aliases Messages sent to the archive are stored and can be retieved by control messages Archive Hame into Archive Description Product Information W Permit Requests by Proxy W Default Message index W Messages Reply To lino Owner Local Directory Visibility Administrator Private Owner bl io ores It may not be appropriate to allow anybody to add messages especially since an incorrectly formatted control message may be submitted to the archive Archives can maintain a list of users who are permitted to retrieve messages Members and users permitted to submit messages 169 Mailing Lists Administrators If these
151. ically collect and deliver mail W Enable Scheduling Scheduled Dial up events eDaily at 00 03 00 News POPS to ISF Line 1 Ever Mon Tue Wed Thu and Fri every 30 minutes e orea This tab shows all the schedules currently configured identified by a brief summary which does not include all the schedule options The icon beside each schedule will appear grey if the schedule is disabled 6 Int ernet Dial up Configuring Schedules Configuring a Scheduled Dial Up Select alternative connection on failure 62 Number of retries if the dialup fails When you create or edit a schedule you will see the Schedule Properties dialogue shown below Scheduled Dialup Settings EIE Connection Settings Schedule Date and Time Options aa Use these settings to determine how the connection is established Use the timeout facilities to close the connection as Mailtrag cannot determine when all the mail has been received Dialup Connection isp Line 1 Y W Select alternative connection on failure Number of retries if the dialup fails 3 _ W Disconnect after 120 seconds of no activity i Disconnect unconditionally after s00 seconds This option allows Mailtraq to automatically change the selected Dialup Connection when a dialup cannot be established If your service provider supplies multiple telephone numbers then this can be an effective way to automatically deal with b
152. ices It has also been designed to make the most efficient and cost effective use of an Internet connection Another important design concept of Mailtraq is how it is actually used Many of those who have contributed to the development of Mailtraq have observed just how complex server software can be to install operate and maintain and we have put a great deal of work into building the most intuitive interface possible We hope that you will find working with Mailtrag an enjoyable experience Thank you for choosing Mailtraq The Development Team Preface Introduction This section deals with the basics of Mailtraq and what it does It does not go into either E mail or News in depth as these will be covered in subsequent chapters However it does provide some necessary background to Mailtraq s many services Using this Manual This User Guide has been written for both those with or without experience in administrating a messaging server If you have managed another mail server previously you will notice that Mailtraq includes many more features in one package We shall outline these in this guide Introduction Some Assumptions All about Enderson The topics covered in this guide Unlike many other software packages our user manual is not simply a reptition of our on line documentation This guide concentrates on providing an overview of how Mailtraq s various processes work and how to make the best use of
153. idgetmakers com gt CC Jane Simpson lt janes enderson com gt Date Tue April 07 1998 15 15 50 GMT Have you got the new widget specification yet John smith gt Note do not edit the database files ending in AFV Although they appear use the standard message format other files reference the precise position that each message starts at 135 Administration Topics gt Note never access the files whilst Mailtrag is running while accessing them you may prevent Mailtraq from writing to them resulting in lost data 136 The News System This chapter introduces the Internet News system and discusses how Mailtraq uses it This chapter also deals with Mailtraq s own news services and how they are integrated with the e mail system The following topics are covered Introduction to Internet News News Collection News and Mail Gateways The News Server 137 The News System Introduction to Internet News 138 The Internet News system is almost as old as e mail and there is actually very little difference between the two types of communication A news article looks very similar to an e mail message they both have the same header and body structure and they are in fact both defined by the same Internet Standard The difference is in the way the messages are delivered The Internet News network is also known by its original name The USENET This is a web of agreements between service provid
154. il Slots between Mail Groups The List View Overview of the Console Connections In the right window pane the List View the current contents of that object are displayed Each object in the Tree View represents some sort of container When you select the object by clicking on it with the mouse or by using the keyboard the contents will appear in the List View on the right If the contents are also containers then they will also appear in the tree as branches extending from the icon in the Tree View marketing marketing a Sem E projects lees projects distribution l i janes ia janes management cp johns n ohna 3 into GS mattk E mattk 5 mailserver G philipt Gi philipt 2 newsletter projects dep b projects dep E NeWSSErver ei zami Ga zami E postmaster distribution distribution j prices management management ai products 3 info gt info Some objects can be dragged to other groups to change ownership Groups can be opened or closed to reveal the objects they contain The Tree View is represented by a hierarchy of groups showing the relationship between objects Most objects have some options associated with them which can be reached either by the File menu when the object is selected or by right clicking on the object Mail slots can be moved between mail groups shown as folders simply by dragging them as illustrated above Mail Groups can also
155. ilbox Description Configure the descriptive name of the mailbox Archive Settings Configure the archive name administration and membership Auto Expiry Control when messages in the archive are automatically deleted Aliases Edit the archive aliases alternative addresses Era Document Done Archive Settings The Archive Settings essentially allow you to configure the members and administrators for the archive which control the access that users have to the archive messages 209 The Web Administrator Configuring the Archive 210 Members and Administrators Members Administrators e Netscape products settings File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help 2 G Maitrag Web Achuinisirator Achunisirator Main Menu Mailslots Archive products Product Lists Archive settings Archive Name Product Lists Archive Members are those users permitted to retrieve messages from the archive via mail Limit Membership to the users listed below M Limit Administration to the users listed below f Apply Reset Cra Document Done The members are the users described by their e mail address who are permitted to request messages from the archive Mailtraq examines the Sender and then From header fields of the message to determine if the sender can access the archive The administrators are those people permitted to add
156. ill initially refer to the template itself the message being created by the template Some templates will be triggered by the receipt of messages and in these cases you can change the current message with the SelectInMessage and SelectOutMessage functions This function changes the current message to the trigger message if one was used Scripts Templates and Web Page Templates can be triggered by the receipt of messages SelectInMessage 275 Scripting Function Reference SelectOutMessage This function only applies to Templates which are used to create new messages Use of this function is actually only useful to Templates and Scripts that are triggered by messages or Web Page Templates where the SelectInMessage can be used to change the current message to the trigger Syntax SelectOutMessage Header This function returns the contents of the specified header field in the current message If the specified header field occurs more than once in the message the resulting string is the concatenation all the fields Syntax string Header field field The field name to extract from the message header string The text content of the specified field is returned SetHeader This function is used to set the specified header field of the current message to the given value In cases where the specified field occurs more than once only the first instance of the field is set Syntax SetHeader field val
157. iltrag System Access Enable requests by proxy Archives The Autoresponder message Mailboxes Default message for Archives Archives Descriptive name of the mail slot Size in kb to trigger digest delivery Lists Number of days between digest deliveries Lists Address to forward expired mail to Archives and Mailboxes Number of hours after which to expire messages Archives and Mailboxes Mail Slot filter Directory for mail gateway Mailboxes Mailing List maintainer Lists Enable the autoresponder Mailboxes Forward expired mail Mailboxes Expire mail Mailboxes Notify sender on expiry Mailboxes Use KA9Q Queue mode for the gateway Mailboxes Use Pegasus mode for the gateway Mailboxes Use KA9Q Route mode for the gateway Mailboxes Add the tag specified in Tag variable Lists Add the tag file specified in TagFile variable Lists Anonymous Option Lists Confirm subscription by mail Lists Enable digests Lists Include a contents table in a digest Lists Enable size triggered digests Lists Enable scheduled digets Lists Distribute mail evenly between subscribers Lists List is moderated Lists Proxy must be administrator Lists Set Reply To to the message author Lists 299 Scripting Function Reference 300 mlReplyToDefault Boolean Leave the Reply To of the message unchanged Lists mlReplyToList Boolean Set Reply To to the List Lists mlReplyToOther Boolean Set Re
158. ime and the time of your users Mailtraq provides the option of refusing messages based on either the sender s e mail address or that of the recipients Inbox Properties Undelivered Mail Barring Re writing Sorting Options You can refuse to accept messages from any of the senders listed below Note only a partial match is necessary to reuse message Bar mail sent from Bar mail addressed to fahotmessaging com kdh hotmessaging com Message to send when address is bared unable to deliver this message Mail E aring Reports a creu If the message is being received via SMTP it is possible to prevent the message from being downloaded A single line reason must be given and you can configure this to read anything you wish It may be better to provide as little information as possible or the sender may take advantage of the response to find another way to send mail For example a response such as We don t accept mail from you can also be interpreted as We will only accept mail from you if you don t use that address 101 Mail Delivery Re Writing Mail 102 Addresses For collection via POP3 it is not possible to return the message to its sender As Mail Barring is intended as a means to refuse mail downloading the message and then generating a delivery report defeats the purpose Thus barred mail is simply ignored gt Note for mail receipt via SMTP the
159. ind Kevin Dunn kd256 markj Mark James mj961 patricke Patrick Enderson pe001 The first step to create a template mailbox on which the imported mailboxes will be based You can then begin the import procedure by selecting Import Mailboxes from the Tools menu of the Console Then select the text file containing the mailbox details A window similar to the example below will appear based upon the text file described above with the columns separated where the commas were found Import Mailboxes Ea Configure column order and definitions click on column header ta nmetifil Mailbox Not Assigned chloeh Chloe Hall ch332 iee esther Esther McCarthy em2e janeh Jane Hammersmith hess janniced Jannice Dubcek jd234 julie Julie Johnson 423 katep Kate Pearson kped4 kevind Kevin Dunn kd256 mark Mark James mj961 patricke Patrick Enderson pelli Mailbox Template aew Cancel Import The label above each column shows how Mailtraq will interpret the values in that column To change it simply click on the column and 127 Administration Topics Event Logging 128 select the option from the drop down list Select Not Assigned to ignore the column contents Select the mailbox template on which to base the new mailboxes from the drop down list and complete the importing process by clicking on the Import button As Mailtraq is a very complex system operating many tasks simultaneously
160. ine for more than 0 minutes Apply Reset Cral Document Done Each schedule also has checkboxes to set whether or not it is active and to select it for deletion In both cases Mailtraq only activates or deletes the schedules when the Apply button is pressed 216 Dial Up Status Monitoring the Mailtrag Dial Up Status Active Connections System Administration The schedule settings themselves are the same as those configured from within the Dial up properties in the Mailtraq Console This option allows the user to monitor the dial up service and manually go on line and off line From here automatic schedules can also be initiated The page also gives details of the next scheduled dial up 4 Netscape Dial Up Status File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help s aj 2 Maitrag Web Aomiwsiralor Achunisirator Main Menu Dial Up Status Mailtraq Dialup and Schedule Status Connection Status Connection Offline Next Schedule 08 00 00 07 04 98 Daily at 08 00 00 News POP3 to ISP Line 1 Go Online With lisP Line 1 Schedule a Connection Now Generated by Mailtrag 0 8 7 73 on Monday April 6 1998 15 03 20 Crai To update the information click on the Refresh link If you are using a Netscape browser to view the Web Administrator Mailtraq will automatically update the page every few seconds This facility is very similar to the Ac
161. ing Mail Slots 5 In the Owner property select the user who will be responsible for the Mailing List In a single user environment you do not need to alter this setting Adding Subscribers are the members of the Mailing List who can either post to Subscribers the list or receive messages distributed by the list 1 Select the Subscribers Tab 2 Click on the New button to add a subscriber The Subscriber Properties dialogue will appear Subscriber Properties HEJ Mailing List Subscriber Statistics Filter Messages Subscribers can be given permissions individually in the mailing list When subscribers are added via mail they can receive messages by default Full Name John Smith Email Address lohas Send To Address lohas Details PO Password po Flags W Posts Messages a W Receives Messages Receives Digests multipart mined Receives Digests multipart digest 3 Enter the subscriber s name in the Full Name field 4 Inthe Email Address enter the address of the subscriber This is their sending address and should match the From field of the messages 35 Quick Start Guide 36 they post Mailtraq will use this field to identify the subscriber when they post a message to the Mailing List 5 In the Send To Address enter the address you want messages sent for this subscriber Normally this will be the same as the Email Address However some subscribers may wish to have mail distributed
162. ing a Netscape browser the page will be refreshed automatically every few seconds If this prevents you from starting a service simply press the stop button in your browser 218 Manage Mail Slots System Administration This facility allows you to create and delete mail slots from the Mailtraq system Once a mail slot has been created a link will appear to allow you to configure its properties he Netscape Manage Mail Slots Creating and Deleting File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Mail Slots Seren Maitrag Web Achunsirator Aaminisirator Manage Mail Slots Create and delete mail slots Create a new mail slot Mail slot name Main Menu System Settings Slot Type Mailbox Directory Visibility Private Only listed owner 7 Mail Group Root Mail Group Root Mail Slot Owner Administrator admin Create Mail Slot Reset Delete an existing mail slot Mail Slat Delete Reset Eris Document Done 219 The Web Administrator 220 Network Services This chapter discusses the Network Services which are the facilities that Mailtrag provides to which other machines or applications on the same machine can connect The following topics are covered The Service Manager Using Firewalls The Mailtrag Services 221 Network Services Mailtraq s services are all configured from the Services item in the Options menu of t
163. ing the Console and log off Mailtraq will try to detect this but when the icon does not appear you can simply use the Mailtraq Console applet in the Control Panel About M ailtrag View Event Log Hailtrag Console Finger all Automatic accounts Finger an account Collect POPS Mail Collect News Schedule a Connection How Go Online Shutdown Server 01 02 It is also possible to intentionally disable the icon and this can be done from the Server Properties from Options menu in the Console While Mailtrag is running you can open the Console through the applet in the Control Panel This may be useful if for example you have chosen to hide the system tray icon J Control Panel of x File Edt View Help Accessibility AddNew Add Remove Date Time Display Options Hardware Programs EF J eon ie a 4 Internet Joystick Keyboard Mail and Fax a 5 g D Mouse Network Passwords Printers mj cca Regional Sounds System Settings 24 objectis 4 The Console You can prevent unauthorised access to the console by password protecting it This can be configured from the Administration tab of the Server Properties from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console Whether you access the Console from the Control Panel applet or from the System Tray Icon the password will still be required to open the Console Overview of the Console 42 The Console uses the standard dual windo
164. ion available to the rest of the script The function must be defined before it is used and function definitions can be shared with references to external scripts Any number of parameters can be passed to a defined function From within the function definition the parameters are referred to by the placeholders 1 2 3 etc The number of parameters is given by 0 Syntax Define func_name content func_name The name of the function to be defined in the form of a string content The function expressions Use the Do function to bind multiple statements 268 Example File Handling Functions This example shows the definition of a function which will repeat the given string a specified number of times If a number is not given the default of 5 will be used DefineC RepeatLine Do local_i If 0 lt 2 5 2 whi leClocal_i gt 0 Doc locali locali 1 1 n RepeatLine Repeated Line 3 RepeatLine Another Repeated Line File Handling Functions OpenFile These functions are used to manipulate text files and for reading and writing to them Opens a text file for reading The function returns a handle which identifies this instance of the file and is valid until it is released with the CloseFile function The handle also identifies the current file pointer so that consecutive file reads retrieve consecutive lines of text When the end of the
165. is discarded Syntax LoadMessage path content path The file name of the message Use a relative name for messages stored in the database and a fully qualified name for external messages Do not attempt to load a message from the Mailtrag Database using a fully qualified name as this may interfere with the database management content The expression to execute in the context of the loaded message For example functions such as Header will retrieve data from this message Example This example demonstrates a script to prepare a message for forwarding as an SMS message to a mobile phone or pager which can only carry 160 characters and no subject line LoadMessage mail inbox johns msgid Do 1 t 0 msgc WhileC i lt GetMsgLinecountQ amp CLength msgc lt 160 msgc msgc GetMsgLine i Tie ttl PostMessage postmaster johnsms sms com msgc 282 String Manipulation String Manipulation LU of RJ Syntax These functions provide facilities to manipulate strings lists and other data Since the scripting language has no concept of data typing all the expressions can be treated as strings Left Justify LJ Centre Justify CJ and Right Justify RJ are the versatile trio of justification functions These functions pad the given string out to make it a given length If the given string is longer than the required length the functions will tri
166. is gateway allows all articles posted to this news group to be forwarded to the list of email Properties addresses The News To Mail Gateway sends messages e News to Mail Gateway ad posted and downloaded to this group to the specified address Filter ets aywidgetmakers com E Mail Address to post to widgets widgetmakers com To Field for messages widgets widgetmakers com Message Filter gt eal oan Edit Filter OF Cancel Help OK 3 Enable the Mail To News gateway 4 Subscribe to the mailing list under the name of the Mail To News gateway i e local widgets enderson com You will also need to ensure that everyone who will be posting to the news group is also permitted to post to the mailing list You should set the To field in the News To Mail gateway to the same address as the mailing list in order to let Mailtraq rewrite that header field Some mailing lists will not accept messages that aren t addressed to them to avoid loops and mis routed mail 149 The News System Now you can subscribe to the news group local widgets just as any other eroup but with the advantage that messages will be better managed by the news client The Mailtrag News Server 150 Authentication The news server allows local news clients news readers to connect to the news groups downloaded and the local news groups managed by Mailtraq The news clients can also post news
