Frequently Asked Questions

This page contains the answers to the most command questions asked about NTMAIL. It also gives details of how to report any problems. Please follow this procedure since it will speed up any help we can provide.

General Questions

Mail Readers / Senders

Lists

Configuration Problems

Other Questions


How to report a problem

If the none of these apply in your situation, please would you send your problem details with the following information (where applicable). This will help speed up the reply and save us from having to ask you for further details. If you can repeat the problem, this will help us immensely.

The Answers

Does NTMAIL support MIME?

Yes, NTMAIl will support MIME attachments and any other type of attachments to mail messages.

What is the maximum length of a mail message?

The maximum length of a mail message depends upon the system that the mail server is running on. The maximum size (if no other processes are using memory) would be (Swap_file_size + Memory_size - 16M). In practice most other SMTP servers start having problems when mail messages reach about 4M. You can set the maximum length of a mail message by using the registry entry
MaxMessageSize.

What do I need from my Service Provider?

You will need your service provider to set up an MX record to point to the machine that will receive all your mail. You should also ask them to act as a backup mail server in case your service is lost for any reason (e.g. line goes down, or you only dial in occassionally).

If you have a dialup connection, you will also need to find out how to collect mail from your service provider. There are several possible ways to do this:

How do I read my mail?

You will need a POP3 client to read your mail. See our page listing
POP3 clients.

What POP clients are there?

There are a large number of public domain POP3 clients available. The main criteria in choosing one depends upon the style of POP client you would like to use. Typical clients include Eudora, Pegasus Mail and Air Mail. See our page listing
POP3 clients.

Where can I get POP clients from?

Here is a list of hot links for some of the more popular POP clients - this is not intended to be an exhaustive list but we would welcome updates and information about new POP clients:
See our page listing POP3 clients.

Are there any 32-bit POP clients?

From newsnet: " I use Z-Mail from Network Computing Devices (info@z-code.com). Its a Win32 application and after having used both Eudora an Pegasus I am much happier with this application." If you have used Z-Mail with NTMAIL please let us know how to set it up...

What is Logon Privilidge?

Logon Privilidge is the name of the privildge you need to give a user or group of users so that they can use a POP account with their NT Username and Password. To give Logon Privilidge to a group you need to use the "User Manager", Select Policy, Rights and a dialog will appear allowing you to select the privilidges you give to certain groups of users. You need to select the one called "Log on locally".

What version is running?

Use the "-s" (show) option with any of the servers and they will tell you the current version and the status of the current key.

Can you tell me when a new version is released?

If you join the mail list
NTMAIL-UPDATE you will be sent details of all new updates and improvements to NTMAIL.

Where can I get a key from?

The trial key has its own page -
The Key Page. However, if you need to test for longer or with a different number of users you can use our Application Form and ask for a longer lasting key.

Can I have a full documentation set?

Yes. Simply select the file
MAILHTML.ZIP. Note that the most up-to-date set of documentation will always be available on the server at Internet Shopper.

Why are my list server options ignored?

There are a couple of reasons why your list definition may not work:

What is the maximum number of people in a mail list?

The maximum number in a mail list is 10,000. These are all stored in the registry whose maximum size (according to MicroSoft) is 2Gb. However your local registry may need its maximum size increasing as you add more software to your system. This is controled from the "System" icon in the Control Panel. When you have selected "System", press the "Virtual Memory" button and at the bottom of that dialog you will see the current registry size and the maximum size of the registry.

My key will not validate?

The usual reason for this is that it has been typed incorrectly. Please check the key against your orginial, if you still have no luck, enter the command "SMTP -d" and send a request for the key to be checked to
ntmail-support@net-shopper.co.uk.

What are files like AAnnnnnn.MBX?

These are files of out-bound messages that are waiting to be sent to a remote destination. The messages will wait until either the destination becomes available or they have been their too long (set by the value in
PostData. (See Why is no (or some) mail being sent?)

Is it OK to delete mail boxes?

Yes. The POST service will assume that if there is no mail box, there is no mail. If you cannot delete the mail box (the system says the file is being used by another process) the mail is currently being sent, so stop the POST service and then delete it.

NT says "RPC Server Unavailable". What does this mean?

This is nothing to do with NTMAIL. It has a lot to do with the RAS software. The RAS server has a bug in it which can cause NT to become unstable if there is an error when a remote client disconnects. We have experienced the problem here and the only solution is to reboot NT (on our third attempt, NT worked again)!

Microsoft acknowldege that this is a problem and is caused by a "memory leak". As yet, we have not heard of a fix although it has not re-occured for 3 months.

NT reports low on memory. Why?

This is an error caused by memory leakage in some application that has been running on NT. Great care was taken during the design of NTMAIL to ensure that no memory is lost when in use. There is a known memory leakage problem with EMWAC's HTTP server which occurs every time a script is executed - this ammounts to about 100 bytes per script.

Best remedy is to reboot the machine every couple of days.

Eudora says "Thre recipient ... is not acceptable to your SMTP Server". What does it mean?

This means that Eudora has attempted to send the message to your SMTP server and the SMTP server has refused the mail. Check the user name is a valid alias, that the number of mail drops defined in "Version is correct and that you have set up a default mail drop for any unrecognised mail.

Eudora displays message incorrectly. Why?

