These notes were last updated January 13, 2000.

These release notes contain important information about Netscape Messaging Server 4.15. Please read these notes before using the product.

Messaging Server 4.15 is available for the following platforms (refer to the Messaging Server Tuning Guide for required and recommended patches):

• Solaris 2.6 for Sparc with required patches
• HP-UX 11.0 with required patches
• Windows NT 4.0 SP4
• IBM AIX 4.3.2 with recommended patch
• Tru64 Unix 4.0d
• Linux 2.2 (Red Hat 6.0)

For Messenger Express access, Messaging Server 4.15 requires a Javascript-enabled browser.

The server is compatible with Netscape Navigator 3.x and 4.x, and Internet Explorer 3.02 and above. These browsers support Javascript and therefore will support Messenger Express access to Netscape Messaging Server 4.15. For optimal performance, Netscape recommends using the following browsers:

• Netscape Navigator 4.x or later
• Internet Explorer 4.x or later

Use of this product is subject to the terms detailed in the license agreement accompanying it. For information on installing Netscape Messaging Server 4.15, see http://home.netscape.com/eng/server/messaging/4.1/install/contents.htm.

These release notes contain the following sections:

• What's New in This Release
• Known Limitations and Considerations
• Potential Problems and Solutions
• Corrections to The Documentation
• How to Report Problems
• Where to Go for More Information

What's New in This Release

Netscape Messaging Server 4.15 enables ESPs and ISPs to quickly build business-grade messaging services for conducting communication and commerce with entire communities of employees, partners, suppliers, and customers. New features of Messaging Server 4.15 include:

• Support for multiple platforms.
• U.S. domestic security support with Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140a.
• Messaging Multiplexor support of SSL, which enables offloading SSL handling from a Messaging Server to an MMP.
• Mailstone, a stress-testing tool that lets system administrators determine Netscape Messaging Server capacity by testing how the server performs under heavy loads.
• Support for Korean and simplified Chinese character encodings.
• Messenger Express - an integrated email interface to Netscape Messaging Server. Specific features of Messenger Express include:

  • High Scalability for support of millions of users
  • Highly customizable and extensible
  • Advertising enabled
  • Core email service feature support, including:

    • Automatically create Inbox, Drafts, Sent, and Trash folders at first login
    • View messages headers; sort by date, from, size, subject, or type (new/read)
    • View received message; reply, reply all, forward
    • Search for message with folder using the subject, from, body, or to fields
    • Compose message, allow attachments, add recipients from LDAP search, set priority, return receipts
    • Folder management, create, delete, rename
    • Account summary: display email address, mailbox quota limit, current disk consumption
    • Personal information settings: passwords, preferred language, reply to email address, vcard, text signature, forward email information, vacation message
    • Other settings: Number of messages per page, delete style (IMAP style or trash style), empty folder on logout, save copy of sent messages, save messages for draft, message display wrap, appearance set color scheme, set toolbar (icons & text, icons only, text only), display font, font size
    • POP collection allows users to collect messages from remote mailboxes and store them in a selected folder

Known Limitations and Considerations

Messaging Server 4.15 includes the following limitations and considerations: (See also Potential Problems and Solutions later in this document for other issues that might affect product capability or use.)

Installation and Upgrade

• Messaging Server 4.15 Export version cannot be installed in the same server root as the Directory Server Domestic version. (350547)

  Install Messaging Server Export version 4.15 with Directory Server Export version (which comes packaged with Netscape Messaging Server 4.15). Or, install Messaging Server and Directory Server in separate server roots.

• If you are upgrading from Messaging Server 4.01 to 4.15, the warning message "NLS libraries are missing" appears during installation. (379258)

  This warning message is harmless and does not affect the installation in any way.

• Installation fails after entering an account that should have write access to the User & Groups Directory Server. (356622)

  If anonymous search is not available on the User and Groups Directory Server, then during installation the DN for the User/Groups Administrator should be used, not the user ID for the User/Groups Administrator.