167. ived with SMTP Messages received through other methods are actually handled through the Return a Delivery Report Failure Part of the SMTP service defines how to deal with mail bounces and by indicating that the message cannot be accepted before it is received by Mailtraq is certainly the most efficient option available The Mail Server that is attempting to send the message is then responsible for providing a delivery report to the sender What the server actually does is usually very similar to the next option 99 Mail Delivery Return a Delivery Report Failure Forward Undelivered Mail to Mailbox Re Address Mail to Create a Mailbox and Store Place in the Outbox 100 When a message that cannot be delivered is processed by the Inbound Router a report is generated and returned to the message s sender This delivery report should explain what has happened although its actual content since it is a Mailtraq template is user definable Delivery Reports are also issued when Mailtraq is attempting to deliver a message via SMTP and receives a mail bounce as described above This option simply sends all mail for which there is no local address to the specified mailbox While you are first installing Mailtraq this is possibly a better choice than one of the above just in case there are any configuration errors gt Note that since the sender is not notified that there was a problem they will ass
168. janes enderson com gt aa message header Subject Contact Mr Green Date Tue 28 Oct 1997 11 50 58 0000 Mr Green called at 12 30 Please contact A A Oo Mim as soon as possible U O Le oO _ Ko Jane Simpson D he Amongst the headers of an e mail you will find the From and To fields These describe the author and original recipient of the message and provide both the e mail address and usually the name For example you may see the header field To John Smith lt john enderson com gt 0 Message Envelopes Or To john enderson com John Smith Both of these are quite valid as are a myriad of other formats In fact this information does not actually indicate to whom the message is to be sent Imagine you wish to write a message to John Smith but since he is away on vacation it is passed on to Jane Simpson his secretary She will still see that the message was addressed to John but if that is the case how did she receive it Because the actual recipient is described in the message envelope not the message itself Message Envelopes Just as with real letters the person on the top of the first page does not indicate to whom the message is sent The message is actually sent to the person on the envelope If the sorting office at Enderson Enterprises gets the message they can just put the letter in another envelope for Jane Simpson E Mail wor
169. ks in a similar way During delivery each message also has an envelope This envelope indicates who sent it and where it is going The envelope can be altered during delivery without affecting the message itself The envelope also contains a return address This address may not be the person who wrote the letter but usually the last step in the delivery process whoever put this message in the envelope If the message gets stuck somewhere because it cannot be successfully delivered the sender A Introducing E Mail must be informed Because the contents of the message may vary widely the delivering agent only has the envelope sender to notify Thus during delivery only the information in the envelope is used The Message Envelope F To Jor a From O Subjeci f Date i FROM janes enderson com Mr Gre RCPT john enderson com him as Jane S Once a message has been delivered or put in a mailbox for collection the envelope is usually discarded This is because the only recipient is the person who comes to collect the mail Thus it is useful to think of the envelope as being part of the delivery process not part of the message Message Headers There are a number of header fields that you can expect to find in any message The meaning of these fields has been standardised to avoid confusion and the table below describes the most common headers Many mail programs add additional information to the
170. l then appear in the list specifically for that mailing list Initially the new template will be a copy of the original template class Web Page Templates Sub classing a Template Create a Template Sub Class Template Class list welcome Description Welcome message for new subscribers Select an object to sub class for marketng dep Marketing Department List g accounts dep Accounts Department List info Information Des kEKO OCj ljljlaaaaaa marketing dep Marketing Department List newsletter N ewsletter projects dep Projects Department List sales Sales Team Web Page Templates You can also use templates in the Mailtraq Web Server to generate web pages For details on the Web Server see Chapter 12 Ifyou refer to page on the Web Server that ends in the extension tpl or mtq then Mailtraq will assume that it is a template instead of a normal file and execute it accordingly gt Note By default Mailtraq sets the MIME Content Type of the page to text plain If you wish to generate an HTML web page you must set the Content Type to text html Mailtraq web page templates are similar to CGI programs CGI standing for Common Gateway Interface used on other web servers Mailtraq will even take the parameters passed using CGI and place them into variables before the template is executed 25 Templates When a web browser requests a web page from the server it sends a message in a si
171. l will be received with SMTP Collection via SMTP requires no configuration as long as the SMTP service is running your service provider will attempt to deliver mail to it The ENV extension and the use of additional header fields are Specific to service providers consult their technical support service Choosing between SMTP and POP3 If you are considering collecting mail from one POP3 mailbox and distributing it on your network then there is a very important issue to consider Can you rebuild the message envelope correctly Without the message envelope it is not possible to determine the message recipients Mailtraq provides a number of ways to do this but without help from the POP3 server they are unlikely to be effective Mailtraq can obtain the envelope by examining header fields that some service providers add for that purpose such as the X Apparently To field Mailtragq can also use the ENV extension to POP3 to obtain the original envelope If these options are not available then Mailtraq can examine the To header and extract addresses from that Although extracting the recipients from the To header may seem an adequate solution there are further problems Consider a message posted to a mailing list The To header may contain the address politics ourworld net It is unlikely that your mailbox received this message because it happened to be addressed as politics ourworld net but rather because it is a subscri
172. ld be sending messages at the same time so several clients could be connected at once While all this is happening people can also be collecting mail from their mailboxes using another service Mailtraq itself also connects to services provided by other servers for example to forward a message to be delivered to someone elsewhere on the Internet Mailtraq is built around this concept of clients and services and you will find out more about these later When you send a message from your e mail software it disappears off to a server which then carries it away eventually to its intended destination But how do you read new mail Most e mail software is also able to collect mail for the user sometimes sending and fetching mail take place at the same time When the user presses the collect button the e mail software connects to the server and fetches the e mail waiting for it Many Windows e mail clients can send messages via MAPI Microsoft s Messaging Technology This is not currently supported by Mailtraq Delivering Service Providers What is Mailtraq You may now realise that there are two distinct types of delivery taking place here sending mail and collecting mail Usually when you send a message to somebody elsewhere on the Internet the message is delivered by a number of e mail servers these deliveries are called hops For example you might send the message to Mailtrag which then holds it for a
173. le SetSystemVar This function assigned a value to the specified variable The above system tree describes the available variables Some variables such as 303 Scripting Function Reference Syntax ConsoleMenu Command Syntax Examples addmailbox are write only and cause an action to take place when the value is written to them SetSystemVar variable value variable The full variable path e g mailslots johns descriptions value The value to be placed into the given variable This function scans the Mailtraq Console menu for a matching entry and then executes the associated function as though the user clicked on the meny item ConsoleMenuCommand menu menu The text taken from a menu entry These examples show how the menu entry names only have to match alphanumeric characters ConsoleMenuCommand Go Online ConsoleMenuCommand Outgoing Mail Conso1eMenuCommand C Incomi ngMai l External Programs 304 Mailtraq can be extended with outside programs and function libraries using the scripting language The following functions allow you to call custom made applications and integrate Mailtraq with existing software Execute ExecuteAsync Syntax Example External Programs By writing external functions it is possible to develop more complex extensions to Mailtraq than those possible with the scripting language These functions call an external
174. licate Downloads Preview Window Routing Service Post Master Postmaster Mailbox Preview Window Proxy Servers Proxy Tunnels Public Archives Q Querying Connections Queue Mode See KA9Q 150 221 144 ADA 144 129 58 49 100 109 111 151 111 21 46 115 64 117 78 113 120 116 114 227 85 48 120 178 228 169 66 RAS See Remote Access Service Re Addressing Mail Registration Details Registry Remote Access Service Dial Up Networking Remote Logging Service Remote Mailboxes Reports Accounting Delivery Reports Event Reports Return Path Returning Undelivered Mail Re Writing Routing Advanced Routing Table Inbound Router Local Router Outbound Router POP3 Collection Smart Hosts Run Script Command S Schedule Now Command Schedule Options Scheduled Dial up Scripting Automated Scripts Constructs Error Handling Expressions Functions Introduction 326 100 16 134 13 Do a ddI 21 46 114 g3 100 131 102 c oY 102 110 97 107 a UO 109 111 116 110 246 67 68 66 60 246 239 242 239 237 235 Lists Operators Run Script Command Strings Variables Secure Password Authentication Secure Sockets Layer SSL Security Timeout SGML Smart Hosts SMTP Overview Service Transactions Sorting 5 Static IP Addresses Static Routing Table Subscription By Mail Subscriptio
175. list of all the scripts that Mailtraq has stored in it s database To create a new script click on the Add button A new file will be added to the list and you can change the name to something more appropriate You can then edit the file and enter the contents of the script itself Scripts and Templates Templates Scripts Automated Scripting Plug ins Delete Once you have done this Mailtraq then knows about the script If you entered the script described above and called it add sig then you could then call that script either from the Automatic Scripting service or from any other script with the statement CallScript add sig Scripts and Templates Templates Scripts Automated Scripting Plug ins Description i Trigger Last Execution SifAdd Signature The Automatic Scripting tab shows a list of all the automatic events that have been configured To create a new event click on the Add button When a new event appears on the list you can select it and click on Properties to edit it In the Script Plug In to execute option you can select the previously created script 245 Scripting Automated Scripts Automated Script Properties Script Properties Message Trigger Use these settings to determine when the gt scheduled event should take place W Enable this Script Description Add Signature Script Flug in to Execute Disable after execution
176. lists are disabled then all users are considered Members and Administrators The message sender is identified first by the Sender header field or if that does not exist the From field Because of this messages distributed by a mailing list take on the identity of that list This is useful if you wish to have a mailing list automatically add messages to an archive as mailing lists place their address in the Sender field If Mailtrag cannot determine if a given message is a control message it relies on the table below Sender is a Sender is an Member Administrator Action Taken No No No action taken Yes No Matching messages are retrieved and returned to the sender No Yes Message is submitted Yes Yes Message is submitted Retrieving Each message in an archive is automatically given a filename when it is Messages 170 added Unless specified otherwise the filename will be the next available serial number Messages are retrieved by sending a control message specifying the filenames As with mailing lists control messages can be sent either directly to the archive or to the mailserver object Control messages sent to the mailserver can have more than one command while control messages sent directly to the archive have the command in the subject line Public Archives To retrieve a list of the messages in an archive simply use the index command The message returned will consist of a list of the messages and
177. ll need a database table to store the information which would be stored in the Mailtraq database as database db products 259 Templates Below is an extract from such a file which shows you what the structure would look like Editing fi wines Notepad Torx ae File Edit Search Help database db wines bot11 Cultivar Cabernet Sauvignon Region Bulgaria Vintage 1995 Colour Red Price 6 25 Stock 15 bot12 Cultivar Shiraz Region Australia Vintage 1996 Colour Red Price 5 56 Stock 4 bot13 Cultivar Pinotage Region South Africa Vintage none Colour Red Price 5 25 Stock 6 bot14 Cultivar Sauvignon Blanc Region France Vintage 1997 Colour White Price 5 66 Stock 7 Next you will need a template to generate the web page that provides access to the information The template below is then stored in the file wines tpl which is placed somewhere that can be reached by the web server SelectOutMessage SetHeaderC content type text html If cultivar cultivar Tf colour colour If region region 5 lt HTML gt lt HEAD gt 260 A Web Database lt TITLE gt Wine List lt TITLE gt lt HEAD gt lt BODY gt lt H1l gt wine L1ist lt H1 gt lt P gt lt FORM METHOD GET ACTION wines tpI gt Cultivar lt INPUT TYPE edit NAME cultivar VALUE cultivar gt lt P gt Region lt INPUT TYPE edit NAME region VALUE region gt lt P gt Colour
178. ll take place automatically Introducing E Mail This chapter introduces the concept of e mail and how it is used and delivered The following topics will be covered What is E Mail Message Envelopes Message Headers The Delivery Protocols SMTP and POP3 Mail Routing and Mail Exchanges Mail Gateways This chapter will also cover some distinctions between the different types of delivery protocol that may affect your choice of delivery method 69 Introducing E Mail What is E Mail Electronic mail was one of the first practical uses of wide area networking and remarkably little has changed since it began The content has certainly changed now you can send graphics sound and video as part of a message No doubt the future will provide even more creative uses of e mail Thankfully none of these new forms of message affects the actual delivery of them E Mail messages have a simple and consistent structure leaving mail servers to do the task of transferring them without knowing the complexities of what they contain An e mail message consists of a header and a body The header is normally not visible to the author and recipient of the message but instead tells the e mail client software in which it was written and read about the message The body represents what the user can actually see An example e mail ne sh th a Loe donn smith lt johnt enderson com a aoe aan ae From Jane Simpson lt
179. ltraq to recognise this name and you can do this by adding it as an alias in the Server Properties accessed in the Options menu of the Mailtraq Console This will allow you to access the web server by using the network name in the URL The Web Administrator discussed comprehensively in Chapter 13 is accessed through a special local path For example if the local machine name is netserver then it is accessed through http netserver Local web pages are retrieved from a directory structure available to Mailtrag In the HTTP Server Properties you can specify the root directory for the web server This directory becomes the root for URL requests to the web server For example if you set the root directory to be c web then the URL http metserver products index html will be translated to c web products index html If you wish to spread the web page directories over different locations you can use the aliases facility If you have an alias information company set to c company details then the request http netserver information company index html becomes c company details index html Aliases can also be relative to the root For example the same alias may refer to company details so the same URL will refer to c web company details html Each user may have their own home pages and their directory is specified in their user properties This allows browsers to refer to home pa
180. lue is a comma separated list Each item in the list may be enclosed within quotation marks General System These variables apply to the entire system rather than a specific object Variables such as a Mail Slot 296 Variable Name AddArchive AddMailbox AddMailingList BounceOption BounceSite BounceUser BreakIntoPartials ForwardIncoming ForwardIncomingTo HostAliases LocalAreaNetwork LocalHost MailboxTemplate MailSortingRules MaximumMessageSize NetworkOption OutgoingForward Type String W String W String W Option String String Boolean Boolean String List List String String List Integer Option Boolean Mailtrag System Access Purpose Create a new archive with the given name Create a new mailbox with the given name Create a new mailing list with the given name How undelivered mail is handled returntosender Return refuse to accept returnreport Create a failure report forwarduser Send to a specific mailbox readdress Re Address to another domain create Create a new mailbox sendtooutbox Put in the outbox Site for BounceOption readdress Address for BounceOption forwarduser Enable Disable the Break Incoming Mail option Forward all incoming mail to a local mailbox Forward all incoming mail to this mailbox Specifies the domain aliases comma separated The IP Addresses representing the local network Specifies the local domain name Mailbox
181. ly into the web cache using Web Crawlers Crawlers to use the common Internet name are clients that browse web sites in the same way that a user would but much faster A crawler will download a page identify all the hyperlinks and then follow them Web Crawlers Properties dialogue Web Crawlers Web Crawlers and Web Cache Web Crawlers can be used to download web sites automatically making it possible for other machines on the network to browse the sites without requiring an Internet connection Web Crawlers Mame Roo URE Edit SI Maitrag Web Pages http www fastrag co uk mailtrag i 3 Enderson Intranet http netserver indes html Web Cache Files invalid after E hours when online and 99999 hours offline Cache Pool j 0 mb Maximum crawlers actiwe 5 gt Help OF Cancel Every time a file is downloaded it is added to the web cache This makes it possible to browse entire web sites without having to actually follow each link by hand while online Another advantage of the web crawler approach is that sites can be regularly traversed with only modified files being downloaded making it possible to mirror a web site For example if you may wish to mirror a popular news site for employees to read Web crawlers can also index sites As Mailtraq downloads a web page it keeps a list of all the words and stores them locally If you wish to find a web page on a site indexed with a web crawler you ca
182. m the string appropriately LJ adds padding characters to the right RJ adds to the left and CJ adds padding characters evenly to both sides The padding characters are taken sequentially from the given pad string string LJ text width pad text The string to which the padding characters are to be added width The required width of the resulting string If this is longer than the length of text then textis reduced to this length otherwise characters are taken successively from the pad string until the resulting string reaches the required length pad The characters to pad out the string until it reaches the required length string The result of the function which is always width characters long If this un parameter is not given the default is used a space 283 Scripting Function Reference Example The examples below show typical uses of the functions LIC text 10 Ji TERT nasai cy text 10 text RIC 10 abcde abcdeabcd Length This function returns the length in characters of the given string Syntax num_chars Length string string The text to measure num_chars The number of characters counted in string Wildca rdMatch This function compares a string with a wildcard expression and returns a boolean value indicating whether the match was successful The wildcard expression consists of plain text with the pla
