Release Notes for Netscape Messaging Server

like this:

+imap imapmmp:ALL$-pop popmmp:ALL

Setting the local.service.smtp.smtp-accept.receivedcomment configuration parameter as follows:

# ./setconf local.service.smtp.smtp-accept.receivedcomment "AOL-%s v%s msg-system1"

produces received headers similar to the following:

Received: from netscape.com ([207.1.151.156]) by <host>.<domain>.com

(AOL-Netscape Messaging Server v4.15 msg-system1) with

ESMTP id FOM6N700.S00 for <user@netscape.com>;

Wed, 19 Jan 2000 19:21:07 -0800

The parameter will be truncated to a max of 200 characters. You could even configure the parameter as "" and you should get the minimal received comment of ().

There are a few related extensions to the Protocol plugin properties:

SMTP_PPP_RECEIVEDCOMMENT: overrides comment per-connection

SMTP_PPP_PRODUCTNAME: read-only access to the product name

SMTP_PPP_PRODUCTVERSION: read-only access to the product version

SMTP_PPP_INSTANCENAME: read-only access to the server instance name

The service.listenaddr parameter prevents Sendmail from listening to the localhost SMTP socket. (382098)

This issue has to do with the Sendmail emulator, which redirects the SMTP connections to the MTA from the standard connection. The following parameters can be set to solve this problem:

local.service.sendmail.port

local.service.sendmail.listenaddr

If you set the local.service.sendmail.listenaddr, which is the IP address to listen on, then you should also set the local.service.sendmail.port.

For the port number, sendmail looks first for the value defined by local.service.sendmail.port (for example, 25). If this is not set, then it looks for the value defined by service.smtp.port, then for the smtp/tcp port number. If none of these is set, it defaults to 25.

To find the listen address, sendmail looks first for the value defined by the local.service.sendmail.listenaddr parameter (for example, localhost). If this is not set, then it looks for the value defined by service.listenaddr. If neither is set, then it defaults to localhost.

The MTA can leave deferred message bodies in the messages directory without references to the original messages. (382456)

Due to a race condition, deferred message bodies could be left in the messages directory without references to the original. This problem is fixed, and a configuration parameter is also available for tuning this.

The service.smtp.fileretry parameter is used to specify the number of times to retry internal renaming of a file before concluding an error exists. There is no default value; the internal value is 30.

In Messenger Express, a "File too large" message may appear after a large file is uploaded. (382477)

The service.http.maxpostsize parameter defines the maximum size of an HTTP POST that the server will attempt to upload.

If the file to be uploaded is larger than the value defined by service.http.maxpostsize, Messenger Express will upload at most 32K before returning the File too large error message.

Turning off the MTA's DNS cache.

DNS caching by the MTA can be turned off if you wish to have more control over the DNS behavior. To turn off the MTA's DNS cache, set the service.smtp.dnscachesize parameter to -1.

An entry in the log will show that the DNS cache was disabled.

Skipping the LDAP query in the MTA (useful for out-going mail relays). (379424)

To skip the LDAP query in the MTA, you can set the service.smtp.smtp-router.remotemaildomains parameter. For example, setting it to *.siroe.com makes the server treat <everything>.siroe.com as remote and skip the LDAP lookup on them. Setting the service.smtp.smtp-router.remotemaildomains parameter to an asterisk (*) character makes the server treat everything as remote.

Any regular expression can be used to set this parameter; for example, you could set the value to (*.siroe.com && *.company22.com) to make these addresses remote.

Fallback host for the MTA. (379426)

To define a "host of last resort" for the MTA, set the service.smtp.smtp-deliver.fallbackhosts to a list of x:y separated by $ as the delimiter. X represents the pseudo-regular expression specifying the domain and y represents the host name or IP address.

If y has multiple IP addresses, they are treated as the lowest priority MXs by the name server. If the "real" MXs for the domain are dead, then these pseudo MX IP addresses float to the top and stay there for the duration of the TTL.

Personal Address Book

Overview

Configuring the Personal Address Book

Configuring the Directory Server for the Personal Address Book

Configuration

Maintenance

Installation Notes

For Messenger Express access, Messaging Server 4.15 patch 4 requires a Javascript-enabled browser. For optimal performance, Netscape recommends using the following browsers:

• Netscape Navigator 4.7 or later

• Internet Explorer 5.0 or later

For information on installing Netscape Messaging Server 4.15 patch 4, see

http://docs.iplanet.com/docs/manuals/messaging/nms41/install/contents.htm.

