Oracle® eMail Server

Release Notes

Release 5.2for Windows NT

May 2001

Part No. A90426-01

These release notes accompany Oracle eMail Server Release 5.2 for Windows NT. They contain the following topics:

• What's New in this Release?
• Client Certification
• Known Limitations
• Known Bugs
• Known Third Party Client Limitations
• Messaging Storage Parameters
• Doc Errata
• Additional References

 

 
 
 
 
 

What's New in this Release?

Release 5.2 of Oracle eMail Server for Windows NT ships with both iAS version 1.0.2.2, and the Oracle 8.1.7 database server, and is certified to work in conjunction with Oracle Internet Directory release 2.1.1. New features include:

• ES Thin Client Sample Application -- a JSP-based dynamic HTML e-mail client
• Protocol Server Directory Lookup -- In large multinode installations, the SMTP Gateway-IN server will first lookup to which node it should deliver a message. Previously, all messages from a Gateway-IN server would deliver to only one node. Messages destined for other nodes within the installation were then moved.
• Monitor charts -- administrators can now monitor capacity and usage of the e-mail system using the Performance Manager application within Oracle's Enterprise Manager.
• Virus Cleanup Tool -- PL/SQL procedure that allows an administrator to define the "fingerprint" of e-mail virus suspects, match all messages inside the message store against that fingerprint, and set them aside for review and appropriate actions by an administrator.
• Postman Sorting -- faster delivery of messages when queues are long.

 

 
 
 
 
 

Client Certification

Oracle eMail Server supports standard IMAP4/POP3 clients. This product has been certified and tested against the following clients:

• Netscape 4.75
• Outlook Express 5.5
• Lotus Notes R5
• MS Outlook 98
• MS Outlook 2000

 

 
 
 
 
 

The Thin Client has been certified and tested against the following clients:

• Netscape 4.75
• MS Internet Explorer 5.0+

 

 
 
 
 
 

Known Limitations

The following are known limitations for Oracle eMail Server Release 5.2:

• If a production system is upgraded from 4.3, 4.2, or any other version prior to 5.0, the system can contain undelivered messages that the new 5.2 server no longer processes. This is because the new version of the server uses a more efficient method of mail delivery that is not compatible with the old algorithm. As a solution, configure a postman instance with the NOTIFICATION parameter set to value 1. Run the postman instance for one day to clear up all old undelivered messages. This instance can be deregistered since the NOTIFICATION parameter is no longer used in Oracle eMail Server 5.2.
• Do not use spaces in object names. Use an underscore instead of the space. This does not apply for descriptions or address lines. For example, use John_Smith instead of John Smith.
• If the timeout for the IMAP messaging session is shorter than the timeout for the Web Client JSP session, an exception message may appear. Re-login will correct the problem.
• For the Monitor Charts, when email server is deinstalled and installed, the NT deinstall of the email server Data Gatherer cartridge does not update the svppcart.dat file by removing the existing line for the MS5 cartridge (i.e MS5 ALL libvpxmx5 vpxms5.svppcart.dat) in ORACLE_HOME\odg directory. Because of this duplicate entry in svppcart.dat file, Data gatherer may not be started from Services. Remove the duplicate entry and it should work.

 

 
 
 
 
 

Known Bugs

The following bugs are known to exist in Oracle eMail Server Release 5.2:

• 1715849: A JSP error occurs when opening folders containing ISO encoded Russian messages.
• 1643538: The database custom installation does not install the Oracle interMedia option. This may cause Oracle eMail Server installation to not enable interMedia related APIs in Oracle eMail Server.
• 1567927: Replication of e-mail name service into an LDAP server does not work in multi-domain sites.The RESULTING_MIGRATION_DOMAIN parameter is not correctly read in by individual instances of the IOODSSYNC process (synchronization from eMail Server to the LDAP server).

 

 
 
 

Note: ODSIOSYNC uses the RESULTING_MIGRATION_DOMAIN parameter correctly so no special workaround is needed.


Workaround: Override the global RESULTING_MIGRATION_DOMAIN parameter with an individual eMail Server person object parameter ldapusersuffix. Accounts that use the eMail Server directory as the source to populate an LDAP directory should have the person object parameter set for all individual users before synchronizing.

• 1338861: The imconfig file fails at the end of the installation when the value of shared_pool_size is specified with a suffix, such as 150M. Error message returned is sql error, check configuration of node, failed internal representation. The sql statement that returns the error is:

SELECT value

FROM v$parameter
WHERE UPPER(name) = SHARED_POOL_SIZE

Workaround: Change the init.ora value to be the full integer representation, e.g 150M changes to 150000000.

