Topic: Pop-before-SMTP

[Italo Masiello]

I installed it on a e-smith 5.1.2 server and the installation went fine, except that after the first email test I ran, the successive ones failed. I don't think I missed something in the installation since it worked the first time, but I don't understand why it stopped working. Nathan, do you know what it is?
Thanks

[Italo Masiello]

Nevermind Nathan, I understood!
I run the command "ps -aux|grep /var/pop" and saw that only 2 out of the 3 instances were running. So I waited a few minutes, retried again, and POPed another test email...this time it went fine. So I guess you have to wait a certain amount of time before you can resend again. I am correct?

Anyway, thanks a bunch! great script!

[Nathan Fowler]

Well, the way the program works is after you POP you are granted access to the SMTP server with relay rights for 10 minutes.  When your IP's time has expired it is removed from the SMTP configuration and your rights to the SMTP server to relay are denied.  What this means is:

If you POP, compose an email (during which 10 minutes pass), and attempt to send that mail it will fail because your IP has expired.

This may have been the scenario that you described.  There shouldn't be any "waiting" period, changes should be instantenous (spelling?).

Some clients natively support POP-before-SMTP, others have to be told.  If you are using Outlook/Outlook Express check for an option that says "Check for mail before sending" or something along those lines.  I believe Eudora has a pop-before-smtp option as well.

Thanks for the positive feed-back, I'm glad this script is working for you.  If you continue to have problems let me know, I'll be more than happy to help you on a 1-on-1 basis.

Nathan

[Nathan Fowler]

Bill Talcott was nice enough to point out an assumption that I had made about the local network, assuming it was 192.168.1.0/24, this was completely my fault, when I design code I do it for my system and if there is a need I release it to the public.  I've since then redesigned the code to grab the Local netmask and IP and build a local network filter.  If you are using old versions before MAY 01, 2002 please update at this time.

To update:
Just kill the PID's of the running programs.
Download the contents of http://www.stickit.nu/pop-before-smtp to /var/pop-before-smtp overwriting the existing contents...

[Abe Loveless]

Nathan,

I'm getting ready to give your script a try.  One question though, I've got almost 2,000 users.... any idea how much all these extra daemons are going to load down my server??  (Of course, all my users feel they need to POP their e-mail every minute or two.)

I'm taking a leap of faith, switching my main e-mail server from NTMail to SME 5.1.2.  I haven't seen any posts from people with this kind of a user load, so I don't really know what'll happen anyway.

Thanks,
Abe

[Abe Loveless]

Also, is this added to the template system?  Or the next time I do something to the server that requires a console-save or will I need to re-install the script?


Thanks again
Abe

Actually, I just installed it, so I guess I'll deal with it one way or another.

[Nathan Fowler]

Abe,
That is a good question, the script isn't really as intensive as one would think, I'm using it on about 50+ users and I don't notice any type of problems.  I wouldn't say it's resource intensive as all.  It's simply tailing the /var/log/secure and watching for connections, then adding them to the smtpd_check_rules file.  I guess the only thing that would be intensive is if there was a massive flood of unique POP requests, then File IO would increase to handle each individual IP, but as far as processor utilization, this should always be minimal.

As far as a console save destroying the pop-before-smtp:
Because the script is installed in it's own directory, and is called from rc.local (a non-templated file), you shouldn't have any issues with making system changes and losing the pop-before-smtp configuration.

Hope this answered your question,
Nathan Fowler
evilghost@stickit.nu

[Tom Carroll]

Nathan, to allow for the maximum flexibility, can I run both popSSL-before-smtp and imap-before-smtp at the same time?

Thanks!

Tom Carroll
Dataware Computers

[Tom Carroll]

Ah, nevermind, I found my answer several posts back...

Tom Carroll
Dataware Computers

[Nathan Fowler]

Evidently when logrotate successfully runs it temporarily breaks X-before-smtp because the tail -f /var/log/messages or /var/log/secure is broken.  This requires a restart of the x-before-smtp services.  Do you guys know of any work arounds or fixes?  My first thoughts are to create another cron.daily job that simply kills and restarts the services but I'm not sure if this will do what we need it to.

Thanks,
Nathan

[Bala]

Nathan

Thanks for your script... It works fine for me ....and around 10 users...

Thanks again.

BaLa

[Nathan Fowler]

Anytime, I'm glad you like it.  It is nice to be able to give back to the community when you have the chance.  Let me know if you find any problems,

Nathan

[Franco]

Thank you very much for the development of this script.  Been looking into setting up a mail server using Esmith, but this feature was missing.  Keep up the good work!

[Nathan Fowler]

Thanks for the positive feedback, glad you were able to move over to E-Smith as a result of this script.  Let me know if you have any problems, I would be more than happy to help you out.

Nathan

[David Stanton]

Greetings. I installed the pop before smtp, and it puts the correct pop'd addresses in the log file, however since I'm behind a router all the obtuse daemon can see is the router's IP address. Does anyone know a way around this or am I just missing something easy?