This is a known bug in Windows NT's emulation of 16-bit Windows. To fix the problem, exit Eudora and restart or if you have the professional version press the "blah, blah, blah" button in the top bar of the message twice.

Eudora reports "Network error 10054". What does this mean?

This error can be reported when you mail to a very large mail list using Eudora. Eudora times out before the mail server has time to send mail to every-one on the list and displays this message. If this is the reason for the error being displayed, it is wise to not to send the same message again otherwise every member of the list will receive the same message twice.

How much does NTMAIL cost?

The
Registration Page gives full details of the cost of NTMAIL along with details of support provided.

How do I receive mail to the dotted-decimal address?

Add the dotted-decimal address as another domain in the entry
"PostData".

Can more than one user have access to a mailbox?

Short answer: Yes. Simply define each user to have the same mailbox.

Why is no (or some) mail being sent?

There are two usual problems which case mail not to be sent. First check the values in PostData and then check the destinations of the mail. Before you proceed, it may be worth checking our
DNS Primer.

How do I configure NTMAIL to use NT's User Database?

The sixth parameter of
SmtpData indicates whether NTMAIL should use the NT User Database. The option is only allowed if you have an unlimited user license. To enable the use of the Database, change the last parmeter (a minus ("-") by default) to a plus ("+"). You will need to give all the mail users logon privilidge to allow their password checking to take place.

Not all NT Users can access their mail - why?

Check that the users who cannot access their mail have "logon" privilidge. See
"What is Logon Privilidge?" for details of how to give users logon privilidge.

How do I setup an auto-responder?

In NTMAIL there are two types of auto-responder. One that saves the original message and the other which ignores the sent message. In both cases a text file is sent to the person who emailed the auto-responder. In NTMAIL these are called
"Information" (defined by I in the Mail\Mxxx entries) and "Holiday" (defined by H in the Mail\Mxxx entries).

WINQVT will not send mail to the SMTP server?

Check the version of WINQVT you are using. The earlier versions attempt to log into the SMTP server with "EHLO" rather than "HELO" and fail since "EHLO" is not supported. This is not recommended RFC behaviour - RFC says if "ELHO" is not recognised to default to "HELO" instead. Later versions of WINQVT do this.

In the 50+ version, does NTMAIL automatically know about new users or password changes?

Yes. A mailbox for a new user will be created when they first receive mail.

How much does it cost to upgrade?

The upgrade cost depends upon how you wish to upgrade! If in sterling the upgrade charge is the difference between original price and new price. If in US dollars, it is the difference plus $30 (to cover bank charges).

How do I setup aliases for users in the NT User Database?

You can use registry entries to set up aliases for users who have accounts in the user database. For example, if I am user "brian" in the NT Database but I want to receive mail for "root" and "webmaster" I would add the following line to Mail\Mxx (where xx is a number): Pwebmaster,root brian Now all mail for webmaster and root will be placed into my mail box. Further, you may want to send a message to the user who sent mail to an incorrect address: Hwebmaster,root d:\test.txt,brian would cause the file d:\test.txt to be sent to anyone who mailed "webmaster" or "root". The mail message would then be placed into my mail box as you would expect.

Why do I get "System Error 5... Access denied"?

This error occurs because the system user does not have the appropriate access to the executables.

Control Panel reports "Error 0002: Cannot find the file specified" when trying to start a service

This is liklely to be caused by moving the executables after they have been installed. To move the executables, you need to run them with the "-u" command and then "-i". This will tell the service to update the location of the executable so that the Control Panel can find it when you attempt to start it.

Do I need the user "root"?

Yes. It is wise to have someone assigned as root since this is the place where looping mail is sent and where people often email when they want to contact the person in change of the mail server.

Problems with AirMail v3.0...

The following problems have been reported with AirMail v3.0 running with NTMAIL: AIR support suggest that you download version 3.0a from their FTP site. This is not reported to have any of these problems.

How big a machine to I need for a mail server?

As far as machine size goes, the most important thing is number of mail messages you expect to handle and how often they will be collected. This will tell you what size link you will need to the Internet and the disk size. Remember to include all messages that you might handle if you are a secondary mail server (i.e. acting as backup for someone else's mail system).

For example, if you expect 3000 users to send 3 messages per week that is equivalent to 3000 * 3 / 7 / 24 = 50 messages per hour or 1 a minute. The average message size is about 4K (this includes the ocassional 1Mb file) so this would suggest a throughput to the Internet (assuming all out bound mail) of about 70 bytes per second.

You will need to think about the load on each of the three services.

The mail server here, at Internet Shopper, is also running WWW and FTP - it is a 16M 486DX2 running NT 3.5 and handles about 2000 messages per week without any problems. In fact, the machine is idle most of the time.

What about passwords?

Use of passwords is dicussed on the Reference Page and with the Eduora Pasword Server. This section goes into some detail about how to set up your POP configuration. You may also want to see the following questions on this FAQ: How do I configure NTMAIL to use NT's User Database?, How do I setup aliases for users in the NT User Database?; and Not all NT Users can access their mail - why?

Not all registry entries reloaded on MAIL -u?

The only value that will not have any effect when reloaded is the POST delay between attempts at sending mail. If this value is set to zero, the POST server will default to once per minute.
webmaster@net-shopper.co.uk (12th May 1995)