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Setting Up An Email Server If you want to streamline the email service in your office, setting up an on-site email server is the answer. It lets users send local email with ease, without initiating separate dial-up sessions. A popular solution for the Windows platform is the MDaemon mail server package. By PETER SMITH The standard dial-up account offered by most ISPs (Internet Service Providers) is often the starting point for many small businesses when email access becomes a requirement. A modem, telephone line, email application software and dial-up account are all that’s required to get online. Standard dial-up accounts generally include one email address with a username of choice. The domain name part of the address (everything after the ‘<at>’ symbol) is common to all dial-in users of the particular provider for this type of account. For example, a Big Pond dial-in customer would have an address of username<at> bigpond.com Of course, most businesses will want the company name or some derivative of it as part of the domain name. In addition, they also usually want multiple email accounts, including a general company account plus individual user accounts. That’s where the ISP comes into the picture. An ISP can host a suitable domain name on a company’s behalf Fig.1: a minimum system requires the MDaemon Server and the MDaemon Documentation and Help components. Fig.2: during setup, you have to enter the IP address of your DNS server. This address is provided by your ISP. 56  Silicon Chip and can also offer multiple email accounts, each account existing as a separate mailbox on the ISPs’ server. Individual users can then access their email via separate modems but this quickly becomes unwieldy if there are more than three accounts involved. For this reason, most businesses use some kind of sharing technique, so that users can access their respective mailboxes through a common Internet connection point on the local area network. Often, this connection is made via a single 56K modem, which is shared using proxy server software such as WinGate, WinProxy or SyGate, etc. Hardware-based proxy servers are also available. We looked at WinGate in detail last month and we’ll be looking at a couple of hardware solutions in a future article. Adding an email server Although this type of email setup works well in many small businesses, there are several disadvantages. Fig.3: select the option shown here so that MDaemon automatically starts and runs as a system service. Fig.4: first-time users should run the configuration wizard, as this greatly simplifies the setup. All settings can be changed later if necessary. Fig.5: enter your domain name in this dialog box and ignore the default company.mail entry recommended by the wizard. Fig.6: the ISP’s mail server address (POP host) and the logon name and password are entered here (for option A in Table 1 only). Fig.7: leave this dialog box blank if you entered your real domain name in the dialog box shown in Fig.5. Fig.8: select the option shown here if you want MDaemon to automatically connect to your ISP. Fig.9: this is where you assign a name to your dial-up profile and enter your logon name and password. First, adding, removing or otherwise modifying user accounts often requires a call to the ISP and there can be delays while the changes are implemented at their end (a few of the more progressive ISPs do provide web-based account management, however). Second, depending on the ISP, there may be costs involved each time account changes are made. And third, because the email server actually resides at the ISPs end, email between local users must go via the Internet connection. This not only adds to the call costs but can also cause significant delays and inconvenience for companies that depend on fast message delivery. The solution is to install an email server on the company network, effectively relocating the user mailboxes from the ISP’s server to the local LAN. No changes need be made to the type of Internet connection and all existing email client software is retained. The ISP still provides the domain name hosting but rather than manage multiple email accounts, all email for the company is either placed in a single mailbox or forwarded directly to the email server whenever it is connected. One big advantage of this scheme is that account administration is now performed locally, so users can be added or deleted at will. More importantly, local email never leaves the company – instead, it is transferred directly to the recipient’s mailbox on the email server and can be collected immediately. Other important administrative tasks like redirecting important email when employees are out of the office also become much easier. manent Internet connection, which can be a costly proposition for small businesses. By contrast, one of MDaemon’s key features is its ability to operate effectively over a standard dial-up modem connection. By using a feature called DomainPOP mail collection, MDaemon is able to collect all email from a single POP3 mailbox at the ISP and distribute it to local user accounts, which is just the shot for a small business. With this scheme, individual users retrieve all their email from the local server which means that they don’t have to make separate phone calls. Similarly, when individual users want to send email, it too goes to the local server. MDaemon then subsequently sends and retrieves email to and from the ISP at designated intervals (eg, two or three times a day, or even once every hour). MDaemon Most ISPs and some large corporations run their email servers on UNIX