• During the installation, if BaseDN contains double-byte characters (such as Japanese or Korean), it gets a warning during installation: 'assert: line 92, file enconv.cpp'. (367037, 367214, 361497)

  Do not use double-byte characters in the BaseDN.

• You cannot specify a symbolic-link directory or a mount-point directory as your server root. (353740)

  If you attempt to do this, the setup program displays a misleading error message and you will not be able to continue with the installation.

• Netscape Console installs natively on the machine running the Messaging Server, but may be used from any machine to administer your Netscape Servers remotely.

  To obtain Netscape Console for platforms other than the installed platform, you'll need to obtain the appropriate platform version of Netscape Console by visiting http://home.netscape.com/eng/server/console/.

Netscape Console and Administration Server

• In the Messaging Server Console, the Number of Process settings should not be set to greater than four using the current environment. (369118)

  If this value is set too high, the system could hang and you would receive a "Virtual Memory Low" error message.

• Netscape Console does not display any warning messages if the numerical value entered into the connection settings is too large. (369126)

  The numerical value that is entered is converted to the maximum integer value without warning.

• Administration Server must be run as root. (341197)

• The Netscape Console has problems dealing with simplified Chinese data on Solaris. (367814)

  The workarounds for this limitation are:

  1. Use the Netscape Console on Windows NT for simplified Chinese.
  2. Use the command line interface.

• Uninstall does not stop the Netscape Console JRE (Java Runtime Environment). (337877)

  All Netscape Console Java environments must be shut down before running uninstall. Close and exit all instances of the Netscape Console before running uninstall. Be sure there are no Netscape Console instances running on remote machines.

• To launch the help screens from the Netscape Console, you must include the Netscape browser client in your PATH environment variable. (339214)

Linux Issues

• The Linux mshttpd daemon may die under heavy stress. (380796)

  If you encounter this problem, contact Technical Support.

• There are a large number of daemons running after the Messaging Server is started.

  This is normal. On Linux, threads within a process show up the same as processes under ps or top. There is really only one daemon with many threads. The exact number of threads depends on configuration and load.

• The proper Java CLASSPATH must be set up to run the JMailstone master or client.

  If the server is installed in /usr/netscape/server4, the setup steps for C-shell users are listed below.

  For running the GUI:

  cd /usr/netscape/server4/jmailstone
  ../bin/base/jre/bin/jre -green -classpath \
   ./JMailstone.jar:../bin/base/jre/lib/rt.jar JMailstone
     

  For running the client:

  cd /usr/netscape/server4/jmailstone
  ../bin/base/jre/bin/jre -green -classpath \
   ./JMailstone.jar:../bin/base/jre/lib/rt.jar JMailclient
     

Other Limitations and Considerations

• For general security purposes, it is suggested that UNIX users close their browser windows when they are finished with their mail session. (380283)

• In some cases, the SMTP process grows in size. (370054, 361773)

  If you encounter this problem, contact Technical Support.

• If a server process crashes, another process might hang.

  If the server process terminates unexpectedly, shut down all Messaging Server processes before restarting the server. Otherwise, the remaining processes might stop responding while waiting for locks held by the terminated process.

• If the Directory Server goes down when mail is sent to a large mailing list, the messages that should be deferred are actually never sent. (370061, 359018)

  When this occurs, the message is deferred to a mailing list, but delivery of the message fails and an error message is sent to the postmaster.

• In Messenger Express, it is possible to create an account called "admin" and log in. (379083)

  The admin account is reserved and it is not recommended that you create such an account for Messenger Express access.

• If more than 300 folders are created for a user by a script accessing IMAP directly, no folders may appear when the user logs into Messenger Express. (379459)

  The Folders screen is blank.

• For a short period of time (default is 15 minutes), it is still possible to login the account of a user after that user is deleted in Netscape Console. (still 379080)

  If you elect to turn the cache on (for performance reasons), then you must restart all the services on the server to make the deletion of a user(s) effective.

