These notes were last updated December 20, 1999.

Important Product Alert: Root Certificate Expiration

If you are are using SSL with Netscape Messaging server, you need to be aware of important information related to root certificate expiration by the end of 1999. At a minimum, you may need to ask your users to upgrade their browsers to Communicator 4.7. Depending on how you are using SSL, you may also need to update the root certificate in your server. For important and urgent information on root certificate expiration, see Digital Certificate Security Alert.

These release notes contain important information about Netscape Messaging Server 4.1. Please read these notes before using the product. Messaging Server 4.1 is available only for the Solaris 2.6 platform.

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

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 4.1 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. Features of MS 4.1 include:

• Messenger Express - an integrated Webmail 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 Webmail 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

• Messaging Multiplexor support of SSL, which enables offloading SSL handling from a Messaging Server to an MMP.

• JMailstone, a stress-testing tool that lets system administrators determine Netscape Messaging Server capacity by testing how the server performs under heavy loads.

Required Tuning

• local.service.smtp.smtp-accept.maxrecipients

  Messaging Server 4.1 allows the administrator to tune the maximum number of recipients of a message. Care should be taken to modify this values because ISPs and other systems receiving mailing lists may need to accept a large number of recipients in each mail.

  By default, this value is set to 100000.

Known Limitations and Considerations

Messaging Server 4.1 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

• During installation, if you are not using an existing Netscape server root directory, you must specify a new directory. (353740)

  You cannot specify a symbolic-link directory or a mount-point directory as your server root. If you attempt to do this, the setup program displays a misleading error message.

• 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/.

Language Release

• On occasion, bounce back error messages may not be translated. This is a known issue and will be resolved in the next release.(359443)

• Some error messages related to POP/SMTP/IMAP protocols are not localised. This is a known issue and will be resolved in the next release.

Netscape Console and Administration Server

• Netscape Console 4.0, which is packaged with Messaging Server 4.1, is not compatible with Directory Server 4.1. (349983)

  If you are using Directory Server 4.1, you must use Netscape Console 4.1 (packaged with Directory Server) to administer your Directory Server. (As of Novemeber 1999, Directory Server 4.1 is released.)

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

• 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. (339214)

Other Limitations and Considerations

• For webmail access, Messaging Server 4.1 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 webmail access to Netscape Messaging Server 4.1. For optimal performance, Netscape recommends using Netscape Navigator 4.x or Internet Explorer 4.x browsers.

• Messaging Server 4.1 does not support certmap plugins. (337413)

• UBE: Using the RUN or SCAN command is not supported. (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 is interrupted, run reconstruct -m before starting the server.

  If something interrupts the upgrade process that upgrades a Messaging Server 3.x mail store to the 4.x format, the process can be resumed. The upgrade process will not attempt to upgrade mailboxes that have already been upgraded to the 4.1 format. However, after the resumed upgrade is completed, you must run reconstruct -m before starting up the Messaging Server.

• 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. 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 take effect until the user receives new mail (quotas are reset during mail delivery). If the user is already over quota, the limit will also take effect when the user logs in. (319715)

  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.

• 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.

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

  For example, 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 Netscape Technical Support.

• With more than 10 mailAlternateAddresses listed for a user, the Account Summary screen for Messenger Express may not display properly (364085)
• vCard attachments viewed on a Macintosh may not display properly (366862)
• NFS is not supported for mailstores

  NFS is not supported for several reasons, including: open with O_EXCL is non-atomic. This technique is used for synchronizing deferred handling between various threads.

• JavaScript problems during resize/refresh of browser (359087)

  You may encounter problems (JavaScript errors, white screens) using the resize or refresh buttons of the browser used for Messenger Express.

Potential Problems and Solutions

The following section details the known problems and solutions for the Messaging Server 4.1 release. If a bug-report number follows the problem, please use that number when communicating with Netscape 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

• Messaging Server 4.1 cannot be installed in the same server root as the Directory Server Domestic version. (350547)

  Solution: Install Messaging Server 4.1 with Directory Server Export version (which comes packaged with Netscape Messaging Server 4.1). Or, install Messaging Server and Directory Server in separate server roots.

• If your site uses a Configuration Directory and a User Directory, upgrading Messaging Server against an existing default Configuration Directory might cause Messaging Server to reference an incorrect User Directory. (353313)

  For more information about using separate configuration and user directories, see your Messaging Server and Directory Server documentation.

  Solution: After upgrade, change your Messaging Server configuration to reference the correct User Directory.

• During upgrade, Messaging Server does not always rewrite the 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 4.1, end users might not be able to edit user preferences. (354669)

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

• If you are upgrading from a 3.x Messaging Server to Messaging Server 4.1, the autoreply messages and mail routing table entries will not be migrated. (357053)

  Solution: You will need to save the 3.x information and recreate the entries for Messaging Server 4.1.

• If you are upgrading from a 3.x Messaging Server to Messaging Server 4.1, and you have more than one LocalMailDomain entry in the 3.x /etc/netscape.mail.conf file, the entries are not migrated correctly. (357055)

  Solution: You will need to save the 3.x information and recreate the entries for Messaging Server 4.1.

• 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.

• Creating a custom location for the queue directory can cause the SMTP process to not start. (352155)

  Solution: If you want to specify a custom location for the queue directory, you must ensure that Messaging Server has access to the custom location.

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

  Solution: 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 uid for the User/Groups Administrator.

Language Release

• After installing the Language release of Messaging Server 4.1, you must manually start the Messaging Server daemons. They are not started by default as stated in the install script.

Other Problems and Potential Solutions

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

  If you include a 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 slash character (\) in the message.

• Messaging Multiplexor might not handle SSL user certificates correctly. (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 4.1 documentation:

• counterutil list of objects. (330433)

  On some platforms, it is not possible to use the counterutil command-line utility to list the set of counter objects in a given server's counter registry. The following list includes all counter objects recognized by the utility:

  alarm
  diskusage
  serverresponse
  popstat
  imapstat
  smtpstat
  cgimsg

• Messenger Express online help provides insufficient instructions for localizing the ME 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.

  Instead, the instructions should be:

  Localization. The /msg-serverinstance/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.

Language Release

• Configlang Utility (363130)

  This utility needs to be included in msg.z and installed under the $SERVERROOT/bin/msg/install/bin directory prior to installing the language package. This allows the installer to change the language configuration in the config database dynamically.

  Usage: configlang [opt] [-s sitelanguage] [-a installedlanguages]

  -r: reset to default
  -b: bring servers up after reconfiguration
  -d: set site language (e.g. "ja")
  -a: add languages to installed language list (e.g. "ja, fr, de")
  

  On UNIX, the utility itself is used as a post installer. Specify the sitelanguage using the -d option and the installedlanguages using the -a option. Please ensure that you specify the -b option to start the servers after reconfiguration.

How to Report Problems

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

Where to Go for More Information

For Messaging Server 4.1 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://home.netscape.com/eng/server/messaging/4.1/.

Installation instructions and release notes for all Netscape servers are posted at the location http://home.netscape.com/eng/server/.

If you can't find the information you need, please contact Netscape technical support.