operating systems or derivatives but a small businesses will want something that runs on a more familiar platform – either Windows 95/98 or Windows NT. One popular solution is an email server program called MDaemon. This runs on the Windows platform and provides many advanced capabilities, including web-based email access, auto-forwarding, mailing lists, remote administration, auto responders, multiple domains and many other features. Many email servers require a per- System requirements MDaemon is available for both Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4. It requires a PC with a 486 processor or higher, 8MB of memory minimum (we recommend 16MB) and approximately 30MB of free hard disk space November 1999  57 Fig.10: this dialog box is normal. Just click OK so that you can proceed with the setup. this type of service. The two other commonly available services can be roughly categorised by their connection type, as shown in Table 1. MDaemon supports all of these options. By the way, the services offered and the prices vary significantly between ISPs, so its worthwhile finding out what your ISP has on offer. Installing MDaemon Fig.11: you only have to enter your ISP’s mail server address here. The installation wizard automatically completes the other entries for you. Fig.12: MDaemon automatically formats new user accounts that you create later on using the information entered here. (plus space for any mail that will be stored). The TCP/IP protocol must be installed on the network and, of course, an Internet connection is required. In addition, Dial-up Networking (DUN) must be installed for Windows 95/98 and Remote Access Services (RAS) for Windows NT 4. All popular email client software will work with MDaemon, the only requirement being that they support both the POP3 and SMTP protocols. Compatible email applications include Outlook, Outlook Express, Internet Mail, Netscape Mail and Eudora, etc. MDaemon will work with most types of Internet connection methods (modem dial-up, ISDN, cable modem, etc) but consideration needs to be given to the type of email service provided by the ISP. As mentioned above, MDaemon can be configured to collect all email from a single POP3 account. This is the most cost-effective method, as all the ISP need do is redirect (or alias) all email for the particular domain into one mailbox. Internet connection time is reduced to a minimum too, because the company’s email server need only be online for long enough to retrieve all email from the POP3 account and send any email queued for delivery. However, not all ISPs provide Table 1: Common Email Service Options Option Service & Connection Type A B C Description Single POP3 email account The server connects to the Internet at assigned and standard dial -up intervals, collects all emai yrom a singl e POP3 modem connection. account and sends any waiting email. The server connects to the Internet at assigned interval s to send and recei ve email. At the ISP's end, SMTP email servi ce with emai l recei ved for the company whil e the connection non-permanent modem i s off-line i s held in a queue unti l the next connection connection. i s made. This method i s si mil ar to option A but there are more overheads at the ISP's end. The server i s permanentl y connected to the Internet. SMTP email servi ce with The advantage of thi s system i s that there i s no del ay permanent modem in sending and recei ving email but it i s more costl y connection. than options A and B. 58  Silicon Chip Because of its wide range of features and options, installing and configuring this product could be a rather daunting task for some. Certainly, we don’t recommend that you attempt it unless you have a basic understanding of Internet and networking concepts. On the positive side, MDaemon includes a configuration wizard to help get it up and running with a minimum of knowledge. Comprehensive documentation is also available and can be down­loaded separately in a variety of formats (Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, etc) from http://www. mdaemon.janteknology.com.au Because product improvements occur frequently, you should verify that you have the latest version of MDaem­on (2.8.5.0 at time of writing). The software is available for download from the above listed website and can be evaluated free of charge for 30 days. Before installing MDaemon, it is a good idea to configure and test the Internet connection. Make sure that the system is capable of dialling up and logging in automatically (ie, without the user having to manually enter a username and password each time). When you start the installation, you will be prompted to enter some basic information to get things started. Note that unless you have a permanent connection to the Internet, you will probably not require all of the components listed in the “Select Components To Install” dialog box (see Fig.1). A minimum system requires the MDaemon Server and the MDaemon Documentation and Help components. After all files have been installed, you will be asked for the IP address of your DNS server (see Fig.2). Enter the DNS address provided by your ISP here. Note that MDaemon has the ability to run as a system service. This is the preferred option because MDaemon starts and runs automatically, regard- Truscott’s !RESELLER FOR MAJOR KIT RETAILERS !PROTOTYPING EQUIPMENT !COMPLETE CB RADIO SUPPLY HOUSE !TV ANTENNA ON SPECIAL (DIGITAL READY) !LARGE RANGE OF ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS Professional Mail Order Service Fig.13: double-clicking the envelope icon in the System Tray brings up the Message Router window. This lets you add and