183. mailbox r Name of the mailbox owner Or other description Mailtrag fs Mailbox name the email address fiohns Password for access via POP3 from a mail client g One can post to this mailbox from other hosts and access this mailbox over the network from any mail client gt Previous lt Finish Cancel However if you are installing Mailtraq to manage e mail for a network or multiple users on one PC then you may prefer to enter the mailbox details in the Mailtraq Console where all the options and on line documentation are available If your service provider supplies e mail only through a POP3 account then you can use this facility to collect it 2 Installing Mailtrag Provide News Services Define your Local Area Network 22 Mailtrag Installation Ed collect mail from a remote mailbox Do you wish to collect mail For this mailbox from a remote a POPS account This would be 4 POPS mailbox supplied by an al raq Internet Service Provider f No mail will be delivered via SMTP F C Yes using these settings POPS Server Jpop isp co uk POPS Account fenderson Password iaee Leave mail on the server Previous lt Finish Cancel The Leave mail on the server option allows you to download a copy of the messages leaving them on the server for another system to download later Mailtraq will not download a second copy of the messages providing the
184. mailing lists can become quite easy to maintain Using subscription by mail a user can write to the mailing list server with a special control message and using the information provided in that message such as the user s name and e mail address they can be added to the list Users can also leave the mailing list by sending a similar message Mailing Lists in Mailtraq Mailtrag provides most of the mailing list facilities found in dedicated list managers Each mailing list is represented by a mail slot in a similar way to a normal mailbox and is subject to the same message routing mechanisms 155 Mailing Lists Mailing List Properties Mailing List Properties Dialogue General Digests Aliases List Subscribers ACCESS Messages Vea Malling lists can be used to distribute messages eos to subscribers at any address The maintainer Will receive delivery and transport messages List Name Fales Description Sales Team Maintainer sales owner T Distribute incoming messages to all subscribers f Distribute evenly between subscribers Owner Local Directory Visibility Administrator x Public Arybody bi E a When a message is received by a mailing list the message itself and the mailing list configuration determine what is done with it If the message is not admitted a notice may be returned to the user or in the case of moderated lists it may be sent to the moderator
185. mary DNS 123 123 123 123 oOo iw NetBEUI Secondary DNS 123 123 123 124 0 M IPX SPX Compatible i 0 0 0 M ICPAP Tcpap Primary WINS ELELEE Seconday WINS 0 0 0 0 Next gt Finish Cancel OK M Use IP header compression M Use default gateway on remote network Cancel Your service provider should have supplied details on how to create a DUN connection If they have not you will need the following information from them Whether or not you have a static IP address If so what that IP address is The IP address of your service provider s DNS machine A dial up telephone number Your dial up account name and password This information can be used to create a Dial up Network Connection If you encounter difficulties using the connection you should contact your service provider for assistance 20 Service Provider Account Details Create a User Mailbox Collect Mail from a Remote Mailbox The Installation Wizard In this section you should enter the account name and password that you use to connect to your Internet Service Provider Mailtraq needs this information even if you have already entered it as part of your dial up configuration This section allows you to optionally create an initial mailbox If you are configuring Mailtraq for a single user environment then this is all the configuration you will need for your mail slots Mailtrag Installation ES configure the
186. mic mysteries Atte Awww msnbc com news l 438i asp Looking into cosmic mysteries amp 5 MSNBC Snail venom prevents chronic pain REED www msnbc com news l 43529 asp Snail venom prevents chronic pain Scientists work slowly but steadily toward cure By Charlene Laino MSNBC Ca Document Done ba h In the example above the keyword science has been entered and Mailtraq is displaying the pages it has matched Mailtraq will sort the matching pages according to how often it has found the matching keywords showing the pages with the most matches first System Administration If the current user has System Administration privileges they will be able to access the options in this section The System Administration facility 214 System Administration allows users to monitor and configure some of the system parameters such as network dial up and the creation of mail slots Sy stem Configuration 4 Netscape System Settings File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Page A 2 Maitrag Web Admaunistrator Aaministr ator Main Menu System Configuration Configure the Mailtraq system properties Select one of the options below to configure the corresponding properties Schedule Configure the dialup schedules and automatic Internet connections Dial Up Status Monitor the dial up status Initiate and schedule dial ups Active Connections Monitor the active
187. milar structure to an e mail message It is therefore possible to access the requesting message using SelectInMessage and functions such as Header Example Web Here isa simple web page template which simply displays the current Template time SelectOutMessageQ SetHeader Content Type text html lt HTML gt lt HEAD gt lt TITLE gt The Clock lt TITLE gt lt HEAD gt lt BODY gt lt H1 gt The Clock Page lt H1 gt lt P gt The current time is lt EM gt Now lt EM gt lt P gt Your web browser is SelectInMessage Header User Agent lt BODY gt lt HTML gt The illustration below shows what happens when the page is viewed through a web browser 258 A Web Database A Web Template shown yi Netscape The Clock File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help in a Web Browser Back Home Edit Reload i i A Location http localhost clock tpl X The Clock Page The current time is Thu 22 Jan 1998 207397220 0000 Your web browser is Mozilla 3 01Gold Win95 ID Cr Document Done A Web Database The example given above is very simple compared to what can be achieved with Mailtraq This section will describe a complete web based database using only Mailtraq and the scripting service In this example the database contains information about a number of wines and we will create a web page to access this information Firstly you wi
188. ministrator johns John Smith Copy FF alexw Alex Winters choeh Chloe Hall estherm Esther McCarthy FF jamesw James Woods Properties f janeh Jane Hammersmith F lanas l aha Ciramece Licensed for 30 users you may add a further 5 users Help Done To create a new user acount follow these steps 1 Click the Add button which will create a new user and open the User Properties dialogue 2 Enter a short user identifier in the Login User Name edit box This name should not contain any spaces or any characters other than letters and numbers This is the name that will be used when logging in to the Web Administrator and will appear in the Console 3 Enter the full name of the user in the Full Name edit box 4 _ Enter a password for this user The characters entered will be shown as asterisks Note that the password is case sensitive 29 Quick Start Guide An example completed User Properties dialogue Adding More User 30 Accounts User Properties HEJ Properties Hews Groups Web Services Licensed users may log on via the Web J Administrator and may use their account to read Login User Mame fiohns Full name ohn Smith Password RRRRREEE Web Home Pages m He Creal The user account is now configured and you can click on OK to store the new account If you click on Cancel the user will not be created and any changes will be discarded You
189. n Commands See List Commands Subscriptions Synchronised Online Times System Tray Icon T TAPI TCP IP About Ports Proxy Tunnel Telephony See TAPI Templates Introduction Mailing Lists and Templates Sub classing Tree View Trigger Messages e 19 110 316 243 238 246 244 238 114 114 190 176 ie 74 112 226 19 104 S17 110 155 50 56 40 13 317 74 316 228 293 168 259 43 248 U Undelivered Mail Universal Resource Locators See URL URG s s r s amp 4 URL Encoded Format USENET User Information Protocol Users Accounts Mail Slot Ownership Web Administrator Access V View Event Log View Record Command Virtual Network Visibility W Warn on Missed Schedules Web Administrator 99 177 186 138 229 122 125 191 130 oi 56 84 185 67 Active Connections Directory Introduction Mailing Lists Moderating Messages Reading Mail Reading News Security Timeout System Administration User Access Web Browser Web Cache Web Crawlers Overview Scan Depth Web Proxy Web Server Wildcards Windows Clipboard Windows Explorer Windows Registry World Wide Web X X Moderate For 134 217 192 189 203 195 194 211 190 214 191 177 179 180 183 179 183 102 131 40 175 159 327
190. n be used num DateTimeToReal 20 10 1997 13 12 11 1fCnum gt 35723 5501385995 days num DateToReal 10 10 1997 These functions simply convert real numbers into their equivalent date time text formats The FormatDateTime function provides more versatility datetime RealToDateTime real real A floating point value representing some date datetime The textual version of the date in one of the Mailtraq system formats This function takes a date in its numerical format see DateTimeToReal and converts it to a user defined text format Note that unlike RealToDateTime Mailtraq will use the locale settings on the host machine This will result in day names for example being generated in the language that is specified in the system locale Syntax String Manipulation text FormatDateTime format datenum format A string specifying the format of the date using the specifiers shown below datenum A number representing a date time fext The formatted version of the date The table below shows the available format specifiers Other characters will be taken literally see example Specifier dd ddd dddd mm mmm mmmm yy Yyyy hh nn SS am pm a p Description A single digit day number 1 31 Double digit day number 01 31 A three letter abbreviation of the day e g Mon Tue A full length day name e g Monday Tuesday A single digit month number 1 12 D
191. n become difficult to manage Further 185 The World Wide Web Referring to CGI 186 Templates with HTML sensitive information is often more clearly visible to web browsers in the URL appearing for example in the URL history The POST command simply places the parameters in the body of the request rather than in the URL Mailtraq supports both GET and POST for templates but only the URL Encoded format of data which is also the most widely used When parameters are sent in this way Mailtraq converts them to variables and when the template is executed these variables will already be set Given the request above the database tpl template may contain Database Result is DBRead db rec field In this case the parameters db rec and field have been placed into variables before the template is executed gt Note the templates will by default appear as plain text not HTML This is because Mailtraq sets the outgoing message content type to text plain If you wish to generate HTML output you should change this with the SetHeader function Specifically use SelectOutMessageQ SetHeader Content Type text htm1 There are two methods for referring to templates and passing parameters to them You can either directly reference a page and supply parameters using the lt A gt HTML tag For example lt A HREF cgi database tpl db wines gt which will call the specified template with a
192. n this period you will have to enter the user name and password details again Netscape Login File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Maittrag Web Administrator Guest Main Menu Log In Please enter your user name and password below You may be asked to enter this information again if you do not access any information for more than 20 minutes User name johns Password Login Log in as Guest Generated by Mailtrag 0 8 5 66 on Tuesday January 20 1998 02 47 43 Cra Document Done This facility provides access to the Mailtraq mail slots If the current user has administration privileges they will see all the mail slots but will only be able to read mail in the slots his or her mailboxes If the current user does not have administration privileges then they will see their mail slots listed first followed by all the mail slots that have protected or public access The other slots are shown so that the user can write messages to them Users can only modify the properties and read the mail of their own mail slots The Directory Local Mail Slot yy Netscape Directory File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Directory Your Mail Slots johns John Smith Mail Slots gt i Information Desk gt ni Newsletter G Postmaster s Mailbox E p Price List E p Product Lists s Sales Team gt oc Technical Support Desk Accounting Department 5 a nts der Accounts De
193. n use the Web Administrator discussed shortly to identify pages containing the specified keywords As Mailtraq is also a web server you can use this mechanism to index local sites too 18 The World Wide Web Web Crawler Properties Web Crawler Properties E x dialogue Properties Crawler Settings Files Connection The Web Crawler will downoad web pages and automatically download the images and follow the references Web Crawlers can algo be used to index sites Hame enderson Description Enderson Intranet Root URL hitp netserver index html Owner Administrator Directories Public visible by anybody W Create an Index e ea It is important to carefully configure a web crawler in order to make it effective If a crawler follows every link it will soon leave the web site and try to download the entire Internet Further since crawlers can follow every link you may find that they download unnecessary files such as large animations or applications You will need to set limits on what links it can follow and what types of files it can download Mailtraq allows you to enter a wildcard list of the URLs that the crawler will download lt footnote link to page gt You can also indicate if you want the crawler to follow links outside the site you have specified and how many files to download The scan depth determines the maximum number of links to follow to reach any file For example i
194. nd files on the World Wide Web although it can in fact transfer any type of data The HTTP Server usually resides on TCP IP port 80 although HTTP Servers intended only for proxying requests are often set to listen on TCP IP port 8080 The IP address is used to uniquely identify a machine on a network No two machines may share the same IP address An IP address is defined by four numbers in the range 0 to 255 separated by dots For example 192 168 0 1 would be a valid IP address A single machine may be known by several IP addresses MX machines or Mail Exchanges are mail servers designated to receive mail for specific domains MX Resolution involves identifying the appropriate Mail Exchange when delivering mail to a user MX Records can be retrieved from DNS machines Network News Transfer Protocol This is a communication protocol for transferring news articles between news servers and clients Unlike SMTP and POP3 NNTP can both send and receive news articles The NNTP Server usually resides on TCP IP port 119 Post Office Protocol Version 3 This is a communication protocol for collecting mail from a remote mail store The protocol is initiated by a client that wishes to receive mail and it connects to a POP3 Server to do this The POP3 Server usually resides on TCP IP port 110 313 Glossary 314 Port RAS Server Smarthosts SMTP This is the TCP IP term for one end of a network connection A single mac
195. ndows program that can access a Ep Mail arriving in this mailbox can be retiewed POPS account Mailbox Name liohnd NameDescrption of Malbos i ohn Smith POPS Password Owner Local Directory Visibility John Smith z Private Owner as o E In order to access the mail in a Mailtraq mailbox you simply need to tell your mail client the mailbox name and its password If you set your mailbox password to be blank then Mailtraq will accept any password You can also read mail from within the Mailtraq console by selecting the mailbox in the object tree and opening a message You will see the entire message contents including the header You can also read mail using the Web Administrator which can be useful in situations where you 8 7 Mail Slots Forwarding Mail Configuring the Forwarding Options for 88 a Mailbox need to access mail quickly without installing a mail client or where you are not using your normal machine This facility allows a message to be automatically sent to another location If you select the Delete from Mailbox option then a copy will not be kept in the mailbox This may be useful if for example a user wants to ensure that a colleague receives a copy of all his e mail The mailbox owner may also for example wish to have all his mail forwarded to a secretary while he is away Mailbox Properties POPS Mailbox Mail Aliases Message Expiry Gateway by an
196. netserver has been used In this case the pages on the web server are usually referred to with http netserver The Web Administrator is referred to using a system page name To enter the Web Administrator use the URL http netserver gt Note Mailtraq must be able to recognise the name of the machine otherwise it will assume the user wishes to access the Web Proxy service to reach another machine To do this ensure that whatever names that will be used to refer to the Mailtraq Web Server are added to the Domain Aliases in the Server Properties from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console The Web Administrator uses a token security model This means that every hyperlink that appears in the Web Administrator pages includes a token identifying and authenticating the current user If one of these tokens is not used within a certain period the Security Timeout configured in the HTTP Server Properties the user will have to enter their password again For this reason one cannot enter a Web Administrator URL other than the main menu manually It may be more convenient to hide the URL in the browser when accessing these pages User Access and Control The Web Administrator y4 Netscape Web Administrator Menu File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Main Menu Mailtraqg Web Administrator Administrator Web Administrator Mailtraq Web Administrator Main Menu ddu Login Lo
197. network services Manage Mail Slots Create and delete mail slots Eris Document Done 215 The Web Administrator Schedule This option allows the user to configure the dial up schedules A list of the currently configured schedules is shown and in the frame below the currently selected schedule settings are displayed To select a schedule click on the icon beside it Configuring the Dial up yi Netscape Schedules File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Schedules amp e oc ty 2 Maitrag Web Aahunisir ator Achanisir ator Main Menu System Settings Dialup Schedules Active Description Delete M Daily at 08 00 00 News POPS to ISP Line 1 C Apply Add Schedule Reset Dialup Settings Current RAS Connection ISP Line 1 T Automatically select next alternative on failure to connect Number of retries Bo Disconnect after fi20 seconds of inactivity 0 disables Disconnect unconditionally after faon seconds Schedule Date Schedule Time Connect Every Day Once a day at 08 00 00 Connect only on the following days C 0 i D Sunday C Menday Every jo minutes past the hour l Tuesday Wednesday C Every faso minutes starting at 12am Thursday Friday l Saturday l Only between these times Connect on specific day of month fi 00 00 00 and 23 53 00 Schedule Options Enable only if outbound mail waiting l High priority mail only l Enable only if offl
198. nnection to the Internet Click on a time block to mark it as online SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT Offline 2 00 m E E E E P P E Online 4 00 Each block 5 00 represents 15 6 00 minutes 2 00 EE EE EE EE EE 9 00 BEB BBB BRP eee eee eee 10 00 BEB BBB BRR eeee eee 11 00 BEB BBB REPRE eeee eee 12 00 BEB BEB RPP eee eee eee 13 00 BEB BEB RRP 14 00 BEB BBB PRR eee eee eee 15 00 BEB BBB RPP Ree eee eee eee 16 00 BEB RBBB RPP Ree eee eee eee 17 00 n EE EE EE EE 20 00 Cancel 21 00 __Lancel Em 23 00 Done Click on the grid to toggle a time block You can specify the times by clicking on the Edit button and highlighting the fifteen minute periods when Mailtraq can use the Internet services In the above example the network is available from 8 30am to 5 30pm Monday to Friday and for fifteen minutes every day at 2 00am This option is very similar to the Dial up Networking option but Mailtraq will not actually initiate the connection Scheduled dial ups can still be configured allowing Mailtraq to consider itself online as though it initiated the connection ending the session after an idle time out Dial Up Networking If you have a dial up network router which handles connections to the Internet as needed which you do not wish to use unnecessarily then this can be an effective solution You can use the Console Go Online and Go Offline to manually change Mailtraq s state
199. nsole in the Outbox object When a message has been designated for outbound delivery and its local recipients removed from the message envelope it is added to the outbound queue When first added to the queue the message does not have a route The Outbound Router regularly scans messages in the queue for those that can be dealt with in some way If the Outbound Router encounters a message without a route it scans the static routing table to find the most appropriate route and assigns it to the message If the message has Mail Routes Static Routing Table Advanced Routing Tables from Outbound Mail Properties The Outbound Router multiple recipients and the recipients match more than one route then the message is duplicated once for each route At the heart of the Outbound Router is the routing table an example is illustrated below The routing table also called the static routing table is a list of user defined routes that messages may take to reach their destination Each route can either be local or remote and can either be a list of mail servers or Domain Name Servers which can resolve MX requests Mail can be delivered to machines on local routes without an Internet connection while messages to remote routes cannot be delivered until Mailtraq is online zA Mail Routing Table Static Routing Table Dynamic Routing Table Mx Cache Address Hosts Filter Move Up setitenderson com 192 100 1
