Mail access issue solved
The problems I encountered with the HP-supplied POP server have been posted on the HP Network forum, and I got an alternative via a Russian collegue: Ruslan Laishev. He ported (or wrote) a POP server (Starlet POP3 – hence SPOP3) that should do the job, and it can be obtained from his site. The project contains a MMS/MK build file, but it failed to build since commands were missing: it is important that you specify that files need to be compiled….So I added these commands, but again it failed: two files were not included: an SDL file and a TCPWARE library; the first I could locate, but the second I couldn’t. I contacted Ruslan and he built me an Alpha version. Next was to start it – but the procedures to do so contained a possibility to start the server as a TCPIP-service using TCPWARE stack, not the HP TCPIP stack. So I added this as well. A second possibility is to have the server running as a detached process.
Neither way worked flawlessly. First, the process ran into a number of SSL issues – non fatal but still. That is because both port 11n and 995 are initiated – except if the secure port is set to zero; however, you would still need to specify the .PEM file. But most annoying is that when the program is started as a TCPIP service under HP’s stack, it crashes stating a DUPLNAME error.
There were a number of other issues that boiled down to logicals that were misinterpreted – but in the end it all looked nice, more or less. But building failed on syntax errors – and my knowledge of C is far too limited. Ruslan would look into it, and urged me to download the latest header – and source files.
For the time being, I stuck to IMAP, but that proved to have some issues as well: Some messages – once moved – were not re-read and did not show up in Outlook, though the web-agent (that accesses VMS mail directly) had no trouble at all. So I left al mail on the server and didn’t access it using Outlook.
Tonight I downloaded the latest versions – first onto the workstation and moved the to Diana for compilation. Most files succeeded, but the most important one failed to be transferred – any file, actually. So I started the browser on Diana and downloaded the files directly on the system – built the application and fired it as detached process – which succeeded perfectly. But when run as an HP TCPIP service, it again fales with DUPLNAME. After restarting it (once more since I forgot to remove the installed image and disable and remove the service) it now runs as detached process. For the moment, that’s Ok. But the DUPLNAME issue need to be resolved (I do have an idea of the cause but will need to investigate the code).
So now I’m using POP again to retrieve mail.
04-Jun-2014
Maintenance
No real issues; the number of operator logs is a bit larger that you could expect for a month: you could expect 31 (one for each day) but due to instalations and subsequent reboots, the amount was 37. No big deal.
No significant spam attempts, and pretty neat figures on spam:
PMAS statistics for May
Total messages : 4341 = 100.0 o/o
DNS Blacklisted : 0 = .0 o/o (Files: 0)
Relay attempts : 715 = 16.4 o/o (Files: 29)
Accepted by PMAS : 3626 = 83.5 o/o (Files: 31)
Handled by explicit rule
Rejected : 2765 = 76.2 o/o (processed), 63.6 o/o (all)
Accepted : 239 = 6.5 o/o (processed), 5.5 o/o (all)
Handled by content
Discarded : 120 = 3.3 o/o (processed), 2.7 o/o (all)
Quarantained : 254 = 7.0 o/o (processed), 5.8 o/o (all)
Delivered : 248 = 6.8 o/o (processed), 5.7 o/o (all)
On 01-Jun-2014, I installed the TCPIP-update, because the new version of POP ruins Outlook output. At least, it doesn’t show as it should. It seems the server breaks on extension header records (the ones that are added by PMAS, for instance: beginning with “X-PMAS”) and fails to recognize MIME headers; mail that is sent locally – like the T4 output and batch status messages – are Ok. Just incoming mail fails.
Sent some info on the issue to the OpenVMS Netwokring forum, got a reply mentioning a freeware POPserver but that requires TCPWare, which I don’t use and therefore it cannot be considered.
The final solution – for now – is switching from POP3 to IMAP, which was already enabled. The only problem here is the requirement of a separate mailbox file. Only to find out how I can bypass that, or change it’s location…