Preface

The Sun Internet Mail Server 4.0 Concepts Guide provides SIMS system administrators with conceptual understanding of the SIMS product. It provides a conceptual understanding of SIMS architecture and its individual components, including: IMTA, MS/MA, Directory Services, Administration console, and the Delegated Management console. It also provides some background information on the messaging services, the key terminologies used by services provides, and different deployment scenarios for which SIMS could be used.

By understanding how SIMS works on a conceptual level, the administrator will be able to install the system using the Sun Internet Mail Server 4.0 Installation Guide. The administrator will also understand the administrative tasks that are described in the Sun Internet Mail Server 4.0 Administrator's Guide.

Topics in this chapter include:

Who should use this book

Conventions

Related documentation

Ordering Sun documents

Shell prompts in command examples

Graphical user interface conventions

Notice

Who Should Use This Book

The intended audience for this installation guide is system administrators who are moderately experienced with managing a network of Sun Workstations^TM, PCs, Apple computers, or IBM mainframes. Previous experience in planning, installing, configuring, maintaining, and troubleshooting an enterprise email system also helps to efficiently use this guide.

Conventions

The following table describes the typographic conventions used in this book.

TABLE  P-1   Typographic Conventions 

Convention	Meaning	Example
courier font	Names of commands, files, on-screen computer output	Edit your .login file. Use ls -a to list all files. machine_name% test.doc.
italics	Book titles, new terms, words to be emphasized, variables that you replace with a real value	Read Chapter 6 in User's Guide. These are called class options. You must be root to do this. Type rm filename to delete a file.
boldface courier font	What you type	machine_name% su Password:

Related Documentation

SIMS 4.0 Documentation Set

The Sun Internet Mail Server 4.0 Concepts Guide manual is a prerequisite document for the following manuals in the SIMS documentation set:

Sun Internet Mail Server 4.0 Installation Guide - Describes the software and configuration, and pre installation requirements; planning the system; list of packages and files installed; installation instructions; post installation configuration and tasks; SIMS High Availability architecture; and Netscape Directory Services installation instructions for SIMS and for SIMS HA systems.

Sun Internet Mail Server 4.0 Provisioning Guides--describes how to provision the SIMS LDAP directory with users, distribution lists, administrators, and domains by creating and importing LDIF records.

Sun Internet Mail Server 4.0 Administrator's Guide--describes how to fine-tune the default configuration, and maintain, monitor, and troubleshoot your mail server by using the SIMS Administration Console, a graphical user interface tool (GUI).

Sun Internet Mail Server 4.0 Reference Manual--Provides detailed information on command-line options, configuration files that can be edited by the administrator, system architecture, supported standards, and location of software files.

Sun Internet Mail Server Delegated Management Guide--describes the SIMS Delegated Management console and the tasks associated with the console. In particular, it describes how a delegated administrator for a hosted domain performs tasks on users and distribution lists.

Sun Internet Mail Server 4.0 Web Access Administrator's Guide--Describes the core system administration tasks for Sun Web Access software.

Reference Manual Pages (man pages)--Describe command-line utilities and detailed information about the arguments and attributes relevant to each command.

Sun Internet Mail Server 4.0 Release Notes--Covers open issues and late-breaking installation, administration, and reference information that is not published in the product books.

Other Related Sun Documentation

Sun Internet Mail Server 4.0 Web site (located at http://www.sun.com/sims)--Offers up-to-date information on a variety of topics, including: online product documentation and late-breaking updates, product information, technical white papers, press coverage, and customer success stories.

Sun Directory Services Administration Guide (http://docs.sun.com:80/ab2/coll.297.1/@Ab2CollToc?subject=sysadmin)--Describes the Sun Directory Services.

Netscape Directory Services documentation (http://home.netscape.com/eng/server/directory/)--Describes the Netscape Directory Services.

Shell Prompts in Command Examples

The following table shows the default system prompt and superuser prompt for the C shell, Bourne shell, and Korn shell.

TABLE  P-2   Shell Prompts

Shell	Prompt
C shell prompt	machine_name%
C shell superuser prompt	machine_name#
Bourne shell and Korn shell prompt	$
Bourne shell and Korn shell superuser prompt	#

SIMS User Registration

Register as a user of the Sun Internet Mail Server 4.0 (SIMS) to receive information about new releases, upgrade offers, and promotions. To register, press the Registration button at the Administration Console login page. Fill-in the form requesting your name, address, e-mail address, and other information, and press Send. When Sun receives the completed registration form, we will email an acknowledgment back to you. You must provide an email address in order to receive a confirmation notice.

Error Conditions

Registration errors are rare, but TABLE P-3describes the possible error messages and the required action.

TABLE  P-3   Registration Error Conditions and Required Action  

Error Message	Required Action
"The server could not set a locale to encode the mail. There was no locale supplied and the server could not set the default properly."	Make sure that you start registration from the Admin console screen.
"The server could not obtain the <LOCALE> locale that you registered from to properly format the mail. It is necessary to have the same locale installed on the server that you registered from."	Either make sure the locale installed on server is the same as the locale you are registering from on your client or, type in registration in us-ascii.
"The mail program on the server could not be opened."	There was an error involving the sendmail program. Make sure that /usr/lib/sendmail is on your system and properly configured.
"There was not enough memory to process the mail."	You've run out of swap space. Shut down applications or increase swap and try again.

Notice

To better illustrate the process being discussed, SIMS manuals contain examples of data that might be used in daily business operations. The examples might include names of individuals, companies, brands, and products. SIMS manuals use only fictitious names, and any similarity to the names of individuals, companies, brands, and products used by any business enterprise is purely coincidental.