200. nt specifies the structure of e mail messages This format is also used for news articles and is the basis for practically every form of Internet message Amongst other things it also defines many of the standard header fields Network News Transfer Protocol A Proposed Standard for the Stream Based Transmission of News February 1986 Brian Kantor Phil Lapsley U C San Diego U C Berkeley This document is the NNTP standard which is the protocol Mailtraq uses for all its news services See draft barber nntp news 07 for the latest revisions to this standard Post Office Protocol Version 3 November 1994 J Myers Carnegie Mellon M Rose Dover Beach Consulting Inc RFC1521 RFC1288 RFC1522 This document is the current revision and standard for POP3 which is the protocol used by Mailtraq to provide mail clients with access to locally stored mail MIME Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions Part One Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies September 1993 N Borenstein N Freed Bellcore Innosoft This document is the standard for MIME messages which is the basis for carrying non standard information in Internet messages The Finger User Information Protocol December 1991 D Zimmerman Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science This is the standard for the Finger protocol MIME Multipurpose Internet
201. ntaining recipient addresses and the C and B lines are optional This can be described in BNF as cnofile gt sender CRLF recipients CRLF message sender i F email recipients i recipient recipient recipients recipient i T email C email B email emai e mail address of sender or recipient message message text including headers Here are some examples of the headers from cno files Example 1 Example 2 F johns enderson com F johns enderson com T janes enderson com T widgets widgetmakers com B johns enderson com C piercet enderson com piercet B janes enderson com gt Note that the message text including header fields follow immediately after the recipient addresses Network Services 232 More than one T C or B line may be given containing recipient addresses and the C and B lines are optional This can be described in BNF as cnofile gt sender CRLF recipients CRLF message sender i F email recipients i recipient recipient recipients recipient i T email C email B email emai e mail address of sender or recipient message message text including headers Here are some examples of the headers from cno files Example 1 Example 2 F johns enderson com F johns enderson com T janes enderson com T widgets widgetmakers com B johns enderson com C piercet enderson com piercet B janes ender
202. ny message with a subject line that does not begin with an will be added to the archive If you wish to add the message and assign a filename simply begin the subject line with ADD filename Filenames must be just a single word Templates can also be submitted to an archive Since Mailtragq cannot automatically identify a template you will need to begin the subject line with TEMPLATE filename With both the ADD and TEMPLATE commands the command part of the subject line will be removed before the message is added Here are some examples of control messages sent to mailserver to retrieve messages from archives Example Archive commands sent to mailserver Index development This requests a list of all the messages stored in the development archive Send help archive 1 3 6 9 18 This requests messages 1 3 4 5 6 9 and 18 from the archive to be returned as individual messages Send prices widget This requests the named file widget from the prices archive to be returned This might be a normal message or a template that generates the prices on demand Digest sales 1 99 This requests a digest consisting of all the messages numbered 1 through 99 to be returned If any of these messages are templates they will be excluded Public Archives Here are some examples of messages sent directly to the archive The subject line is shown here Example Archive commands sent directly to
203. o a simple way to prevent clients from automatically using services such as preventing the Mail Server from your Internet Service Provider delivering mail via SMTP when you wish to actively collect via POP3 instead The firewall works by listing the IP addresses of the machines you wish to allow access to The IP address is the unique 32 bit number assigned to every machine on the Internet Machines only visible on your local area network are unlikely to be globally unique as the network administrator may select them 224 Use 192 168 0 1 through 192 168 0 255 for local IP numbers HTTP Service Properties Firewalls IP addresses are represented by four numbers separated by periods in the range 0 255 For example 192 168 0 1 It is recommended that you use the IP addresses 192 168 0 1 through 192 168 0 255 for your local area network as these numbers are guaranteed not be assigned to any Internet machine Mailtraq allows you to specify ranges such as that above by using the wildcard For example to specify the range above you could enter 192Z108 0 Mailtraq also allows you to exclude a single address or range of addresses by prefixing them with a tilde For example 192 would prevent any machine with an IP address starting with 192 from connecting The ranges are interpreted from top to bottom and firewalls begin empty excluding everything so if you wi
204. ol Large Message Safety You may permit only specified machines to an connect to this service using the options below f 1 Allow any client to connect C 2 Use the addresses below as a Firewall f 3 2 and Local 4rea Network Edit Limit access to the IP address ranges listed below e oea Large Message Safety The POP3 Service The NNTP Service The Mailtrag Services Many mail clients first connect to the POP3 service to collect mail and then begin delivery via SMTP This method allows those mail clients to gain access to SMTP effectively using the mailbox authentication mechanism used in POP3 This facility can be used as a defence against unnecessarily large messages Such messages can tie Mailtraq up on your dial up connection for a long and possibly costly time and such misuse may also be malicious SMTP does not have any means to refuse large messages as POP3 does but Mailtrag can cancel the connection and refuse to accept the same message next time a delivery attempt is made as mail servers should try to send the message again if the connection is cut during delivery The Post Office Protocol service allows mail clients to collect messages from the mailboxes managed by Mailtrag POP3 is covered in detail in Chapter 6 It is unusual for mail clients outside your local network to connect to the POP3 service particularly if you have a dial up connection For this reason it is usuall
205. ol Messages Digests Distribution Lists Even Distribution Forums Introduction The mailserver Maintainer Mirroring Moderating Secure Lists Subscribers Subscription by mail Mailserver Mail To News Gateways 77 77 110 319 76 88 81 90 47 109 201 91 89 200 83 91 147 125 48 162 84 8 87 161 163 160 154 157 161 153 160 162 157 147 159 164 158 155 161 49 162 146 Maling Lists Moderating Marquee Selection Message Sorting Messages Envelopes Expiry Forwarding Mail Header Fields large messages Mailtrag Message Format MIME Script Triggers Templates Messaging MIME Modems Moderating See Mailing Lists MX Resolution N Network Latency Network Services Firewalls Introduction Remote Logging News Article Expiry Authentication Enabling During a Schedule GROUP Type Collection Groups Internet News Local News Groups NEWNEWS Command Posting Servers XHDR Command 193 44 104 71 89 88 72 107 108 155 160 248 168 4 160 57 76 110 111 142 224 221 229 141 150 64 144 140 137 148 142 151 142 144 XOVER Command Newsserver ME News To Mail Gateways NNTP 0 On Disk Event Logging On line Outbox Outgoing Mail Outgoing News P Parallel Mail Delivery POP3 Collection From Enabling During a Schedule ENV Command Overview Preventing Dup
206. om the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console Each account represents a connection to a mailbox held on a remote mail server 114 POP3 Collection Account Properties Leaving Mail in the Account Routing Messages Remote POP3 Collection POP3 Account Properties EEJ You can collect mail from remote POPS accounts and automatically route them through this server to both local and other remote accounts W Enable this account POPS Server pop3 isp com Account U sername Jenderson Password SHREK AEHN W Leave Mail on Server W Automatically delete after ia days Local rea Network Check mailbox every eo Minutes Last collection e ore With POP3 deleting a message after it has been downloaded is usually optional Mailtraq allows you to leave the messages in the mailbox and only download messages that have not been seen before Mailtraq can be configured to delete messages after a certain number of days since they were first seen which can prevent the mailboxes becoming unmanageable You should check with your service provider whether or not leaving mail on the server is permitted and supported Leaving mail on the server can be a way to share the account with different users For example if you are using an account at the office and at home leaving messages on the server allows you to access them from both locations Messages that are downloaded can either be sent to a specific
207. ommon with messaging by having Mailtrag provide them you can avoid separate specialised software and have tighter integration with Mailtraq s messaging services 175 The World Wide Web What is the Web It is quite possibly thanks to the World Wide Web that the Internet is as popular as it is today Although e mail allows people to communicate easily and the USENET provided a medium for worldwide discussion there was no way to use the Internet as an effective information resource The concept of an information store had been around for a long time in the form of gopher and FTP sites The disadvantages though were that obtaining information from these sources was complex and finding information was even more difficult Information stored in these resources represented a huge variety of formats some only available to certain users The result was as always authors resorting to the lowest common denominator plain text The result was unstructured and uninspiring presentation of information HyperText Markup The solution was not to improve accessibility to these resources but to Language standardise the way information is stored and presented to the user Work was already being done in the field of large scale information management and a new and very successful standard was emerging SGML Standard Generalised Markup Language A quick and simplified implementation of SGML was quickly developed called HTML HyperText Mark
208. on TCP IP port 25 Static IP Addresses Static IP Addresses are where connections made to an Internet Service Provider always use the same IP address Because the IP address is always the same Domain Name Servers can hold records translating a domain name into that address TCP IP Transmission Control Protocol Internet Protocol TCP IP is the networking protocol on which the Internet is based It was designed for wide area networks but is equally effective on local area networks 315 Glossary 316 Bibliography This chapter provides a reference to a number of documents that describe the systems and protocols used by Mailtrag The information in these documents is the most comprehensive and accurate available Many of these documents are RFCs or Request For Comments These are documents maintained by the Internet Engineering Task Force IETF and form the basis for common Internet standards Where possible these documents have been supplied on the Mailtraq CD in the docs directory RFC821 Simple Mail Transport Protocol August 1982 317 Bibliography 318 RFC822 RFC977 RFC1725 Jonathan B Postel Information Sciences Institute University of Southern California This document is the specification for SMTP mail delivery Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages August 1982 David H Crocker Department of Electrical Engineering University of Delaware This docume
209. on is completed the contents of the memory block is assumed to be a null terminated string and is returned as the result of the CallDLLFunction It may be worthwhile to bind regularly used functions to scripting functions using Define These function definitions can be stored in a 307 Scripting Function Reference single file that can be called by any script that wishes to use the library functions Syntax result CallDLLFunction library function parameters datasize library The full path name of the DLL that will contain the requested function function The name of the function to execute in the DLL This should be the exported name of the function parameters This optional parameter is a text string that is placed in the shared data block prior to the DLL function being executed datasize This optional parameter determines how large the memory block will be This is also the maximum size of the data that can be passed between Mailtrag and the DLL function If this value is not given the default of 256 will be used result This is the text string contained in the memory block after the function has been executed If the function does not modify the memory block then this will be the same as the parameters value 308 Example External Programs This example shows how two external DLL functions for accessing registry data are bound to more user friendly Mailtrag functions The definitions could have been
210. ormation displayed is similar to mailboxes as news articles are very similar to e mail messages 50 Outgoing News Outgoing News Web Crawlers Ca Web Crawlers 3 fastraq Users P Users i administrator The Console Objects Manfred __ What s new 7400 links on Object Orientation a TES e 4315 Fi Digispec Re Printer port 17 33 36 1619 YuHaian Re Help LIBC LIB libaray not found with nmak ecient 11289 gt Ken Modify resources in an executable file 17 33 37 1260 Carl Mail Fle Modify resources in an executable file 17 33 38 1435 gt Frank Re Modify resources in an executable file 17 33 38 1576 The Outgoing News object stores news articles that have been posted to news groups subscribed to by Mailtrag These will be articles that have been posted locally and they are stored here while waiting to be uploaded to the appropriate news server The Web Crawlers are used to automatically download web pages and files and insert them into the global web cache This makes it possible to browse the pages or even entire sites completely off line through the Web Proxy service The crawlers can automatically update the pages and index them for searching through the Web Administrator You can initiate a web crawler from the Crawl Now option on the context menu for the crawler objects The Users represent the people who can use Mailtraq to maintain their mail slots throu
211. ouble digit month number 01 12 A three letter abbreviation of the month e g Jan Feb A full length month name e g January February A two digit year e g 98 A four digit year e g 1998 The hour without a leading zero Two digit hour with leading zero The minute without a leading zero Two digit minute with leading zero The second without a leading zero Two digit second with leading zero Shows either am or pm using the string from the current locale The preceding time also becomes 12 hour ow aw Shows either a or p The preceding time becomes 12 hour 289 Scripting Function Reference Uses the locale s date separator Uses the locale s time separator vl X Text enclosed within single quotes is included literally Example These examples show a variety of date formats FormatDate hh nn ss date FormatDate dddd mmmm d yyyy at hh nn ss date FormatDateC ham pm precisely date AddressOf This function takes a string and attempts to extract an e mail address from it It is usually used in conjunction with message header fields where other information such as the user s name is also included Syntax email AddressOf string string Any text string such as the contents of the From field email The first e mail address found in the string UserOf This function takes an e mail address and extracts the user part the
212. ounce 3 groups uk announce d Defaults uk announce events moderated uk announce events 1 groups Create uk answers moderated uk bes 2 groups uk business 1 groups uk community 3 groups uk comp 7 groups uk consultants uk current events 2 groups You can see the current subscriptions and available groups by selecting Subscriptions from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console If the list of groups is empty even if you have configured a news server then the list must first be downloaded which if the option is checked in the news server properties will take place on the next connection News Groups Once you have subscribed to some news groups you can further configure how news will be downloaded This is done in the Group Properties dialogue 140 News Group Properties dialogue Connections can be safely cut midway through download News Collection News Group uk announce P x These newsgroup settings determine where articles are downloaded from Wo Download articles News Server News isp com r Download Friority Normal Article Range Highest Server Number 1 0 0 nia Last News Collection Tuesday October 28 at 17 38 17 38 GMT Reset Date Numbers He Creal You do not need to wait for the news group downloads to complete before going offline and if a connection is cut while an article is being downloaded no harm will be done This makes it us
213. partment List Marketing Department Cra Document Done The table below shows what mail slots are visible to the currently logged in user Logged in User Mail slots owned by user Other mail slots Administrator Read Mail Properites Subscriptions Properties Normal User Read Mail Properties Subscriptions Write To and Subscriptions only if mail slot is Public or Protected Guest User n a Write To only if mail slot is Public If a mailing list appears in a directory then the current user may use the associated subscriptions icon to subscribe or unsubscribe from it 193 The Web Administrator Reading Mail Reading Mail using the Web Administrator Icons appearing in the 194 Web Administrator when reading mail Users can read all the messages in their mail slots by following the Read Mail icon from the directory The screen is divided into two frames one shows the list of messages while the other shows the content of a message when it is selected he Netscape Mailbox johns File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Mailtraq Web Administrator John Smith Main Menu Mailboxes johns John Smith From To Subject Date V SM Jane Hammersmith newsletter Christmas Party 15 00 05 E D4 Cupertino weekly Catalogue Catalogue Recipients Catalogue Number 55 15 00 05 L j Christmas Party From Jane Hammersmith Date Tue 28 Oct 1997 09 02 27 0000 lt TH es To all Enderson staff
214. period before sending it to the e mail server at your Internet Service Provider It will hold it before connecting to the recipient s service provider and sending it to their e mail server The last stage in the delivery process is to store the message in some location from which the recipient can fetch it Your Internet Service Provider may store the messages in one or more mailboxes for you or it may send it to you and expect your system to store it for your users Some Service Providers support both of these types of delivery Mailtraq also supports both types so it is simply a matter of configuration These Service Providers will describe this as delivering mail to you via SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol This protocol is a method for sending not collecting mail The distinction is that the delivery is initiated by the sender Normally the Service Provider will wait for you to connect to them and then keep trying to send the message until it is successful While you are not connected it simply stores the message somewhere Some Service Providers need to be told when it should start sending mail and Mailtraq does provide a way to do this but you should refer to your Service Provider for instructions Introduction This method of mail transfer is the same as the method by which you send mail using your e mail software except for mail software that uses directory gateways and MAPI clients Service Provider rec
215. ple if you use mail re writing enderson isp co uk Previous lt Finish Cancel Mailtrag will take responsibility for any e mail domain that matches the primary domain and any aliases Mailtraq will only use the primary Domain name when creating it s own messages gt If your account with your service provider does not include a domain name i e they supply only one or more POP3 mailboxes under their own domain then you should define your own unique domain name Mailtraq also uses these names to identify local web page requests so you should enter any name that represents the server machine on your network It is worthwhile entering the IP addresses by which the server machine is recognised on your network too as it is possible to address mail and access web sites based on the IP address This stage allows you to enter the mail servers normally those of your Internet Service Provider to which you can send outbound e mail The Installation Wizard These are called smart hosts because they will accept mail to any destination and take the responsibility of routing it themselves Mailtraq Installation X outbound mail delivery e Your Internet Service Provider will have supplied the names of smart mail hosts for you to deliver outbound mail to they must al raq accept mail using SMTP gt Primary Mail Host mail isp co uk Backup Mail Host mail2 isp co uk You can enter any mail hos
