How do I configure distribution lists (a.k.a. groups, mailing lists) and mail aliases?
Apply the latest hotfixes and you will be able to do it all from the web-based server administration pages.How do I configure content censorship on mail being sent?
Firstly, you must apply all the latest hotfixes. You can then simply switch on censorship from the web-based server administration pages by going to the "Email administration and configuration" section and then choosing "Configure censorship". N.B. To filter incoming mail, you need the Enhanced Email System upgrade, otherwise filtering is only performed on outgoing mail being sent with the NetManager web-based email.I'd like to check all the mailboxes against the list of censored words.
This is very simple. Log in as root and type the following:cd /var/mail ; grep -if /var/nc/mail/words *This will print every line containing a censored word and prefix it by the username. Similarly, you can search for any word (e.g. fish) with a command like the following:
cd /var/mail ; grep -i fish *
How do I send a mail to multiple people with the web-based email?
In the To: you can type in a comma separated list of email addresses, e.g.jones, smithwill send the mail to both jones and smith.
Alternatively, the Enhanced Email System provides full addressbox, CC and BCC facilities.
How do I delete sections of text when composing or replying to emails using the web-based email package?
This depends on your browser, but for NCFresco the keys are:- Ctrl-K will delete from the cursor to the end of the line
- Ctrl-U deletes the whole of the current line
- Ctrl-D deletes all the text in the box (i.e. all lines)
Not all users seem to be receiving mail even though I know they've been sent it. When I examine the user, it says they have new mail, but they can't read it.
This is due to a permissions problem. Under Unix, a user is defined by a unique user ID (UID), rather than a textual name. Files are owned by a UID rather than a name as such. This means that if you delete a user and then recreate them, there is no reason why the new incarnation will have the same UID and therefore own the files that were owned by the previous user with that name. If using the management utilities provided by the NetManager, when a user is deleted the home directory of that users will be deleted. Therefore, you don't need to worry about permissions on the user's home directory. However (and this is the crucial point), when users first receive mail, a mailbox in their name will be automatically created, owned by them (or the UID corresponding to that name) and with only owner access. If the UID changes for a certain user name, mail will be delivered to the mail box in that name, irrespective of the ownership of the file. However, the mailbox will no longer be owned by the correct user. This can be simply fixed though as each mailbox should be owned by the name of mailbox. Type the following for each mailbox to be owned by the correct user:cd /var/mail for i in * ; do chown $i $i ; done
I've got a lot of email, my filesystems seem to be full and mail isn't be received any more. Help!
N.B. This is only likely to happen on servers over 4 years oldOn early NCManager builds, the mailboxes are stored in /var/mail. This is stored on the root partition which is smaller than the /usr partition. To move the email across type the following:
mkdir /usr/mail chmod 1777 /usr/mail mv /var/mail/* /usr/mail rmdir /var/mail ln -s /usr/mail /var/mail
I'm sending email from another machine on the network and I'm getting "550 Relaying denied" errors.
This is due to the new version of sendmail now being shipped. This contains spam filtering and will block use of the mail server as a mail relay to stop people attempting to send spam via your server. The mail server will only accept email that is destined for somewhere in the outside Internet) from specified machines.When mail is sent to the server, it checks the identity of the machine sending the mail either by name or IP address. The file /etc/relay-domains contains either partial IP addresses (for instance, 192.168.2 to match all IP addresses from 192.168.2.1 to 192.168.2.254) or a domainname. Early NetManagers (and NCManagers from Xemplar) checked by name; modern NetManagers check by IP address. Checking by IP address is much simpler as machines do not need to be given names on the server.
Firstly, check the contents of /etc/relay-domains. If it contains your local domain name (e.g. school), it should be altered to contain a partial IP address as follows:
- Determine your local IP address range
- Type: rm /etc/relay-domains
- Type: joe /etc/relay-domains
- Enter the parts of the IP address that are common to all machines on your network (e.g. 192.168.2 if all your machines are 192.168.2.x or 10.3 if all your machines are 10.3.x.y)
- Type Ctrl-K followed by X
- Reboot (or type: kill -HUP `sed 1q /var/run/sendmail.pid`)
If mail is still not being sent when you are checking by IP address, then the machine you are sending mail from must be external to your network (e.g. on your admin network on a different range of IP addresses). In such a case, edit the /etc/relay-domains file (as above) to add the extra IP address range.
Someone sent me a large attachment and now I can't read my email any more. Or, I'm trying to send an enormous attachment and it's saying "transport not available".
By default, the NetManager imposes a 16MB limit on any process to stop malicious users from attempting a Denial of Service attack by using up all the memory. If you mail box is over 8MB in size, you may well be running into this limit. If you can get a list of your email, i.e. you can view your mailbox, you are not being affected by this limit and so do _NOT_ make the following change. The limit can be switched off by:- Log in as root
- Type joe /etc/rc
- Go down to around line 80 and look for a line that says "ttyflags -a"
- After this line, enter the following:
ulimit -d 262144
- Type Ctrl-K followed by X to save the file
- Reboot the server
When I get sent attachments using the new web-based mail of things like TextEase files, I get "The Network Computer is unable to play this Data file" when I try to access it.