  If not, then turn off the cache for good by setting the service.authcachettl to zero and restarting all the services on the server.

• If you use Netscape Communicator to send a link, then try to view the message in Messenger Express, the body of the message is blank. The same message in IMAP contains the link. (370998)

  If you type some text before the link, then the message can be viewed without any problems.

• On HP-UX 9000/800 systems, the SNMP sub-agent is unable to communicate with the master agent. (370650, 370694)

  SNMP cannot be used on HP-UX 9000/8000 systems.

• With the Users and Groups Directory Server replicated, changes to the user preferences take time to propagate to the replicas. (368971)

  The amount of time it takes for the changes to propagate to the replicas depends on the replication schedule for the Directory Server.

• Messenger Express fails to authenticate to SMTP. (370380)

  When the MTA insists on authentication, Messenger Express gives up and drops the message without forwarding any type of error message.

• The MoveUser operation fails when the folder name contains double quotes ("). (370056, 367485)

  To avoid this problem, rename the folder as appropriate before moving any users.

• When logging in to IMAP proxy using the LOGIN command, the login fails if quotation marks are placed around the password. (370087, 367213)

  Note that the Messaging Server's imapd itself does not exhibit this problem; it shows the proper behavior and accepts the login.

• Users of Outlook Express (any version) using IMAP may see read messages revert back to an unread state. (363547)

  This is due to Outlook Express incorrectly using multiple connections to the same mailbox.

• Users of Messenger Express who want to switch the preferred language in the options must logout and log back in for the change to take effect. (368968)

  There is no warning or dialog box to inform you of this fact.

• Program delivery suspend mode does not work. (352333)

  Creating a suspend file and suspending programs works properly; however, once you remove the suspend file, program delivery does not work.

• Messages that are deferred to an alternate queue do not default back to the main queue when the alternate queue is deleted. (358478)

  Do not delete alternate queues that still contain messages.

• Japanese Base DNs are not supported for the Windows NT platform. (361497)

• Messaging Server 4.15 does not support certmap plugins. (337413)

• The RUN and SCAN commands in the unsolicited bulk email (UBE) plugin do not work. (334886)

• Reconstruct -r loses authenticated sender info. (115193)

  Netscape supports the XSERVER private extension for authenticating message submissions. Reconstructing a mailbox causes all of the authenticated sender information to be discarded.

• If the upgrade process from Messaging Server 3.x to 4.15 is interrupted, run reconstruct -m before starting the server.

  The reconstruct -m command corrects an inconsistent message store.

• The login shell must be valid for Program Delivery to work. (326785, 336039)

  The program delivery option will not work with shells that are not considered valid. On UNIX, the /etc/shells file contains the path for all valid shells. If the file is missing or empty, the following are valid login shells for the user to which the message is addressed:

  /bin/sh
  /usr/bin/sh
  /bin/csh
  /usr/bin/csh
  /bin/ksh
  /usr/bin/ksh
  

  For more information about program delivery, see the Messaging Server Administrator's Guide.

• If you change the quota limit for a user, the new limit does not immediately take effect. (319715)

  If the user is already over quota, the limit will also take effect when the user logs in. This means a user might still receive "over quota" messages until the user receives a new message or until the user logs off and logs in again. You can fix this problem by sending mail to the user after you reset the quota limit.

• Some configuration settings require server restart to take effect. (341854)

  Most SMTP configuration settings require server restart; most POP, IMAP, and HTTP settings do not.

  If you have questions about a particular configuration setting, contact Technical Support.

• POP Collection through Messenger Express has some problems. (380031)

  When you retrieve messages using Collect External Mail you may get a JavaScript error POP3 Communication failure and then get the messages.

Potential Problems and Solutions

The following section details the known problems and solutions for the Messaging Server 4.15 release. If a bug-report number follows the problem, please use that number when communicating with Technical Support concerning the problem.