216. ply To to the ReplyTo variable Lists mlSecure Boolean Only accept subscription by mail commands accompanied by the subscriber s password Lists mlStripDeliveryTicket Boolean Remove the delivery ticket from messages Lists mlSubscriptionByMail Boolean Subscription By Mail Lists mlSubscriptionByProxy Boolean Subscription By Proxy Lists Moderator String Mailing List moderator Lists NextDigest DateTime Next Digest Delivery Lists RemoveSubscriber String Remove a list subscriber by specifying their e mail address Lists ReplyTo String Reply To address Lists Tag String Message Tag text Lists TagFile String Filename for message tag Lists Subscriber The variables shown in the table below provide access to the subscriber Properties properties in a Mailing List The subscriber is referenced by their e mail mailslot slot address the sending address not the reply to address The default and subscribers sub guest subscription properties can be referred to through the reserved addresses default and guest respectively Variable Type Purpose of Variable Details String Additional details usually organisation name EMail String E Mail address of subscriber Key Filter String Message Filter JoinDate DateTime Joining date Name String Full Name of subscriber Password String Password PostDate DateTime Last time subscriber posted to list ReplyTo sfAdmin sfBarred sfConceal sfDigest sfDigestMD sfDig
217. ports would be sent back to the list and distributed to all subscribers again creating a mail loop which is undetectable by Mailtraq In order to avoid this Mailtraq lists have a Maintainer This is the address shown in the message envelope s sender field and this is the address to which all errors and reports are sent It is common practice to use the name of the list with the suffix owner as the maintainer which makes the message easily identifiable from only its envelope Consider the sales mailing list mentioned earlier Perhaps Enderson Enterprises has a large number of sales inquiries and wishes to ease the workload on the person who answers the e mail Instead of sending all the messages to the same people they can spread the incoming messages to one subscriber at a time For example if the list had three subscribers and a dozen messages were sent to the list then each subscriber would receive only four Mailtraq does this on a round robin scheme but it is not necessarily predictable In Mailtrag each subscriber may have a filter and Mailtraq 157 Mail 158 ing Lists The Subscribers selects each successive recipient from the list of subscribers after they have been filtered If a number of filters are in use the distribution may appear random with subscribers possibly receiving more than one message in succession Each subscriber has a number of properties Their name is us
218. protected means that only users who have logged in and thus local can see the mail slot and public makes the mail slot visible to everybody The Post Master The Post Master This special mailbox cannot be deleted and represents an important function of all mail servers The Post Master is the name given to the person who is responsible for the administration of e mail in a domain It is a requirement that mail to the postmaster at any domain be accepted Mailtraq will also occasionally generate messages for the postmaster such as alerts or reports While you can forward messages from the Postmaster to another account you should ensure that they are read frequently by someone The Postmaster Postmaster Mailbox Properties RIES Mailbox properties Postmaster s Mailbox dialogue The Postmaster account is required for administrative purposes although incoming messages may be forwarded to another user Descriptive Name of account Postmaster s Mailbox Store messages POP3 Password Forward to another local mailbox a Mailbox Aliases Each mail slot can have a number of aliases Aliases are alternative names for the slot For example they might be alternative spellings to 85 Mail Slots Setting the Aliases for a 86 Mailbox save confusion and catch errors Consider the advantage of having the aliases philip thompson phillip thompson and phillip thomson for the mailbox
219. ption becomes available If the handoff option is selected then Mailtraq will not continue delivery of the message Use this option when you wish to use the message to trigger an event but when the message itself is of no value after the event has been triggered For example a message requesting Using Scripts data from a database can be automatically answered and the trigger message discarded gt Note that you should consider keeping the message anyway as a record of the requests You can always have the mailbox or archive that it is sent to expire the message after a period 249 Scripting 250 Templates This chapter introduces the concept of Mailtraq Templates and how they are used to automatically generate messages The following topics are covered Introduction to Templates Trigger Messages Web Page Templates An example Web Database using Templates 251 Templates Introduction to Templates 252 From time to time Mailtraq will send messages from itself to people For example in order to notify a user that a message they sent via Mailtraq could not be delivered Another example would be a welcome message sent out to new subscribers to mailing lists Imagine if the welcome message could not be customised by the administrators Mailtraq would only know the name of the list and it would not be able to provide information such as the purpose of the list and the rules if any for posting to it
220. q provides to perform various tasks access information stored in Mailtraq and integrate Mailtraq with other applications You can use scripts in message templates to customise them and you can use scripts in web page templates to build web based applications that execute on the Mailtraq web server The scripting language is not as comprehensive as a real programming language but it does at least allow you to link it to code written in such a language when you need functionality not provided within the Mailtraq environment What do you need to know What do you need to know Most people do not have any interest in learning how to program and you are never forced to use the scripting in Mailtrag It is simply an option that you may take if necessary However if you do find it necessary to use the Mailtraq scripting but have never programmed before then you will find the scripting language relatively simple If you have used other programming languages you may find the scripting a little unusual However it does follow most of the common rules of programming and it does provide many of the familiar programming constructs The Scripting Language Functions At the heart of the scripting language is the function A function is a repeatable routine that can generate a result and can be given parameters to compute What parameters are required and what value it returns will depend on the function itself Functions c
221. r the addresses can be difficult to remember and therefore easy to enter incorrectly and the addresses can change DNS machines translate ordinary textual names into IP addresses Dial Up Networking This is a term used mostly in Windows 95 to refer to a temporary connection made using a modem to an Internet Service Provider Dial up networking can actually be used to connect any two machines together See RAS Some Internet Service Providers dynamically assign an IP address to customers when they connect Because these addresses vary the customer cannot have a permanent DNS record which refers to their machine and thus connections cannot be established from other parties without first sending them the current IP address This is also called the User Information Protocol It is a communication standard for retrieving information about users or mailboxes from remote machines Service Providers often offer finger services to let users determine how much mail is waiting for them or to kick mail servers into delivering mail The Finger Server usually resides on TCP IP port 79 HyperText Markup Language This is an implementation of SGML which has become the standard for defining formatted text in Web pages HTTP IP Address MX Resolution NNTP POPS HyperText Transport Protocol This is a generic communication protocol for transferring messages between machines It is primarily used for transferring pages a
222. r history although the log files will be considerably larger This option affects how messages are referenced in the log entries Normally messages are referred to only by their unique Mailtrag ID It is usually very difficult to cross reference this information so it is useful only to identify where different log entries refer to the same message Enabling this option will result in a detailed reference including the message sender and subject line This may be inappropriate for some systems where users do not wish to have the administrators who may be constantly monitoring the logs view this information The Event Log window available from the Actions menu in the Mailtraq Console provides essentially the same information as the on disk log but on screen and catagorised It only shows the most recent events and does not cover any events that took place before the last shutdown The Event Log Window Event Reports Event Reports az Event Log Configuration Loaded Logging Started Sl 06 04 98 16 33 10 Starting WINSOCK 1 1 m 06 04 98 16 33 10 SMTP Service Loading on 5 m 06 04 98 16 33 10 POPS Service Loading on 110 Ml 06 04 98 16 33 10 NNTP Service Loading on 119 m 06 04 98 16 33 10 HTTP Service Loading on 80 m 06 04 98 16 33 10 ULI MAIN Loaded 06704798 17 15 19 HTTP 127 0 0 1 GET 7f HTTP 1 0 06704798 17 15 39 HITP 127 0 GET login HTITP 1 0 6 06 04 98 17 15 43 HTTP 127 0 POST F men
223. r news readers though only to permitted groups and the articles will be placed in the Outgoing News folder of the Mailtraq Console If the news groups to which the articles are sent have been subscribed to then the articles will be sent to the news server from which they are downloaded otherwise they will be sent to the default news server 151 The News System 152 Mailing Lists Mailing Lists are one of Mailtraq s most powerful facilities providing functionality that would usually only be found in expensive specialised mailing list software This chapter discusses the use of mailing lists their administration and the related public archive facilities The following topics are covered What is a Mailing List Mailing Lists in Mailtraq Subscription by Mail Message Templates Public Archives 153 Mailing Lists What is a Mailing List Distribution Lists allow users to refer to a group of people through a single address Discussion Forums allow subscribers to both receive and submit 134 messages to the list Mailing lists are a very effective means of group communication with a variety of applications Essentially a mailing list simply receives a message and then forwards it on to a number of recipients subscribers Mailing lists are described in the same way as any user with an e mail address For example you might have the list sales enderson com to handle sales inquiries from th
224. r the full name of the Archive in the Archive Description field This can be any short description of the archive for example Press Releases 37 Quick Start Guide Retrieving Messages 38 from an Archive 4 In the Owner property select the user who will be responsible for administrating the archive In a single user environment you can leave this property unchanged You have now completed the basic configuration of the Archive and you can save the settings by clicking on the OK button To discard the settings click on the Cancel button You can modify the Archive properties at any time by clicking on the Archive in the Console and selecting Properties from the File menu To obtain a list of messages stored in the archive send an e mail to mailserver yourdomain com where yourdomain com is the domain name for your mail system In the body of the message add the line index archive name Replace archive name with the name of the newly created Archive The Console This chapter introduces the Mailtraq Console which is the primary interface for Mailtraq and provides access to all of Mailtraq s facilities The chapter covers the following topics Accessing the Console An overview of the Console The Console Objects The console allows the user to configure and manage Mailtraq as well as monitor it s operations and data One of the key features of Mailtraq is the way the console gives
225. rd Is the account on the local network Last time Mailtrag attempted to connect to the account Last time Mailtrag connected to the account Leave the mail on the server after collection Mailtrag System Access RecipientOption Option Option for handling extracted recipients ignorenonlocal assumelocal forwardnonlocal EnableFilter Boolean _ _Enable disable the message and size filter Filter String The message filter FilterSize Integer The maximum size of message to collect Frequency Integer Minimum period in minutes between collection attempts Routing Boolean Route mail based on an extracted address RouteOption Option Method to use for routing fields Extract from specified fields env Use ENV command received Extract from Received field Recipients List Recipients to send to if not routing SendSummary Boolean Send a summary message SummaryTo String Address to send the summary message to ReptFields List List of fields to examine for recipient addresses if RouteOption fields AutoDelete Boolean Automatically delete messages over a certain age AutoDeleteAfter Integer Number of days after which to delete the messages GetSystemVar This function returns the current value of the specified variable The above system tree describes the available variables Syntax valve GetSystemVar variable variable Full path e g mailslots johns description value The current contents of the variab
226. re John Cooper John Deakin John Gorst John Raynor Jonathan Perkins Karl Prince Lance Boehm Lindy Beveridge Marcel Moens Marco Imperi Mark Derricutt Mark Hill Mark Preston Mark Ruys Marnix Keesmaat Marton Clayton Martin Kerr Martin Green Matthew Preston Michael Humberston Mike Collins Mike Tozer Mike Vybiral Mike Ziemann Mitch Bromage Nathan Strom Ralph Bednarski Rashied Ilahibaks Richard Mein Richard Morris Richard Ramshaw We would like to thank the following people for their valuable contribution to the Richard Sobey Richard Townend Roelf Renkema Ross Nicol Russ Brindley Simon Fell Simon Quill Simon Plant Simon Steele Stephen Tyers Steve Lee Steve Musitano Steven Wenham Stijn Bokhove Thijs Kinkhorst Trevor Gentry Tom Martens Tony Bullock Tony Olsen Tony Rickard Zac Spitzer Table of Contents i Preface 1 Introduction Using this Manual What is Mailtraq 2 Installing Mailtrag Essential Configuration The Installation Wizard 3 Quick Start Guide Multi User Networks Creating Mail Slots 4 The Console Accessing the Console Overview of the Console The Console Objects Vi 15 15 16 27 28 31 39 40 42 45 5 Internet Dial up Configuring the Internet Connection Type Dial Up Networking Manual Dial Up Scheduled Dial Up Dial Up Schedule Options Automatic Schedules 6 Introducing E Mail What is E Mail
227. ready available for accessing information A proxy server allows one machine to connect to another through a third party Normally such servers are used to provide machines access to the Internet without actually having their own connection to a service provider Mailtrag can act as a proxy for web browsers and many other types of service The Web Proxy The Web Cache Internet Dialup The Proxy Server Most Web Browsers can be configured to use a web proxy Using a proxy means that instead of connecting to the host specified in the URL it connects to the proxy It is then the proxy s task to make the connection and return the requested resource Only the proxy needs to have a connection to the Internet and any number of clients can use the proxy services to share that connection Each Mailtrag user can separately be given permission to use the proxy facility To provide access to the proxy for everyone simply give the default user permission If the default user is not given proxy access then Mailtrag will ask for a name and password when the user first uses the proxy Mailtraq will cache the response and any subsequent requests from the same machine will be permitted If the user fails to use the cache for a long period specified in the Web Server properties as Security Timeout Mailtraq will ask again for the name and password Proxies can also offer other facilities such as caching If several clients are reques
228. record field database The name of the database table Note that this is essentially the filename so operating system file naming conventions should be considered For example the database name is not case sensitive and certain characters are not permitted record This is the name of the record in the form of a string The name is not case sensitive field This is the name of the field from which a value is to be retrieved The field name is not case sensitive Records do not have to share the same set of fields so it is in no way inefficient to use different field names in different records value The string of data extracted from the database If the field record or table do not exist an empty string will be returned This function writes the given value into the database If the specified database table record or field does not exist they will be created 293 Scripting Function Reference Syntax DBRecordExists Syntax DBDeleteRecord 294 DBWrite database record field value database The name of the database table Note that this is essentially the filename so operating system file naming conventions should be considered For example the database name is not case sensitive and certain characters are not permitted record This is the name of the record in the form of a string The name is not case sensitive field This is the name of the field from which a value is to be retrieved The field
229. revious lt Finish Cancel You do not need to enter the IP address of every machine on your network as you can replace each of the IP quads with an to represent any number For example if all your machines use the IP range from 192 168 0 1 to 192 168 0 255 then you can enter 192 168 0 to represent all of them If you wish to have Mailtraq provide one of the web services listed then you should check this option If you don t have any other web services running on the host machine then port 80 is usually the most appropriate 23 Installing Mailtrag 24 Start Automatically Mailtrag Installation X provide a web proxy Mailtrag can also provide a web service to all the machines on J Mailtraq your network 4 web service provides the Following Facilities Web Proxy gt Web Cache 4 Web Administrator Web Server ae z MV Provide a web service on port v 80 Se 8080 s Bein n 8081 aiaee nE Previous lt Finish Cancel This is the default web server port and if you use a web browser and refer to the host machine web pages will be requested from the Mailtragq Web Server If you wish to use a different web server other than Mailtraq but still wish to use the web services that Mailtraq provides then you should select a different port Usually 8080 is appropriate for a web proxy although essentially any port can be chosen as long as each web client is
230. ric Pedder lt elric fastraq co uk gt pe J i Subject Example Message a f Message ID lt SMRT971748D184 smartdrive i Date Mon 26 Jan 1998 13 54 24 00 a X MSMail Priority Normal a hriority 3 oOo The above illustration shows how Mailtraq has identified the recipient s address by searching through the Received header fields Unfortunately not every mail server will add this information and where there are multiple recipients this information cannot be shown However if your service provider s mail servers do add this information then the presence of this information can be almost guaranteed 117 Mail Delivery POP3 Collection Properties for Mail Routing Ignore non local Recipients Assume all recipients are local Forward non local recipients off site 118 POP3 Account Properties H E and automatically route them through this server Ep fou can collect mail from remote POPS accounts to both local and other remote accounts Send to listed recipient s f Enable Message Routing C gnore non local recipients f Assume all recipients are local C Forward non local recipients off site f Use these header fields to identify recipients To 2 CE C Use ENY extension to POPS Extract recipient from Received fields He crea Once the e mail addresses have been extracted there are further options open Firstly addresses that are not local mail slots
231. ritten to with the SetSystemVar function Some variables are write only and act as functions when values are assigned to them Objects in Mailtraq such as Mail Slots are represented by branches of the tree For example to access the description of a mailbox called johns use the variable mailslots johns description 295 Scripting Function Reference The System Tree The keys are arranged in a hierarchical structure as shown below Key Type of values found in the key I General Variables representing the entire system mailslots slot The Mail Slot properties mailslots slot subscribers sub The Subscriber properties for mailing lists mailgroup group Mail Group properties pop3 account POP3 Collection account properties The following tables show all the variables available to the scripting system The Type column indicates the variable type that should be given to SetSystemVar and the type returned with GetSystemVar These items may appear W The variable is write only i e a function is performed when the variable is written to String The value is a textual string Integer The value can always be interpreted as an integer number Boolean The value will either be TRUE or FALSE DateTime The value will be a date and time using the Mailtrag system format dd mm yyyy hh mm ss Time The value will be a time in the format hh mm ss Option The value must be one of the described strings List The va