When a file is sent either to or from a web-browser, the type of the file is sent along with it. This is known as the MIME type (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). This consists of two words separated by a slash. The first is the general type (image, text, application, audio, video, etc.). The second is the actual specific type. There are a number of standard types defined. For instance:| MIME type | Description |
| text/plain | Plain text |
| text/html | HTML pages |
| image/jpeg | JPEG image |
| application/msword | MS Word document |
| video/mpeg | MPEG video |
| MIME type | RISCOS name | RISCOS hex | Windows name |
| text/plain | Text | fff | .txt .c .cc .h |
| text/html | HTML | faf | .html .htm .iso-html |
| image/jpeg | JPEG | c85 | .jpeg .jpg .jpe .jfif |
| application/msword | MSWord | ae6 | .doc |
| video/mpeg | MPEG | bf8 | .mpeg .mpg .mpv |
text/plain Text fff .txt .c .cc .h text/html HTML faf .html .htm .iso-html image/jpeg JPEG c85 .jpeg .jpg .jpe .jfif application/msword MSWord ae6 .doc video/mpeg MPEG bf8 .mpeg .mpg .mpv
A catch-all MIME type for unknown data is application/octet-stream. This corresponds to a Data file under RISCOS (filetype ffd). When you send an email from the browser which has an attachment, the MIME type of the attachment is sent on the basis of the contents of the MimeMap file. Therefore, if you send a JPEG image, the attachment will be sent as image/jpeg and will be given the right filetype at the other end. However, there are no types defined for most proprietary file formats. Therefore, if you send a file from something like TextEase, it will be sent as data and hence the NC will say "The Network Computer is unable to play this Data file".
To fix this, you may add your own entries to the MimeMap file. First find out the RISCOS filetype of the file by choosing the info option of the filer menu:
Next find out if there is a Windows version of the program and if so, what filename extension it uses (e.g. TextEase files end in .te). Finally enter a line in MimeMap such as the following:
application/x-textease TextEase b8b .teSave the file and reboot your computers.
When I try to send attachments, I get weird errors from the browser (such as the connection was reset or the server returned an invalid response).
If you have configured the maximum attachment size to be 0 (which according tto the documentation should switch off all limits), then this error may occur. To workaround this, simply increase the attachment size limit to a real number like 4000.You should also ensure you keep up to date with hotfixes. Setting the size to 0 with a later version of the webmail will disable the sending of attachments completely (disabling reading of attachments is a separate configuration option) and describe it correctly on the configuration page.
I want to delete all the emails in a mailbox without having to delete them all individually.
This is very simple.- Log into your NetManager as root
- Go to a command line
- Type:
cd /var/mail - Type:
rm <username>
where <username> is replaced by the username of the mailbox to be deleted. - The mailbox will be automatically recreated next time an email is received.
My mail package (Marcel, Outlook Express or Eudora) is listing all the files in my home directory when I try to list all my mail folders.
When using IMAP, all your mail folders are held in your home directory. By convention they are held in a directory called mail. You will need to configure your mail reader so that it only looks in the mail directory.ANT Marcel
- Find your /marcelrc file and double-click on it (or type Filer_Run MarcelRC:/marcelrc)
- Look for the line that begins send.copy= (around line 55) and
edit this to:
send.copy="mail/SentMail";
- Look for the line that begins filer.prefix= (around line 135) and
edit this to:
filer.prefix="mail/";
- Save the file
Outlook Express (version 5) or Outlook 2000
- After creating your IMAP account, choose Accounts... from the Tools menu
- Choose your IMAP account and click on Properties
- Click on the IMAP tab
- Type mail/ into Root folder path
- Click on OK and then Close on the Accounts window.
Qualcomm Eudora (version 5)
- Choose Options... from the Tools menu
- Click on the Getting Started button and check all the details are correct
- Select Incoming Mail from the list down the left hand side.
- Select IMAP in the Server configuration section
- Type mail/ into IMAP Mailbox Location Prefix
- Click on OK
When I try and send a large attachment with the new webmail, I get the error "Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted"
a.k.a.
When I try and read a large attachment, I get an error saying the webpage cannot be displayed or returned no data.
Sending files by email is a common task, but it's in fact a very uneconomical way of sending data as the encoding method increases the size of the data being sent by 33% (e.g. if you think you are sending 3MB, you are in fact sending 4MB).
Many NetManagers have 64MB memory and thus a limit has been set on the amount of RAM that can be used by the webmail system. This is so that multiple users can use the email system without. When installed, this limit is set to 8MB which provides a fair compromise. This doesn't mean you can send an attachment of 8MB as during encoding both the original and encoded versions must be present. Taking into account the 33% growth and the temporary space required, this gives a realistic limit on total attachment size of around 2-3 MB. You are encouraged to set the attachment size limit appropriately, so that users will never see this message.
Alternately, if your server has more than 64MB of memory you may easily increase the limit (we do not recommend setting it too high).
- Log in as root
- Type joe /usr/local/lib/php3.ini
- Go down to around line 90 (look for the Resource limits section) and look for a line that begins with memory_limit =
- Alter the number to 1048576 multiplied by the new limit in megabytes (there are 1048576 bytes in a megabyte). e.g. for 16MB set it to 16777216.
- Type Ctrl-K followed by X to save the file
- Type: apachectl restart
How do I block email from certain addresses?
Firstly, make sure that you have the Enhanced email upgrade and have applied all the latest hotfixes.- Go to a command line on the server and type: editaccess
- You will be presented with a file in a text editor. At the top will be a short heading describing the format of the file.
- For each address you want to block, enter either the full address or just the domain (no including the @). Then press TAB and add the word REJECT.
- If there are address you want to accept even though they would be blocked elsewhere (e.g. if you want to block all mail from Hotmail except for one address), put ALLOW instead of REJECT.
- Continue entering the details with one address or domain per line
- When you have finished, type Ctrl-K followed by X
# This is comment. Any line with # at the start will be ignored spam.com REJECT spam@yahoo.com REJECT