• What is POP before SMTP?
• What mail software does this service use?
• What is IMAP?
• How can I test my account with telnet?

It's a way of allowing trusted people to use our SMTP server and disallowing spammers from relaying through it. When you check your incoming mail via the POP3 server (where you have to prove who you are with a username and password), your IP address is automatically added to the "ok to relay mail" list for a time, roughly 30 minutes. This means that during that window, you can send mail to others through the mail.dslr.net SMTP server. After 30 minutes the window is closed, only to be opened again the next time you check your mail.

Many email clients have an option "POP before SMTP" or "check before send" - enable it if you can.

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by Steve
last modified: 2002-12-12 10:56:36

We use Wietse Venema's excellent Postfix 2.2.x software, which is modular and designed with security in mind. It's a polar opposite of sendmail, which is monolithic and has a historically spotty track record on security and is generally un-fun to configure. We're using postfix's "virtual" module for local delivery into Maildir/ mailboxes.

The POP3 server is tpop3d by Chris Lightfoot. It has excellent Postfix integration, it talks to the mySQL database for authentication, and supports the Maildir/ mailbox format.

We've also spent a fair amount of time integrating all of this into our forum software to make it a seamless and pleasant email experience.

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by Steve edited by KeysCapt
last modified: 2005-12-19 21:24:10

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol.

IMAP based email (not yet available) can be accessed from any compatible Web browser or compatible email client.

It is a method of accessing email messages that are kept on a (possibly shared) mail server. In other words, it permits a "client" email program to access remote message stores as if they were local. For example, email stored on an IMAP server can be manipulated from a desktop computer at home, a workstation at the office, and a notebook computer while traveling, without the need to transfer messages or files back and forth between these computers.

It is this access from multiple systems that is the advantage of IMAP over a regular POP3 mailbox.

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by KeysCapt
last modified: 2002-12-20 13:43:16

You can talk to the DSLR POP server just like your mail client can. Fire up your telnet client to host mail.dslr.net, and to port 110 (the default telnet port is 23). The conversation under Linux looks like this - what you type is in red

$ telnet mail.dslr.net 110
Trying 209.123.192.186...
Connected to mail.dslr.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK <a211c376bfce5288278eacc7c597fcf5@gold>
USER steve@dslr.net
+OK Tell me your password.
PASS fatnessBozo
+OK Welcome aboard! You have no messages at all.
QUIT
+OK Done
Connection closed by foreign host.
$

If you don't get an "OK" after your password, you've done something wrong. The USER and PASS commands can be in lower case - they're just shown here in caps for clarity.

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by Steve
last modified: 2003-01-06 20:07:55