232. rovider listed below for on line services will be dialled Phone Book Mame Account g l5F Line 2 enderson E ISP Line 1 enderson West Coast Office User Host Name enderson Password ous W Internet Connection New Edit a For each connection that you wish Mailtraq to initiate you must provide the username and passwords needed when logging on to your Internet Service Provider even if you have already entered this information elsewhere in Windows Mailtrag will only consider itself on line when a connection that has been checked as Internet Connection becomes active Mailtraq constantly monitors these connections so it can use them even if another program initiates them Manual Dial Up Manually initiating a dial up Manual Dial Up On the Actions menu of the Console and on the System Tray icon menu you will find the Go Online option This will initiate the currently selected connection About Mailtrag View Event Log HM ailtrag Console Finger all Automatic accounts Finger an account Collect POPS Mail Collect News Schedule a Connection Now Shutdown Server A manual connection will not be automatically disconnected by Mailtraq but will remain active until you disconnect either via the Go Offline command or by closing the DUN connection elsewhere in Windows gt Note that some service providers will automatically close the connection after
233. rovides a number of database functions These functions are designed to provide shared access to data between any number of scripts operating simultaneously The databases tables are user editable and are stored in the Mailtragq database under the db directory The file structure used is the familiar Windows INI format Datab The structure of a o Messages p Sent Received Forwarded Returned Autoreplied Copied Stored johns janes Fields mattk philipt database table Records samj juliej piercem patricke jamesw N maryt The illustration above shows the structure of a database table The functions in this section are used to access data stored in this type of structure Each database table is identified by a unique name and it is created when it is first referenced Each table contains a number of records again created when first referenced Each record is referred to by a unique name set by the script Each record can have any number of fields and each field stores a single value Data is retrieved with the DBRead function and written with the DBWrite function 292 DBRead Syntax DBWrite Database Functions This function returns the current contents of the specified field record and database table An empty string is returned if the field does not exist and the database table will be created if it has not yet been created either value DBRead database
234. rver Mail Routes can be configured to issue a delivery delayed warning to the sender once the message has been in the Outbound Router for the specified period The message can also be canceled and a delivery report returned to the sender once the specified terminal period has been reached When message delivery commences a number of separate delivery connections are initiated At no time will more than the specified number of connections be active Mailtraq can deliver multiple messages simultaneously to the same server and will select the optimum set of connections to handle the delivery Mail delivery is a task that can be ereatly improved with parallel delivery There is always a degree of latency during the SMTP connection so delivering more than one The SMTP Service message at the same time makes more efficient use of the bandwidth available This can become an even more important issue when sending messages with large numbers of recipients If a message has a thousand recipients then if the message is delivered using MX routes it could potentially result in a thousand separately delivered messages In this case it would be more efficient to deliver the message to a Smart Host But how do you configure this The Filters discussed on page 80 can be used to select routes based upon various message criteria It is possible to select the route only if the number of recipients is below a specified value The filter criter
235. rvice including all the services supported by Mailtraq It specifically cannot carry FTP connections because they require two streams This service simply allows remote machines to monitor Mailtraq activity by receiving all the log messages You can connect to this service using Telnet which provides a clear text transmission There is scope for building software to analyse the data in more detail This service has historically been used to provide information on users of mainframes However it is also an effective way to determine if mail is 229 Network Services 230 The Gateway Service KA9Q Mail waiting for a user which is what Mailtraq does by default in response to finger requests The response given is taken from the finger_server tpl template This is the only non TCP IP service It simply monitors a directory for new files and imports messages according to the KA9Q and Pegasus mail gateway standards When the message is read it is inserted into the Inbound Mail Router and processed before being deleted from the gateway directory When Mailtraq detects the arrival of a file with the txt extension it assumes that it is in KAYQ format Messages in this format are stored in a pair of files one with the txt extension containing the message itself and a file with the wrk extension identifying the sender and the message recipients similar to the message envelope E WRK Files The wrk file must
236. rvice to connect to the Internet and how to use Mailtrag to automate this procedure Introducing E Mail This chapter introduces the concept of electronic messaging covering how messages are structured and stored Mail Slots This chapter introduces the Mailtrag concept of mail slots including mailboxes mailing lists and archives which are the recipients of mail in a Mailtraq system Mail Delivery This chapter covers the sending of e mail messages to and from Mailtrag and within Mailtraq itself Administration Topics This chapter introduces the user accounts and how mail slots are created and managed This chapter also covers various other administrative subjects such as event logging and reporting The News System This chapter introduces the Internet News system and how Mailtraq uses it This chapter also covers Mailtraq s own news services and the integration between e mail and news Mailing Lists This chapter covers the Mailtraq mailing lists including how to administrate and automate them Introduction M The World Wide Web This chapter introduces the web and describes Mailtraq s own web services including the Web Proxy M The Web Administrator This chapter follows the web services with the introduction and use of Mailtraq s Web based remote administration system M Network Services This chapter introduces the Mailtraq network services and covers in detail
237. s are used to define the settings assigned to newly created subscriptions There are two ways to control the messages being posted to the mailing list Limit posting to specific people only and Moderation Moderation simply means that a moderator has to check every message before it is distributed by the list In Mailtrag each subscriber and guests can have their messages moderated or automatically accepted Each mailing list has one moderator who receives all the messages that need to be checked If the moderator decides to accept the message they simply forward it to the mailing list Although the moderator may forward the message using their mail client this will usually give the appearance that they are the author Mailtraq provides two facilities for moderation without altering the message You can use the moderate button in the Web Administrator while viewing the moderator s mailbox or you can simply drag the message from the moderator s mailbox to the mailing list in the Mailtragq Console Whenever you drag a message in the Mailtraq Console the message s Sender field is set to the source mail slot Since Mailtraq identifies the subscriber using the Sender field in preference to the From field mailing lists will accept messages moderated in this way To assist in moderation across different domains each message that needs to be moderated will have the header field X Moderate For added with
238. s the Do function should be used This function is essentially the same as the concatenation operator but makes the script more readable Do takes any number of parameters and returns a concatenation of all of them result Do expr expr expr expr An expression to be evaluated result The concatenation of all the evaluated expressions given to the function This function simply returns one of two given expressions based upon the result of the first expression This is similar to the if then else construct found in most languages Three expressions are given to the function If the first expression evaluates to true then the second expression is evaluated and returned otherwise if a third expression is given it is evaluated and returned Syntax While Syntax Repeat Language Constructs result f boolean_expr true _expr false_ expr boolean_expr An expression which should evaluate to true or false true_expr Ifthe boolean_ expr evaluates to true then this expression is evaluated false_expr If the boolean_ expr evaluates to false then this expression is evaluated If this expression is not given and the boolean_ expr evaluates to false then no value is returned result The result of the evaluation of either frue_expr or false_expr This function performs the familiar task of a while loop The content is repeatedly evaluated until the continuation expression evaluates to false E
239. s a standard for including data other than plain text in an e mail message This allows structural information to be maintained when sent in a message Subscription by Mail Digest Options z6 Mailing List Properties Mailing List List Subscribers Access Messages Properties General Digests Aliases Addresses Each subscriber can have a number of flags set to determine if they can post receive and administrate the mailing list W Generate a digest i Deliver the digest every days Next Delivery 01 00 48 2603 98 W Deliver the digest when it exceeds 1024 i kb W Include a contents table Last Delivery Send Now a When digests are enabled for a mailing list each message distributed by the list is also stored in the mail slot When the volume of mail in the slot reaches the specified limit or when the digest delivery time arrives the digest will consist of the current mail slot contents Subscription by Mail Essentially this facility allows a user to join and leave a mailing list by sending an e mail message to a certain address There are two types of mailing list that can benefit from this feature Discussion Forums Announcements Lists 161 Mailing Lists Control Messages 162 to mailserver The only real difference between these two types of list is whether new subscribers can post messages In a discussion forum everyone should be able to post to the
240. s of messages to other mailboxes If you wish to forward the message itself without keeping a copy of it you should uncheck the Store Messages option You can use this facility to handle basic mailing lists M Enable mail forwarding M Store messages in this mailbox Forward to these email addresses Apply Reset Lets3 Document Done 197 The Web Administrator You may prefer to keep a record of messages forwarded in this way by leaving mail in the mailbox and simply expiring it automatically instead Multiple recipients may be listed one on each line either a local address mailbox name only or a full e mail address Auto Responder The auto responder allows replies to be generated automatically in response to incoming messages This may be a useful way to inform senders that their messages have been received but not yet dealt with C onfi gurin g an Aut O he Netscape Mailbox Autoresponder File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Responder for a sjela A Mailbox Maitrag Web Achinistrator A chunistrator Main Menu Mailslots Mailbox johns John Smith Auto Responder Use an auto responder to automatically reply ta email messages sent to this mailbox For example this might be a vacation message or note to say that you are unable to reply until a certain date Enable the auto responder with the message below Thank you for your message I m out o
241. sages re enter the Inbound Router again In order to prevent mail loops no message can enter the Inbound Router more than a specific number of times after which it is sent to the Post Master This is configured through The Inbound Router is listed amongst the Active Connections in the Mailtraq Console The entry will indicate what message is currently being routed Name ooOOOoO O Connected To Status EEN SMTP Server accepting connections el POPS Server accepting connections el NNTP Server accepting connections Mail Router Out Idle 5 Mail Router In Routing ENDR32452567 Mail Bouncing Handling Undelivered Mail Inbound Mail Policy Return Undelivered Mail to Sender The Inbound Router This term is used to describe what happens to mail that cannot be delivered to it s recipient The message appears to bounce off the mail server returning to its sender Mailtraq offers a number of ways to handle bounced mail and these are configured in the Inbound Mail Policy illustrated below Inbox Properties ki x What should be done with mail addressed to an unknown local recipient C Return Undelivered Mail to Sender C Return a Delivery Report Failure Forward Undelivered Mail to Mailbox postmaster C Re address mail to yser gt C Create Mailbox and Store Template default gt iat f Place in the Outbox E a This option only applies to messages being rece
242. server supports this gt You should check with your service provider to find out if their mail server supports this option If you wish to collect news articles from your service provider or any other public news provider then you can enter the details here You will only be able to subscribe to news groups after Mailtrag has connected to the news server and downloaded a list of the groups it carries In this section you can define the IP addresses that represent your local area network These are the IP addresses assigned to the network adapters that connect the machines in your LAN which should not be Do not confuse this local area network IP address with that of your Internet Domain Provide a Web Proxy The Installation Wizard confused with the IP address used by your dial up adapter e g modem when connecting to a service provider Mailtraq uses these settings to identify the source of a network connection and this can be used as part of a network firewall Mailtrag Installation Fa define your local area network IF you are installing Mailtrag on a local area network LAN then a Mailtraq Mailtraq must be able to identify these machines Please enter the IP address ranges to identify local machines gt and distinguish them from Internet or ISP machines IF your aa machine is not on a LAN you can leave the list blank ee You can use wildcards e g 192 100 to specify ranges P
243. sh to use an exclusive firewall you should begin with an otherwise all numbers will be excluded HTTP Service HEJ Service Access Control Wit Server Wit Proxy You may permit only specified machines to connect to this service using the options below f 7 Allow any client to connect f 2 Use the addresses below as a Firewall f 3 2 and Local 4rea Network Edit Limit access to the IP address ranges listed below He Crea 225 Network Services Local Area Network List All the service firewalls can also refer to the Local Area Network list which defines the IP addresses of the machines on the local network These addresses can be used as a firewall that is shared by any of the services You can configure the Local Area Network list directly from the Server properties accessed from the Options menu in the Console The Mailtrag Services The SMTP Service Access Control SMTP Service Properties 226 The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol allows mail clients to deliver e mail messages to Mailtraq It is described in more detail on page 74 The SMTP service offers an additional Access Control option machines recently collecting POP3 mail With this option selected any machine that successfully connects to the POP3 service is noted and are permitted to connect to the SMTP service if they attempt within a few minutes SMTP Service EHEJ Service Access Contr
244. son com gt Note that the message text including header fields follow immediately after the recipient addresses Scripting This chapter introduces Mailtraq s scripting language and discusses how it can be used to provide extensive customisation and automation Many examples of scrips are also provided The following topics are covered An Introduction to Scripting The Scripting Language Using Scripts Mailtraq is a relatively large system and it is intended to be used in a wide variety of ways hopefully including many the developers have never considered To make Mailtraq as flexible as possible and to be able to adapt it to any situation a scripting language has been built into it The 233 Scripting What is Scripting 234 scripting language allows you to enhance Mailtraq and integrate it with other applications and systems that you use Chapter 17 provides a complete description of every function supplied with Mailtraq It may be easier to describe scripting by what it is not It is not a macro language Macro languages allow you to make repeated operations more efficient by creating a macro that represents what you would normally do at the machine s console and then having the application repeat it when appropriate It is also not an application programming language You cannot build independent applications with scripts What you can do with the scripts is use the functions that Mailtra
245. ss this bottleneck by delivering mail directly to the Mail Exchanges However when messages are to be sent to a large number of recipients it is quite often faster to deliver a single copy of the message to a Smart Host and leave the bulk of the work to it s hands 11 Introducing E Mail The Post Office Protocol As discussed earlier the user s mail software will also need a way to obtain the messages from a server Mailtraq can provide access to the mail it stores through the Post Office Protocol POP3 Mailtraq is also able to collect mail on behalf of users using this protocol Like SMTP this protocol is used to transfer messages between two machines However POP3 is far more versatile and naturally more complex Using POP3 a client can examine messages in a mailbox download a selection of them and delete them from the mailbox Because deleting the messages from a mailbox is optional it is possible to share a mailbox between several users Since it is possible to examine a message before deciding to download it Mailtrag can also use POP3 to help avoid downloading unwanted messages The examination is simply the opportunity to determine the size of the message and retrieve only the message headers Choosing between SMTP and POP3 18 If your service provider offers both types of e mail delivery you are in a position to select one of them Unless you configure Mailtraq to specifically collect via POP3 all mai
246. st After the PostMessage function the current message is once again the trigger In order to change the subject of the outgoing message the one generated by the template the SelectOutMessage must be used 259 Templates Configuring Templates The Mailtraq Templates 256 You can configure the templates actually used by Mailtraq in the Scripts and Templates dialogue from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console Scripts and Templates Templates Scripts Automated Scripting Plug ins Description Delivery Report Failure Delivery Report Message Loop Delivery Confirmation Ticket Acknowledge 4 successtul posting Confirm subscriber wishes to join a list Unsubscnption message Information on using mailing lists List Membership Curent Subscriber Status Edit Sub Class Welcome message for new subscribers Help Done In the Templates tab you will see a list of all the template classes available Many of these templates can be sub classed for specific objects For example the list welcome message mentioned above is used by default for all the mailing lists In most cases you will wish to customise it for each list which will use it and this is called sub classing When you select the list_ welcome template the Sub Class button will become enabled If you click on this button you will see a dialogue from which you can select a mailing list A new template wil
247. stored in a separate file called with the CallScript function at the start of any script that might need them Func_Lib c lib myfuncs d11 DefineC RegReadval Cal1 DLLFunction Func_Lib RegReadval 1 4096 DefineC Regwriteval Cal1 DLLFunction Func_Lib Regwriteval 1 2 4096 val RegReadval Software MyProgram Valuel Regwriteval Software MyProgram Value2 val 309 Barring Bounce Glossary This chapter describes a number of words and terms used in both this manual and in Mailtraq This term refers to a facility where mail can be refused by a mail server based upon the message sender or recipient With SMTP barring is the most efficient form of avoiding unwanted mail as the messages can be refused before they are downloaded This is a term referring to what happens when a mail server to which the message is addressed cannot complete delivery and returns the message In Mailtrag bounced mail does not necessarily have to be returned to the sender 311 Glossary 312 Client DNS DUN Dynamic IP Addresses Finger HTML A client is an application which connects to a server to perform some task For example an SMTP client is an application that connects to an SMTP server to deliver an e mail message Domain Name Server Every machine on the Internet and on local networks has a unique IP address Howeve