See also the previous section, Known Limitations and Considerations, and the following section, Corrections to the Documentation, for other issues that might affect product capability or use.

Installation and Upgrade

• If you install the product without enabling SSL, error messages appear in the IMAP log file when the IMAP server is started. (363752)

  These messages can be safely ignored.

  Solution: By default, SSL is enabled for all services. To disable SSL without generating any error messages, use the following command:

  configutil service.smtp.sslusessl no

• During upgrade, Messaging Server does not always rewrite the /etc/nsserver.cfg file properly. (351603)

  Solution: If you install Messaging Server on the same Unix machine more than once, make sure the /etc/nsserver.cfg file contains, on the first line, the <server-root> of the Messaging Server you will be using.

• The uninstall process does not remove alternate queues or subpartitions. (355963)

  If you have multiple queues, the uninstall process will remove the default queue, but not alternate queues. If you have multiple partitions, the uninstall process will remove the primary partition, but not subpartitions.

  Solution: You will need to delete any alternate queues or subpartitions manually.

• If you are upgrading from a pre-release version of 4.15, end users might not be able to edit user preferences. (354669)

  Solution: You might need to add an ACI for the Messenger Express administrator to the LDAP user/group DN entry. For more information, contact Technical Support.

• If you are upgrading from a 3.x Messaging Server to Messaging Server 4.15, the autoreply messages and mail routing table entries are not migrated. (357053)

  Solution: You will need to save the 3.x information and re-create the entries for Messaging Server 4.15.

• If you are upgrading from a 3.x Messaging Server to Messaging Server 4.15, and you have more than one LocalMailDomain entry in the 3.x /etc/netscape.mail.conf file, the entries are not migrated. (357055)

  Solution: You will need to save the 3.x information and re-create the entries for Messaging Server 4.15.

• End-user administrator user DN and group DN are not configurable. (355146)

  Solution: If you want to create a custom DN for the end-user administrator, you must create these entries manually before the installation. You must create the end-user administrator group DN with the common name Enduser Administrators ("cn=Enduser Administrators"). You can create the end-user administrator user DN using any uid.

• Directory Server installation will attempt to restart SNMP services on Windows NT. (357053)

  The Messaging Server properly stops all dependent services before stopping the SNMP service, but if the Directory Server is installed on the same machine, it will attempt to restart the SNMP service, which causes the installation to hang.

  Solution: Manually stop the SNMP service before installing the Messaging Server and Directory Server on a Windows NT system. Otherwise, you can also install the Directory Server on a different system (recommended to avoid resource contention).

Linux Issues

• You may receive the following error message during installation: "The network port number is invalid." (341627)

  This message may appear even though the first port tested is genuinely not in use.

  Solution: Re-enter the port number and it will be accepted the second time. If the install still reports the port is in use, then there is something active on the port.

• There is a bug in glibc 2.1.1 that can cause SEGV faults of multi-threaded processes on SMP (symmetric multi-processor) systems. (355966)

  Solution: Upgrade to glibc 2.1.2.

Other Problems and Potential Solutions

• With program delivery turned on, a mail message with a large attachment cannot be delivered if it is the first mail message delivered to that server. (369583)

  The message is deferred, but then there is no way to delete the deferred mail because it does not appear in the Netscape Console.

  Solution: Manually create a .temporary directory in the primary store partition of the server.

• Mail for root or other local users cannot be delivered.

  Solution: Create these accounts on the Directory Server using the Netscape Console or the MigrateUnixSpool utility. The messaging server does not consult /etc/passwd for local accounts.

• Some window managers will not place the Netscape Console login window over the logo window. (367239)

  Solution: Either use a different window manager, or run startconsole with the -x,nologo parameter. For example:

  <server-root>/startconsole -x,nologo

• Authentication may fail if the hostname returned by NIS is not the same as the one returned by DNS.