The following bugs are known to exist in the Thin Client:

• 1697132: The NT version of OID causes a problem when updating data via JNDI. Since the WebMail client updates the user's preferences data using JNDI, an error is displayed if WebMail is configured to run against the NT version of OID. We recommend that a non-NT version of OID be used.
• 1485419: Accounts with more than 200 folders cannot be opened.
• 1532186: MSIE rich composer does not work on Macintosh platforms.
• 1403162: Netscape browser will sometimes only print the first visible page of information and not the entire message view.
• 1420020: If a message has its priority changed to high by the Server Side Rules, the change in priority is not displayed through the Thin Client.
• 1540468: Rules whose name length is greater than 80 characters will cause a problem.
• 1482630: The message search criteria uses 1000 bytes as 1K while the search query uses 1024 bytes as 1K for data returned.
• 1450070: Folder names with %, ', ", and space cause problems and should not be used.
• 1540746: Netscape Messenger client will not display high priority messages as high priority if received from the Thin Client. MS Outlook clients will display high priority correctly.
• 1540700: Special characters (ASCII 160-255) in the message body are not supported.
• 1517102: If the session times out during message composition, use the back button to return to the message compose screen and copy the text of your message to your clipboard. Re-login, navigate to the compose message tab, and paste the text into the window.
• 1471472: Web Client is not NLS compliant. Folders created with another e-mail client and the folder name containing NLS characters, are not displayed.
• 1574647: When using MSIE: Text disappears if it is sent with a background color.

 

 
 
 
 
 

Known Third Party Client Limitations

The following are known limitations in third party clients.

• 1691393: In Netscape 4.72 and 4.74 Solaris versions of the client, when a message containing HTML text is forwarded as an attachment, the text in the original message is either missing or corrupted and cannot be read.
• 1561765: Users sending messages using Lotus Notes will find that a sent message is placed into the sent folder and the wastebasket.

 

 
 
 
 
 

Messaging Storage Parameters

During the Oracle eMail Server installation, there are 4 tablespaces created to accommodate e-Mail Server schema objects. The tablespace names are OFC_MESG, OFC_MAIN, OFC_INDB and OFC_INDS. These tablespaces are created with low extent values. All Oracle eMail Server schema tables and indexes in these tablespaces inherit their storage parameters from the tablespaces. There are several tables and indexes that grow rapidly and will require their next extent value to be increased as a post-installation task. Some of such these tables and indexes are listed below.

Note: These tables are for internal use of e-Mail Server and must not be accessed directly.

Table	Associated Indexes
OM_BODY	OM_BODY_KEY
OM_DATA	OM_DATA_KEY
OM_DATAE	OM_DATAE_KEY
OM_SHELL	OM_SHELL_KEY
OM_HEADER	OM_GLB_KEY OM_HDR_KEY OM_INCL_KEY
OM_EXT_HEADER	OM_EXT_KEY OM_EXT_PRUNE_KEY
OM_RECIPIENT	OM_RECIP_KEY OM_RECIP_NR_KEY
OM_INSTANCE	OM_INSTP_KEY OM_MSGUID_KEY OM_QUEUE_KEY OM_INST_RET_KEY
OM_FOLDER	OM_FLDR_KEY OM_FLDR_DK_KEY OM_FLDR_DC_KEY OM_FLDR_NAME_KEY
OM_FLDR_INSTANCE	OM_FLDR_INST_KEY OM_FI_PARENT_KEY
OM_DELAY	OM_DELAY_KEY

Depending upon the size of your installation, select large next extent values to keep the total number of extents less than 1000 in a segment.

To change next extents on these tables and indexes do the following:

1. Run SQL*Plus as user OO_MAIL.
2. Run the following commands for each table and index listed above:

SQL> alter table table_name storage (next next_extent_value); 
SQL> alter index index_name storage (next next_extent_value);

See Also:: Oracle8i Administrator's Guide for more information on storage parameters

Doc Errata

The following changes apply to the Oracle eMail Server Administrator's Guide:

• Chapter 10, "Managing Protocol Server Processes"

 

 
 
 

The "Configuring Support for IMAP4 Users to Change Passwords" section is obsolete. To change passwords, see Chapter 3, "ESPrefs Self Service Utility."

• Chapter 7, "Managing the SMTP Gateway in Sendmail"

 

 
 
 

In the "Registering the SMTP Gateway with Sendmail" section, change:

Mofcmail,[tab]P=$ORACLE_HOME/bin/ofcuto, F=rlSsDCFMPpmn, S=10, R=20,[tab]A=ofcuto - 
$ORACLE_HOME -f config_file - $g $a $b $f $x ( $u )

to
Mofcmail,[tab]P=$ORACLE_HOME/bin/ofcuto, F=rlSsDCFMPpmn, S=10, R=20, [tab]A=ofcuto - 
$ORACLE_HOME $ORACLE_SID -f config_file - $g $a $b $f $x ( $u )

adding $ORACLE_SID to the string after the second $ORACLE_HOME.

Additional References

For information not covered in these release notes, see the following:

• Oracle eMail Server Administrator's Guide
• Oracle eMail Server Developer's Guide
• Oracle eMail Server Installation Guide for Windows NT
• Oracle Support Services web site at http://www.oracle.com/support