248. t every day s Distribute digest when it exceeds kb The digest was last distributed on Saturday 4 April 1998 at 04 04 70 Next distribution due on 11 04 1998 00 12 53 Apply Reset ffs Document Done The Templates are messages which are generated automatically in response to various conditions such as a subscriber joining the list via an e mail application Refer to Chapter 11 for more information on the mailing list templates and to Chapter 16 for information on the Mailtraq template system The Mail Archives are used for providing public access to the messages that they contain Unlike mailboxes where messages are held for a specific user who collects them and thus removes them from the mail slot the archives allow users to retrieve the messages by request Any e mail message can be stored in the archive and when a request is made the archive message is returned in the same format as it was received in the archive Requests are made by sending a control message to the mailserver as described in Chapter 11 Configuring Mail Slots The archive properties available to the Web Administrator are very similar to the mailboxes and these are shown below The Archive Properties Menu Maitrag Web Administrator Achunistrator Main Menu Mailslots products Product Lists Configure the archive properties Select one of the options below to configure the corresponding properties Ma
249. t that accepts public mail via SMTP but one must be entered even if you plan to have Mailtraq route mail automatically in case a route cannot be resolved Previous lt Finish Cancel Mailtrag can also route outbound mail itself identifying the most appropriate server for each message However there are times when this is inefficient and occasionally Mailtraq will be unable to resolve the route itself For this reason it is important to enter a smart host even if you intend to use Mailtraq s routing facilities Dial up Network Mailtraq will need at least one dial up connection to be configured in Connection Windows in order for it to connect to your Internet Service Provider to deliver and receive mail 19 Installing Mailtrag x 2 xl General Server Types Scripting TCP IP Settings ik dial up network connection Type of Dial Up Server PPP Windows 95 Windows NT 3 5 Inte C Server assigned IP address i l G j Mailtrag will use Windows Dial up Networking to connect to heaped PEDER Specify an IP address the Internet through your Internet Service Provider In IP address 194 202 78 99 order to do this a Dial up Connection must be configured T Log on to network Enable software compression x Use this DUN entry to connect to the Internet Server assigned name server addresses Require encrypted password isp Line 1 Specify name server addresses Allowed network protocols Pri
250. tanding them A list is simply a series of strings separated by commas If a string in a list includes a comma then the string is surrounded by quotes For example the value Monday Tuesday Wed Fri Saturday is a list containing four items the third of which is Wed Fri The functions ListItem and ListCount are used to access lists Lists are returned by many function and the function For has been created specifically to iterate through them 24 Scripting String Handling 242 For example ForC dayname Mon Tue wed Thu Fri Sat Sun MsgAddLine on dayname do something This function iterates through each day of the week inserting that value into the dayname variable Strings are used throughout the Mailtraq scripts and many functions are supplied to manipulate them There are also some aspects of strings that are part of the scripting language Quite often you will need to concatenate join two strings together The operator is used for this purpose For example one two becomes one two You may notice that the quotes are used to identify strings specifically strings are enclosed within a matching pair of quotation marks How do you use quotes inside strings Mailtraq provides a number of escape characters for such a purpose A quote can be represented with the q escape For example the string one gtwo q three becomes one
251. ted another window will appear asking the user to confirm the disconnection This window also has the option to reset the idle time out the Snooze button but this button will not appear when the unconditional time out is reached Mailtrag Dialup Service E4 seconds The connection will be automatically disconnected shortly Click on Stay Online to remain on line indefinitely Click on Snooze to reset the idle counter Snooze i BERRRRRRRREE e This dial up connection has been active for 2 minutes and idle for over 60 i Disconnect If the Stay Online button is pressed then the connection becomes manual requiring the user to disconnect manually with the Go Offline command This also means that the schedule options such as whether or not POP3 is enabled during the schedule will no longer have any effect If this option is selected then when Mailtraq is started it will determine if a schedule would have taken place since it was last shut down Ifa schedule appears to have been missed then it will display a window asking the user if they wish to restart the schedule If this option is checked then when mail is waiting in the outbox the Schedule Now command will be issued providing a schedule is not already due within the specified time This does not apply to messages that have been delayed due to a delivery problem Such messages are only considered waiting for delivery when
252. termine where replies to messages distributed by this list are sent Default leave unchanged C Reply to the message author C Reply to the mailing list C Reply to e Anonymous Messages make the mailing list the apparent message sender Apply Reset Cra Document Done The Distribute messages to one subscriber at a time spreads the volume of incoming mail evenly amongst all the subscribers An example might be a support list where Mailtraq selects one subscriber at a time to handle a technical support query You can always have mailing lists as subscribers in order to spread the mail amongst several groups of people The List Maintainer is essentially the name put in the From field of the message envelope not to be confused with the message header field and in the Errors To header field These are the recognised methods for directing delivery failures to specific people as a means of avoiding delivery failures being returned to the mailine list itself 205 The Web Administrator The maintainer should read these messages and take appropriate action for example removing subscribers from the list when messages cannot be delivered to them Reply Address The reply address is likely to depend on the nature of the list For discussion forums replies should generally be directed to the list itself so that all the subscribers can read them whilst support lists should direct replies to the individual
253. teway 6 A script generates and posts a new message 7 Messages are inserted directly into the inbound mail queue by some external source Methods 4 and 5 are discussed in detail in Chapter 10 Methods 6 and 7 are discussed in Chapter 15 The Inbound Router Once Mailtraq has received a message it is placed into the inbound mail queue and one by one the Inbound Router processes the messages in that queue This router examines each recipient of a message and decides whether it should be delivered locally or sent on to the Outbound Router The Inbound Router considers a number of factors when examining each recipient as illustrated below 97 98 Mail Delivery The Local Router showing the flow of messages The Active Connections window showing a message being routed GLOBAL ALIASES The database configuration aliases file based aliasing ADDRESS REWRITING The Address Re Writing mechanism Inbound Mail Policy MAIL SLOT ALIASES Individual Mail Slot Aliases ADDRESS PATH Addresses containing forwarding paths e g UserYohost domain forwarding domain OUTBOUND ROUTER MAIL SLOTS l MAIL TO NEWS GATE l UNDELIVERED MAIL Mail handled by the Undelivered Mail Handler Inbound Mail Policy When messages are sent to other recipients by for example mailbox forwarding and mailing lists these mes
254. their corresponding filenames The filenames listed should be used to retrieve the specified message There are three ways to retrieve messages from an archive WE Firstly you can use the send command followed by a list of serial numbers In this case each message is returned to the sender separately If you would like to request several messages they can be returned in a single digest with the digest command You cannot retrieve templates in this way M Secondly as with mailing lists commands sent directly to the archive must be preceded with an to distinctly identify them from submissions M The third option is the implicit send command If the sender is a member but not an administrator then the only thing that can do is request messages from the archive Under these conditions a user can request articles by sending a control message directly to the archive with the subject line specifying only the serial numbers In other words the send command can be omitted Messages are returned to the sender of the command The return address is actually taken from the control message s Reply To header if it is available Alternatively the return address will be taken from the From header 171 Mailing Lists 172 Submitting Messages Examples Provided either the archive has no limited administration or the sender is an administrator they may submit messages to the archive Under these conditions a
255. them For step by step information the on line help may prove more useful The on line help is also intended to explain the user interface which is covered only briefly in this guide To simplify the manual we shall assume that you are an administrator for an organisation with several machines and that you use a modem to periodically connect to your ISP Internet Service Provider Don t worry if this does not match your situation Mailtraq can be used in a variety of environments from a home user with one machine to a large network with a permanently leased line To help illustrate the use of Mailtraq we have invented a fictitious company called Enderson Enterprises Enderson s is a small product distribution agency with about 30 employees They run Mailtrag on their network server that connects them to an Internet Service Provider using amodem Their service provider is called ISP E Installing Mailtraq This chapter covers the installation of the Mailtrag Server software and the use of the Installation Wizard to assist with the most essential configuration M Quick Start Guide This chapter covers a number of basic tasks such as creating mailboxes mailing lists and user accounts Using this Manual The Console This chapter introduces and describes the structure of the primary Mailtraq user interface and how to use it Internet Dial Up This chapter covers the use of Dial Up Networking se
256. they reach their delayed time which can be made visible through the Configure Columns option in the View menu Delayed messages are identified by a small circular clock on the envelope icon 6 Internet Dial up Automatic Schedules Configuring the dial up schedule initiated by the 68 WWW Proxy Mailtraq can also initiate a schedule for a specific purpose such as to deliver mail or allow a web proxy to operate It is also possible to initiate a schedule manually with the Schedule Now command from the Actions menu in the Console or from the System Tray icon menu The advantage of this type of connection is that it will be automatically disconnected when it is no longer needed An example of this type of dial up is the automatic schedule used to connect when Mailtraq needs to proxy a web connection HTTP Service E EJ Service Access Control Wi Server Ww Proxy network to access the Internet using Mailtrag s Q The Web Proxy allows web browsers on your dial up connection W Enable Dialup i Conditional Ask user through a web page f Connect to requested web server f Connect to a web cache proxy Web CacheProsy Server Port IY Cache files in the global pool Types Edit Outgoing Firewall When an automatic schedule takes place the options for that schedule apply while it is active For example if the Web Proxy schedule does not permit News collection then no news collection wi
257. time provide reasonable control over the file s format Another aspect of HTTP is the way files are identified The URL Universal Resource Locator is a way to uniquely identify a file anywhere on the Internet and HTTP is built around a request for a URL and a response to that request The URL identifies a specific resource anywhere on the Internet using a standard representation The illustration below shows how the URL is constructed 177 The World Wide Web The Proxy Server 178 URL Breakdown The Web Now Protocol Path location on server rt m http www fastraq co uk mailtrag about html Ll Ll Host Machine File or Resource to download HTML pages usually consist of many URLs in various contexts For example when you click on a hyperlink the browser loads the page referred to by the hyperlink s URL When a graphic appears in a web page it is actually a URL reference to another file possibly elsewhere on the Internet which the browser loads and displays on the page The World Wide Web is the collection of the concepts described above and the software used to provide an interface to them The ability to easily provide information and sites on the Web has led to its rapid erowth However the concepts behind the World Wide Web are not limited to the Internet The more recent Intranet concepts have extended this technology towards local networks taking advantage of the high quality client software al
258. ting Function Reference Write This function writes a string to a file that is currently open for writing Such files would consist of those opened with CreateFile and AppendFile Syntax Write handle string handle A file identifier obtained from a call to CreateFile or AppendFile string A string of arbitrary length to be written to the file If the string contains carriage returns then these will become multiple lines in the file Note that such lines will require multiple Read statements when retrieving them Read This function reads a single line of text from a text file opened with OpenFile The file pointer is advanced such that subsequent reads return consecutive lines of text Syntax variable Read handle variable A variable name to hold a single line of text retrieved from the file handle A file identifier obtained from a call to Openfile 272 Example GetDirectory Syntax File Handling Functions This example demonstrates a number of file functions The file test1 txt is created and a line added This file is then copied to test2 txt hl CreateFi leC c test1 txt write hl This is the contents of the text file CloseFi lech1 h2 CreateFi leC c test2 txt h1 OpenFi le c test1 txt whi le Not EOF h1 write h2 Read h1 CloseFi lech2 CloseFi leCch1 hl AppendFileC c test2 txt write hl This is the
259. ting the same web page then the proxy need only download the page requested by the first client supplying a copy from the cache for the subsequent requests Mailtraq extends this concept to allow the pages to be accessed even when the server is no longer connected to the Internet This means that you can browse pages of interest and if you return later your browser will be able to download the pages without initiating a connection Mailtraq can initiate a dialup connection if the requested resource is not cached Either the connection can be made automatically or Mailtraq can issue a web page asking the user if they wish to connect or not 179 The World Wide Web Using the Web Proxy Web Crawlers 180 Any web browser on the local network can access the web via the web proxy service provided by Mailtraq There are three aspects that must be configured on the network 1 The HTTP Service must be enabled and running on Mailtragq with the Web Proxy enabled 2 The client machine from which the web browser is run must have TCP IP networking ability 3 The client browser must be configured to use the Mailtraq web proxy Configuring the web browser to use the proxy will vary from browser to browser and not all web browsers can use a proxy The browser will need to be given the name of the machine running Mailtraq and the port on which the HTTP Server is operating Mailtraq is also able to insert files direct
260. tive Connections tree in the Mailtraq Console A list of all the current services are shown and by clicking on the icon to the right of each connection you can disable or close them The two routers can also be suspended and resumed with the icon to their right 217 The Web Administrator To initiate a service select it from the drop down list and click on Start Service If the service has already been started no action will be taken Monitoring the Active ic Netscape Active Connections File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window Help Network Connections ajele 2 Maitrag Web Achinitrator Achainistr ator Main Menu System Settings m Refresh Active Connections Services currently operating Description Status Connectedto Started a SMTP Server 06 04 98 14 55 22 E e POPS Server 06 04 98 14 55 22 3 NNTP Server 06 04 98 14 55 22 3 a HTTP Web Server 06 04 98 14 55 22 3 Mail Router In Idle 06 04 98 14 55 22 e Mail Router Out Idle 06 04 98 14 55 22 2 Web Administrator activeconnections 127 0 0 1 06 04 98 15 04 29 x Start Service SMTP Mail Server 25 7 Generated by Matttrag 0 8 7 73 on Monday April 6 1998 15 04 37 LF saa Ma It is important that you have an up to date page before you close any of the services as it is possible to close the wrong service if old information is shown You can refresh the page with the Refresh link If you are us
261. to the comparison operators when it is possible that Mailtraq may interpret the parameters as numeric and thus apply a numeric comparison For example 1 0 is the same as 1 when compared numerically but different when compared textually using StrCmp comparison StrCmp str1 str2 str First string to compare str2 Second string to compare comparison Integer representation of the difference The value is less than zero if the first string is less than the second The value is greater than zero if the second string is greater The value is zero when the two strings are the same These functions convert dates and times from Mailtraq s system formats dd mm yyyy and hh mm ss to real floating point numbers The integer part represent the number of days since 1900 while the fraction represents the time of the day This format is very useful as you can easily compare and perform mathematical operations easily with dates For example to find out the number of days between two dates you can simply use subtraction To find the number of hours between two dates simply divide the difference by 1 24 287 Scripting Function Reference Syntax Example RealToDateTime RealToDate RealToTime Syntax FormatDatelime 288 real DateTimeToReal datetime datetime A date in string format real The floating point equivalent of the given date This example shows how the numeric form of dates ca
262. to true then the second parameter will be evaluated and returned otherwise the third parameter will be evaluated and returned if it is given otherwise no evaluation takes place 237 Scripting 238 The Top Level For example value If number lt 2 number 3 number 4 If the variable number is less than two then value will be assigned the result of number 3 otherwise it will be assigned the result of number 4 The number 3 expression could just as easily include a function such as MsgGetLineCount 3 The script itself is simply a series of expressions and they could be considered the parameters to a function which returns the concatenation of all of them The only difference with the top level of the script is that the expressions are separated by semicolons instead of commas For example the script Header subject Nn Header date would evaluate to a message subject and date taken from the message header fields separated by a line break In normal scripts this information would simply be discarded as the result from a script is never passed to anything else However in templates where scripts are embedded amongst the plain text this information would appear in the place of the script You should refer to Chapter 16 which discusses this further gt Note that there was no semicolon trailing the last expression This is because of the underlying na
263. ts Envelopes See Messages Event Logging Event Reports Expiry Messages News Articles Filters Finger Records Service Firewalls Forums Forwarding From a Mailbox Undelivered Mail Functions AddressOf AppendFile CallDLLFunction Ch CloseFile ConsoleMenuCommand CreateFile DateTimeToReal DateToReal DBDeleteRecord DBRead DBRecordExists DBWrite Define 10 70 71 be ge IA 19 110 316 128 Lod 89 200 141 105 119 52 229 224 161 88 100 292 2 2 308 285 Zia 306 2 2 289 289 296 295 296 295 2 0 DeleteFile DeleteHeader Do EQE Q Execute ExecuteAsync For FormatDateTime Get Directory GetSystemVar Header HostOf If Length ListCount ListItem LJO LoadHeader LoadMessage MsgAddLine MsgDeleteLine MsgGetLine MsgGetLineCount MsgGetRcpts MsgGetSender MsgInsertLine MsgSetKcpts NameOf OpenFile OriginalMessage Params PostMessage Read RealToDate RealToDateTime RealToTime Repeat RJO SameAddress SelectInMessage SelectOutMessage 273 278 266 273 307 307 268 290 2 5 305 278 292 266 286 288 288 285 283 283 280 280 2 9 280 281 280 279 281 293 2 1 2 9 287 281 274 290 290 290 267 285 293 Lif 276 SetHeader SetSystemVar ShellExecute StrCmp Sub
264. ts of machine and telephone time and consequently you may wish to prevent them being downloaded or break them into smaller portions Setting a mail limit will ensure that no message larger than the specified message size enters the Inbound Router If the Break into MIME Partials option is selected the message will be split into portions using the MIME This field can only be used where the message body is available Filters used during POP3 collection and News Filtering do not have access to the message body as only the header is downloaded at the stage when the filter is used 107 Mail Delivery Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions Partial format If this option is not selected then messages of this size will simply not be delivered Both the SMTP server and the Remote POP3 Collection facility have mechanisms to prevent the download of large messages and these are discussed on pages 74 and 114 respectively gt Note While Mailtraq will split the message it does not rebuild it This is the task of the e mail software used by the message recipient Unfortunately not all mail software currently supports MIME Partials You should ensure that the mail software likely to receive these messages can decode them The Outbound Router 108 The Outbound Router handles mail that is not addressed to the domain that Mailtraq manages It is possible to see the messages currently in the outbound queue in the Mailtraq Co