  Solution: Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf to search DNS before searching NIS. Change the following line:

     hosts:        files nisplus nis dns

  to:

     hosts:        files dns nisplus nis

• If more than one popd process is running, then none of them accepts TCP connection calls. (379203)

  Solution: Change the service.pop.numprocesses, server.imap.numprocesses, and service.http.numprocesses back to their default value of one (1).

• The Messaging Server and Directory Server cannot be upgraded at the same time. (369067, 369057)

  The Directory Server holds the installation information for the Messaging Server. During an upgrade, the Directory Server is stopped and is unavailable to the installer.

  Solution: To upgrade both servers, simply upgrade the Directory Server and the Messaging Server seperately.

• The default account for the User Directory Server is "admin". This may not work with Directory Server 4.x. (341829)

  Solution: Use the directory manager account and password instead. At this prompt:

  User Directory Admin ID or DN: [admin]:

  Enter:

  cn=directory manager

• For Windows NT, the version of NativeToAscii shipped with the product does not work with Korean or simplified Chinese. (366604)

  Solution: Set the NS_NLS_DATADIRECTORY variable:

  1. Go to <server-root>/shared/bin
  2. Open a text editor and create a file called NativeToAscii.bat
  3. Type the following in the file:
     set NS_NLS_DATADIRECTORY=<server-root>\bin\msg\admin\bin
     <server-root>\shared\bin\NativeToAscii.exe %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9

• Messaging Server sends incorrect timezone information for Singapore. (341272)

  Solution: In the /etc/NscpMsg script, set the timezone (TZ) for Messaging Server by adding the following line after the LANG= variable:

  export TZ=GMT-8

• Using a back-slash character (\) in an over-quota message can cause problems. (352208)

  If you include a back-slash character (\) in an over-quota message, Messaging Server cannot parse the message and will not deliver the message to the user.

  Solution: When specifying an over-quota message, do not use a back-slash character (\) in the message.

• Messaging Multiplexor might not handle the "e" attribute in FilterComps in the certmap.conf file. (337269)

  Solution: You can correct this problem by changing the line in the certmap.conf file from:

  #default:FilterComps    e, uid, ... 

  to:

  #default:FilterComps    mail, uid, ... 

Corrections to the Documentation

Please note the following corrections to the Messaging Server 4.15 documentation:

• If you are installing Messaging Server 4.15 from a CD, the installation instructions contain an extra step. (380827)

  On the CD, the Messaging Server 4.15 bits are already untar'd; therefore, there is no need to untar them as described in the Installation Guide.

• Disabling Language Lookup Capability

  The MTA looks up the language to be used when it performs international functionality as explained in the Administration Guide.

  A new configurable parameter, local.service.smtp.sitelanguageonly, can be set to yes to disable the MTA language lookup capability so that it sticks to the value defined by gen.sitelanguage. This might be preferable if you want to automatically see generated messages in a particular language.

• Messenger Express online help provides incorrect instructions for localizing the Messenger Express UI. (357517)

  The instructions read as follows:

  Localization. To localize the user interface, copy mail-en.html to a new file named mail-xx.html, where xx is the two letter abbreviation for a specific language. Translate all the string values associated with the i18n array elements. To localize the online help, modify the help.html file.

  Instead, the instructions should be:

  Localization. The <server-root>/msg-<instance>/html directory contains a directory for each language. Contained within each language directory is a copy of the i18n.js file. This file contains all the string values associated with the i18n array elements. Replace the string pair with the relevant language. To localize the online help, modify the help.html file.

How to Report Problems

See the Technical Support site at  http://help.netscape.com/.

Where to Go for More Information

For Messaging Server 4.15 installation instructions, visit  http://home.netscape.com/eng/server/messaging/4.1/install/contents.htm.

The administrator's guide and related documents are posted at the location  http://developer.iplanet.com/docs/manuals/messaging.html.

Installation instructions and release notes for all Netscape servers are posted at the location http://developer.iplanet.com/docs/manuals/index.html.

If you can't find the information you need, please contact Technical Support.