See also bug #399059 documented in the Known Problems and Limitations section that follows.

Messaging Server 4.15 patch 4 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):

RBL not working and other plug-in code missing from product package(494201)

A working version of RBL has been released, and other plug-in sample code is now available for download.

Confusing server installation questions about LDAP account(399059)

The install script asks two LDAP admin account questions. Enter "admin" for the configuration LDAP admin account, and "cn=directory manager" for the users/groups LDAP admin account. The reason there are two different accounts is that the configuration and users/groups directories are separate. The config admin has write access to config LDAP server and the users/groups admin has access to the users/groups LDAP admin account.

PAB feature not supported on HP. (394398)

The install script offers to install Personal Address Book on an HP machine. This because PAB is only supported on Solaris as described in the prerequisites and readme file.

sendmail confused by nsserver.cfg with two entries (387459)

Sendmail fails to run successfully on an nsserver.cfg file with two-instance servers.

The following error message may be displayed:

[03/Mar/2000:15:28:04 -0500] nccmail [3349]: General Warning: CONFIGROOT

environment variable is not set and cannot find unique messaging server instance.

[03/Mar/2000:15:28:04 -0500] nccmail [3349]: General Critical: Failed to open

config file (./configdb). Make sure you set CONFIGROOT environment variable

to the directory containing configdb file. sendmail: Could not initialize Messaging Server configuration.

4.05p1, 4.1p2 and 4.15p1 all support the ability to customize more aspects of which port and address Sendmail uses. Check the path used by mailx and set status=p2, which should break any normal multi-instance deployments.

LDAP mail access domains not working in 4.15 or 4.15P1 (389998)

Setting mail access domains on a user to user basis does not work. Users can login and get mail from domain and IP's not listed in users LDAP entry.

According to the manual, setting mailaccessdomain to "none" should block the user from access the mailserver. This doesn't work. Setting specific domains doesn't work either.

mailAccessDomain syntax has multiple filters in a single attribute, separated by '$', with either '+' or '-' denoting their disposition. Full mailAccessDomain filter syntax is:

"[+-]" servicelist ":" clientlist ( "$" "[+-]" servicelist ":" clientlist )*

For example:

+imap imapmmp:ALL$-pop popmmp:ALL

This would make it so the user could only access imap and imapmmp (no ssl). If you want to do more than one IP address per service, you need to use the following syntax, ensuring that there are no spaces, as shown:

+imap:ip1,ip2

imapd cores with service.imap.maxthread set to 1000 (388049)

To avoid this problem, the total number of threads actively accessing the message store should be well under 1000. To keep the thread count under 1000, adjust the values of the following parameters so that their sum is less than 1000:

service.http.maxthreads

service.imap.maxthreads

service.pop.maxthreads

service.smtp.mailbox-deliver.minruncount

The parameter service.smtp.mailbox-deliver.minruncount controls the number of MTA threads accessing the store. The corresponding service.smtp.mailbox-deliver.maxruncount is not used.

In Messenger Express, the dates of messages with invalid years may be displayed incorrectly. (385657)

RFCs 822 and 1123 specify that two-digit year strings (for example, "00") are improper. Messenger Express systems that send out two-digit year strings may fail to be displayed properly.

In Messenger Express and Personal Address Book, quotation marks in the Display Name are not displayed in the addresses in the Recipients field. (380488)

Additionally, in Internet Explorer 5.0, if you enter %22 (or some other similar two-digit string) in the Display Name field, it becomes encoded as a double quote, causing the MTA to generate an SMTP error.

If you create a new user whose preferred language is Chinese, the First Name and Last Name fields are empty when you view the entry (even if you specified a first and last name when you created the entry). (387389)

The preferred language for Chinese must be specified as "Chinese/China" or "Chinese/Taiwan."

If you create a new user whose preferred language is Chinese, the user is sent an English greeting message rather than a Chinese one. (387704)

In Messenger Express, if the user does not explicitly logoff their session, there is a short time period between when the browser is closed and the session times out that can be exploited by someone with access to the history for that browser. (379157)

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

If a server process crashes, shut down all services before restarting or 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 during the send of a large mailing list, the deferral which should occur fails and the messages are not sent. (370061)

When this occurs, an error message is sent to the postmaster.