265. ttached If subscription details must be protected you may enable password authentication With this facility every subscriber must verify themselves by appending their password to the subject line of any message they send to the list and to the end of every command sent to mailserver The password is removed from messages that are distributed The subscription commands can be used by the subscribers to alter their subscription account They can also be used by administrators as a means of remote management Most of the commands apply to a subscription Subscribe Subscription by Mail and unless that account is specified explicitly it will be identified from the control message in which the command appears Subscriptions are identified by their Sender address and consequently no two subscriptions may share that address When subscription by proxy is enabled the commands may be applied to a subscription other than the sender by giving the subscription identifier as the first parameter The commands available are listed below For simplicity the direct to list form is shown For commands sent to mailserver you would need to add the name of the list immediately after the command name There are two forms of this command the normal form whereby the sender is the applicant and the subscription by proxy form where another party is to be added Subscribe Subscribe nomail digest Subscribe John Smith
266. ture of the script the expressions are parameters to another hidden function and the semicolons simply Loop Constructs The Scripting Language separate these parameters You could equally use commas but semicolons will make the structure clearer Another construct like function is While This function takes two parameters an expression that controls the loop and the expression to be executed repeatedly This is semantically equivalent to the more traditional while do loop used in many languages Here is an example E Ei WhileG lt 10 Do MsgGetLineGi n Tie rt We have also introduced another function Do This function takes any number of parameters and simply concatenates the results of each This has the effect of allowing several expressions to be placed in a single parameter In fact the top level of the script is actually a hidden Do function In the above example the Do function which returns a specific line from a message with a line break appended is repeated executed until the value of i is no longer less than 10 gt Note also how the variable i was first used There was no declaration a value was simply assigned to it If the i 0 line was excluded the value would be undefined and the While function would be unable 239 Scripting 240 Error Handling to compare the value of i to 10 You may be wondering what would have happened so we ll h
267. two three when added to a message or when written to a file Another escape is n which represents a line break When a string containing line breaks is added to a message the result is that several lines are added Finally the l and r escapes represent the left and right braces and respectively This is useful for templates where the braces enclose embedded scripts Working with Scripts Working with Scripts Signatures Examples What can you do with a script Most often you will want to modify a message in some way After all Mailtraq is essentially a mail server Scripts can access and modify the header and body of a message can also create new messages For this reason many of the functions available to scripts relate to message manipulation For example you may wish to add a signature to all messages sent by certain people You could use the scripting database functions described on page 292 to look up the sender s name in a database and if it exists add a string to a message Here is an example If IsAddressLocal GetMsgSenderQ Do name UserOf GetMsgSender If DBRecordExists signatures name MsgAddLine DBRead signatures name sig In the Mailtrag databases directory database db you would create a file called signatures containing something like johns Sig n nJohn Smith Projects Manager nExt 133 jamesw Sig n n
268. u HTTP 1 0 06704798 17 15 45 HTTP 127 0 GET readmailtauth ECZ35aClacs 444472324acx _ 067 04 98 17 15 46 HTTP 127 0 GET sys img ml git HTITP 1 0 D000 FReEe 06 04 98 16 33 10 Configuration Loaded Logging Started At the top of the Event Log window are a set of toggle buttons that allow you to mask certain categories of event You can also open multiple log windows with the button and have a different mask for each window Since the log is continuously being updated you may have difficulty scrolling through the events while new entries are being added You can toggle the pause button II to temporarily suspend the addition of new entries You can also copy the entire log to the Windows clipboard with the Ea button Some entries may be too long to display on the screen If you click on the entry the entire text will be displayed at the bottom of the window Mailtraq can periodically generate reports on a number of topics and send them to specific people Each report is configured in a similar way 13 Administration Topics Configuring an Event Report Properties HE Report Settings Curent Report fou may hawe a report of all dialups sent to the specified address at regular intervals M Enable Reporting Croc heee Seer e ect Send the report every days Send next report at og February 1998 19 59 18 Send the report to postmaster Last report sent at 01702798 19
269. u can select what activity can take place during this schedule W Enable POPS Collection during this schedule W Enable News Collection during this schedule W Enable schedule only if outbound mail is waiting High priority mail only e orea If this option is not checked then automatic POP3 or News collection will not take place when the schedule is active They can still be initiated manually from the Actions menu in the Console If this option is checked then the schedule will be ignored while the Outbox is empty This is similar to the Automatic Schedule initiated if there is outbound mail waiting but because it is scheduled according to a date and time it is therefore predictable Enable only if offline for more than Scheduled Dial Up Checking the High priority mail only option will enable the schedule only if mail in the Outbox has the High Priority flag shown as a red stripe through the message icon This does not apply to messages that have been delayed due to a delivery problem Such messages are only considered waiting for delivery when they reach their delayed time which can be made visible through the Configure Columns option in the View menu Delayed messages are identified by a small circular clock on the envelope icon If this option is checked then the schedule will only be enabled if it would take place no less than the specified period since Mailtraq was last on
270. ue field The field name to modify in the message header value The value to assign to the specified field DeleteHeader This function removes a header field from the current message 276 Syntax OriginalMessage Syntax MsgGetLine Syntax MsgInsertLine Message Handling Functions DeleteHeader field field The field name to remove from the message header This function quotes the complete trigger message A single string is returned which contains both the header fields and the message body Each line is separated by the n escape so that when added to another message or written to a file the line breaks will be maintained string OriginalMessage maxlines maxlines The number of lines to quote optional If no parameter is given the entire message will be returned string A single string containing the original trigger message This function extracts a single line from the body of the current message The required line is identified by a numerical index O representing the first line Use the function MsgGetLineCount to determine the number of lines in the message body string MsgGetLine index index The index of the required line starting from 0 string The requested line from the current message body This function inserts a new line into the current message body at the specified location If the message is five lines in length then inserting at line 5
271. umber of other service providers If it is available this is an ideal solution 3 CC stands for Carbon Copy The original recipients of a message are usually those listed in the To and CC fields Extract recipients from Received fields Identifying the recipient from the Received fields Remote POP3 Collection When a message is delivered between mail servers each server is required to add a Received header field Many mail servers include the real recipient of the message in their Received header and Mailtraq can scan all these fields starting with the first field added for this address Return Path lt dan smartdrive co uk gt V Received from pop3 demon co uk by fastraq co uk Le A with POP3 Mailtraq 0 8 2 54 id FSTR97196A94 A O Mon 26 Jan 1998 15 00 57 0000 J Received from punt 2 mail demon net by mailstore forQelric fastraq demon co uk Fy id 885823283 15 05054 1 Mon 26 Jan 98 14 01 A VY Received from post 10 mail demon net 194 217 242 154 Y a by punt 2 mail demon net id aa0616787 26 Jan 98 14 01 GMT i A LS Received from smartdrive demon co uk 194 222 222 105 by post mail demon net V oo id aa1025750 26 Jan 98 14 00 GMT Received from 110ct 100 100 100 9 by smartdrive co uk with SMTP Mailtrag 0 8 3 56 id SMRT971748D182 A Mon 26 Jan 1998 13 57 01 0000 aa 1 A Re From Dan Lyon lt dan smartdrive co uk gt T L To El
272. ume that the message was successfully delivered Use this option if you are operating multiple mail sites and it is possible that the user to whom the message exists is located at the alternative site Be careful of doing the same at the alternate site as if the message returns it will end up in a loop If you are operating multiple sites you should consider using either the mail re writing option or one of the aliases methods as the mail can still be bounced normally This is a useful way to configure a mail server as mailboxes can be created simply by receiving normal e mails The mailbox will be created by copying the settings from the specified mail slot so in reality it could be any mail slot before continuing to post the message as normal This method should be used in careful conjunction with the static routing tables The message will then be subject to the normal outbound routing rules Be careful of creating a mail loop which is easily done with this option The outbound routing tables should direct messages to a central Mail Barring Mail Barring Inbound Mail Policy The Inbound Router mail server that will not send messages to sub servers with this option enabled unless it knows the message won t be bounced There are number of reasons for wanting to refuse to accept certain messages The most likely reason is an attempt to stop the ever increasing volume of junk mail on the Internet from wasting your t
273. up Language and this was to become the standard for the presentation of information Unfortunately HTML was a quick solution and did not take the usual standards review process The result was a very good content oriented markup language but a poor format oriented markup language This means that the markup concentrates on describing the document 176 HyperText Transport Protocol Universal Resource Locators What is the Web structure such as identifying text as being a heading or a list or a paragraph etc Most would correctly argue that content oriented documents are far more important However it is very limiting for designers and typographers who are used to having far more control over the presentation of their documents The result has been long battle to overcome these limitations and so many proposed extensions to HTML have been passed about that it is difficult to keep up The down side is that the appearance of a page can vary considerably from browser to browser A new mechanism for transferring this information was also necessary so a new Internet protocol was carefully developed and the result was HTTP HyperText Transfer Protocol This protocol is both extremely simple and extremely versatile The word HyperText in the name might be misleading the protocol doesn t inherently have anything to do with hypertext The purpose of HTTP is simply to transfer files between two machines and at the same
274. used for general contacts lists You should be cautious when providing 167 Mailing Lists public access to this information as the details may be considered personal and subject to data protection requirements Further this presents an ideal list for the sending of unsolicited junk mail For these reasons subscribers should not set their public flag on lists available outside their organisation Message Templates Templates used by the Mailing Lists Mailing 168 List Properties Often Mailtraq will need to create and send a message of its own For example if a message cannot be successfully delivered Mailtraq will notify the sender with a delivery report In order for the administrators to have some control over these messages Mailtraq employs the concept of templates A template is a base with which Mailtrag can build its own messages and these can be easily modified Templates M Welcome wl W Help Joining dA Click here to edit the template W Goodbye d Acknowledgement Bi Mailtraq uses a number of templates in mailing lists When people join a mailing list through subscription by mail they are sent the Welcome template When they leave the list they are sent the Goodbye template The Help Joining template is used whenever a user writes to the mailing list without having permission to post and the Acknowledgment template is delivered to the sender whenever a message they have posted to the mailing list is distr
275. usy lines or line problems This setting allows Mailtraq to automatically start the connection again when it cannot be successfully established These attempts will only take place if the Dial Up Networking system reports the connection as having failed Occasionally a connection will appear to be successful but will not actually allow network traffic because of a problem with the service provider s equipment for example Mailtraq cannot detect this and will consider the connection successful even though it will fail to perform its scheduled tasks Disconnect after Preventing the schedule s automatic disconnection from occurring Scheduled Dial Up If delivering outbound mail is essential you can configure schedules that act only if mail is waiting and configure them to take place frequently Mailtrag closes the connection automatically when it detects that it is no longer in use or after it has been active for a specified period of time Since many of the services that use the connection are passive i e initiated by other machines Mailtraq cannot determine exactly when the connection is no longer required Instead it monitors its own activity on the connection and when a period has passed when no activity has taken place it will close the connection It is very important to set an unconditional time out to prevent a connection from being kept open unnecessarily gt Note that Mailtrag can only detect
276. ve a network router that connects to your Internet Service Provider whenever there is Internet network traffic then from Mailtraq s point of view you have a permanent connection However with a permanent connection Mailtraq will simply initiate outbound mail delivery whenever mail is ready to send which may result in unnecessarily frequent dial up connections To help this Mailtrag can be configured to only use the router to connect under certain conditions or at certain times Configuring the Internet Connection Type 54 How and when Mailtraq uses Internet connections can be configured in the Server Properties available from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console Selecting the Internet connection type from the Server Properties Dial Up Networking Windows RAS Direct Permanent Network Connection No Internet Connection Local Network Only Configuring the Internet Connection Type The illustration below shows the available options Server Properties EHEJ You can use the settings here to configure how Mailtrag connects if at all to the Internet Use the synchronised option if you connect via a gateway f Dial up Networking Windows RAS C Direct Permanent Network Connection f No Internet Connection Local Network Only C Synchronised Online Times Edit f Virtual Network Router handles dialup for network E orea When this option is selected Mailtraq will init
277. w design common to Windows Explorer A hierarchical tree appears on the left while the objects in the currently selected tree node appear on the right You can resize either window pane by dragging the vertical bar separating them The structure of the oe l Tree View Mail slots news groups etc List View contents of current item in the tree view Mailtraq Console Mailtraq Console File 33H00 S650 FPXA View Options Actions Tools Windows Help Active Connections Name ConnectedTo Status Tmel gt Mail ae SMTP Server accepting connections 22 55 41 a Remote POP3 Mailboxes a POPS Server accepting connections gt 22 55 41 aes Mailboxes NNTP Server lt accepting connections 22 55 41 ji A admin HTTP Web Server lt accepting connections 22 55 41 seid Mail Router In Idle 22 55 41 4 projects Ez Mail Router Out Idle 22 554 distribution management gt info a Number of e mail messages waiting 9 NEWSSETVET to be delivered postmaster a prices al products Currently Active Services 6 objects 0 selected 0 4 26 03 98 08 00 to ISP Line 1 Details about currently selected objects Current dial up status or next dial up schedule The above illustration shows a typical view of the console In the left window pane the Tree View the currently selected object is the Active The Tree View Navigating the Tree View and dragging Ma
278. with this option gt Note that with any of these options if Mailtraq goes offline while services are active it will not actually disconnect them unless the network connection is broken For example if the Synchronise option is selected and a large message is being downloaded then Mailtrag will not terminate it before completion Dial Up Networking Mailtraq uses Internet services and communicates with other machines on the Internet through the TCP IP networking layer in the operating system on which it is installed If you connect your network to the Internet via a modem analogue or ISDN then the connection is handled by Dial Up Networking or the Remote Access Service The configuration of the Dial Up Networking connections will depend largely on your Internet Service Provider and the nature of your network Once you have configured one or more Dial Up Networking DUN connections Mailtraq can be configured to use them You can select which DUN connections Mailtrag can use and the username passwords needed to initiate them from the Dial up entry from the Options menu in the Mailtraq Console 57 Internet Dial up The illustration below shows two connections identified for use by Mailtragq Selecting Dial Up Internet Dial up zik Networking connections Dial up Connection Actions Schedules Schedule Options that Mailtrag can use 38 When you select Go On line from the icon menu the service p
279. y Windows program that can access a ve Mail arriving in this mailbox can be retrieved POPS account WwW Send a copy of all messages to john home inter net Delete from Mailbox Automatically respond to mail Edit Reply W Acknowledge Deliver Receipt Requests Incoming Mail Filter He corea Although it may not be immediately obvious you may enter more than one e mail address in the forwarding field Do keep in mind that although this may appear to be a simple way to create a mailing list the Mailing List object does this task far more comprehensively Automatic Replies Entering an Autoresponder for a Mailbox Message Expiry Mailboxes This facility is also often called an Autoresponder An example might be a vacation message letting the sender know that the recipient will not be able to reply promptly The response is actually a template allowing a customised response based upon the actual message being received Templates are discussed in detail in Chapter 16 Providing you don t use any braces the and Y characters in your automatic response it is treated as plain text Template autoresponder Your message fHeader Subject on Header Date has been received Unfortunately I m out of the office for a few days but I ll get in touch when I get back Thanks John Smith This facility simply ensures that old messages are automatically deleted or s
280. y recommended that you implement a strict firewall on this service in order to safeguard access to the messages in the local mailboxes The Network News Transfer Protocol service allows news clients to collect and post news articles from the news groups handled by Mailtraqg The Mailtrag news facilities are covered in detail in Chapter 10 227 Network Services The HTTP Service The TCP IP Proxy Service TCP IP Proxy Tunnel Properties 228 It is possible for Mailtraq to authenticate clients by asking for their username and passwords and matching them against the User records accessed from the Options menu in the Console The HyperText Transfer Protocol service provides a number of different functions It can act as a Web Proxy a Web Server and as a host for the Web Administrator These facilities are described in more detail in Chapter 12 This service allows Mailtraq to host a tunnel proxy between a service on another port server on the Internet and the local network When a client connects to this service Mailtraq will pass the connection on to the service specified in the Proxy tab TCPAIP Proxy Tunnel EEJ Service Access Control Proxy Specify the machine and service port to proxy for clients You may refer to another service on this machine or elsewhere on the network Remote Server Part fi 927 100 100 102 8080 When the Post Server is offline f Server is on the LAN

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