Large number of folders cause client memory exhaustion. (379459)

Messenger Express only supports a certain number of viewable folders (less than 200 with 128MB of memory) before it exhausts the available memory. When this occurs, you may see a mostly blank screen and/or a message in your browser status bar telling you about a Javascript error.

To see the entire error message, type 'javascript:' in the Location bar. The error message looks similar to the following:

Javascript Error: http://./fldr_fs.html, line 85 out of memory.

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. (379080)

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

If not, then turn off the authentication cache by setting the service.authcachettl to zero and restarting all the services.

If you use Netscape Communicator to send just a link, and 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 9000/800 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.

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.

Inconsistency in creating folders/subfolders with white spaces. (359809)

On NT, when trying to create a folder name that ends with white spaces, or a subfolder name with white spaces only or ending with white spaces, an error message will be displayed: 'System I/O error, Administrator, check server log for details.' It is unable to create these folders. However, this worked fine on Solaris.

Program delivery suspend mode does not work. (352333)

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.

Messaging Server 4.15 Patch 2 does not support certmap plugins. (337413)

The RUN and SCAN commands in the Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE) plugin are disbaled and are 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 from Messaging Server 3.x to 4.15 Patch 2 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 several UNIX systems, 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 cause the new limit to take effect by sending mail to the user after you reset the quota limit.

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

All 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.

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

Linux Problems and Solutions

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.

To determine which version of glibc you are running, type:

# rpm -q glibc

Other Problems and Potential Solutions

Web Mail: Some messages are truncated when placed into the "sent" folder. (517694)

Some messages are truncated, on slower machines with small amounts of memory, due to timing issues in Internet Explorer builds before 5.5 0.4522.1800. The current code sets the delay to 100 milliseconds before the JavaScript function "submit" is executed. By increasing the delay to 1000, with IE builds earlier than the recommended 5.5 0.4522.1800, IE will use the delay to complete loading of the data (header and message) into memory before sending it off to the server. The maximum delay is 1200 milliseconds. Using the recommended build of Internet Explorer 5.5 0.4522.1800 or later, the increased time delay is not necessary.

smtpd should not be configured to use more than 256 file descriptors. (397590)

On Solaris, if the MTA (smtpd) uses all the file descriptors below 256, the MTAmay experience random failures opening files, particularly if plugins are used. Use caution when adjusting minruncounts for the MTA upward (especially forSMTP-Accept) and monitor the file descriptor usage to ensure it does not exceed 256 under load.

Webmail Online Help doesn't explain Preferred Language Setting (351812)

The online help is unclear about what the Preferred Language setting applies to in the "Personal Information" Options screen. The text that has been added to the 5.0 release of help explains that the user interface elements can be presented in another language. The user can select one of the available languages from the drop-down list.

Mail for root or other local users cannot be delivered.

You should 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.

mailbox autocreate fails with multiple messagehostname's (388443)

When service.smtp.messagehostname is set to multiple values, like, "siroe.com,mail1.emailsif.siroe.com", new user's mailboxes fail to autocreate. If service.smtp.messagehostname is set to just "mail1.emailsif.siroe.com", auto-creation works fine. It appears if the first entry in the service.smtp.messagehostname list does not match the user's mailhost name, the auto-create fails.

Solution: Running mboxutil -c user/newuser/INBOX creates the new user's mail box correctly, and login is then successful.

When first value is in MessageHostname,and it works fine. The user's mailhost attribute MUST be set to the first value in the MessageHostname parameter.

On Windows NT, the -F option of the deliver command does not work. (381927)

Solution: A -g option has been added as a synonym to the -F option. Use the -g option instead:

# deliver -a <sender> -g \SEEN <recipient> <test_message_file>

Note: The Windows NT shell does not do backslash quoting and therefore requires only one backslash (/) character.

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

On Windows NT, If more than one popd process is running, then none of them accept a TCP connection. (379203)

Solution: Change the service.pop.numprocesses, server.imap.numprocesses, and service.http.numprocesses 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 separately.

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 backslash 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 backslash 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, ...