delete user accounts, gives a running update of all email activity on the network (in the righthand pane) and lets you change any of the settings. less as to whether anyone is logged in to the server or not (see Fig.3). At the completion of the installation, you have the option of running the configuration wizard (see Fig.4). This is a good idea for first-time MDaemon users, since it greatly simplifies the setup. Wizardry The following examples show the settings we used in the wizard’s various configuration windows. Note that we selected option A in Table 1 as our service type of choice. As shown in Fig.5, the wizard recommends using the default domain company.mail. However, we recommend that you enter your real domain name here. If necessary, the domain name can later be changed in the Setup, Primary domain menu accessed from the main MDaemon window (ie, the Message Router window). If MDaemon will be using Domain­ POP mail collection (option A in Table 1), enter the ISP’s mail server address (POP host) and the logon name and password for the POP3 account (see Fig.6). If not, you can leave all these fields blank. Next, if you used the default company.mail domain name, enter your real domain name in the dialog box shown in Fig.7. Conversely, if you previously entered in your real domain name (as recommended), leave this field blank. The next two windows deal with dial-up connection settings – see Truscott’s Come In And See O New Storeur ELECTRONIC WORLD Pty Ltd ACN 069 935 397 Ph (03) 9723 3860 Fax (03) 9725 9443 27 The Mall, South Croydon, Vic 3136 (Melway Map 50 G7) email: truscott<at>acepia.net.au www.electronicworld.aus.as SMART FASTCHARGERS® 2 NEW MODELS WITH OPTIONS TO SUIT YOUR NEEDS & BUDGET Now with 240V AC + 12V DC operation PLUS fully automatic voltage detection Use these REFLEX® chargers for all your Nicads and NIMH batteries: Power tools  Torches  Radio equip.  Mobile phones  Video cameras  Field test instruments  RC models incl. indoor flight  Laptops  Photographic equip.  Toys  Others  How MDaemon Manages Multiple Email Accounts Using A Single Mailbox At The ISP Let’s say, for example, that an organisation has a domain name stooges. com and an accompanying mailbox three<at>stooges.com hosted at their ISP. The organisation arranges for their ISP to alias, or forward, all email messages sent to the stooges.com domain (regardless of the username) to the three<at>stooges.com POP3 account. This means that all email messages with the stooges.com domain name received by the ISP – eg, larry<at>stooges.com, curly<at>stooges.com and moe<at>stooges.com - are deposited in the three<at>stooges.com POP3 account. MDaemon can then log into this single POP3 email box, retrieve all email messages, sort them out by user name (ie, larry, curly and moe), and send them to the matching POP3 mailboxes that you’ve defined in MDaemon. Larry, Curly, and Moe can then log into their individual MDaemon POP3 accounts on the local server and send/receive their email as usual – from the MDaemon web site. Rugged, compact and very portable. Designed for maximum battery capacity and longest battery life. AVOIDS THE WELL KNOWN MEMORY EFFECT. SAVES MONEY & TIME: Restore most Nicads with memory effect to capacity. Recover batteries with very low remaining voltage. CHARGES VERY FAST plus ELIMINATES THE NEED TO DISCHARGE: charge standard batteries in minimum 3 min., max. 1 to 4 hrs, depending on mA/h rating. Partially empty batteries are just topped up. Batteries always remain cool; this increases the total battery life and also the battery’s reliability. DESIGNED AND MADE IN AUSTRALIA For a FREE, detailed technical description please Ph (03) 6492 1368; Fax (03) 6492 1329; or email smartfastchargers<at>bigpond.com 2567 Wilmot Rd., Devonport, TAS 7310 November 1999  59 Fig.14: you just enter the user’s real name in the Account Editor and the other fields are automatically completed for you. You can then manually change the entries if you wish. Fig.15: the Account Alias Editor lets you nominate (or alias) an account as the postmaster. The postmaster receives “undeliverable” email and is notified of any problems. Fig.8 & Fig.9. Most users will want MDaem­on to automatically connect to their ISP. Note that the connection times can be chosen by the administrator and we look at this in the final step of the installation. At this point, the MDaemon engine automatically starts if you are running NT, while Windows 95/98 users have to reboot to achieve the same result. As soon as the engine starts a small envelope icon appears in the system tray. Our installation reported “missing or damaged” settings when it was first launched (see Fig.10). However, based on the author’s previous experience, this appears to be normal for a new installation, so just click OK. MDaem­on now presents three additional screens to allow inspection of the default settings. In the Domain Configuration dialog box, under the Message Delivery section, enter your ISP’s mail server address (see Fig.11). The installation 60  Silicon Chip wizard automatically completes the other settings, so you don’t have to worry about these. The next dialog box is the “New Account Defaults”, as shown in Fig.12. This lists a number of templates and MDaemon formats new user accounts according to the information entered here. Careful setup of the templates greatly speeds up the creation of new accounts later on, as MDaemon will do most of the work for you (as we shall see later)! We only needed to change two settings for our installation. The default Mailbox setting generates mailbox names from the first initial and last name of each user; ie, the Mailbox entry is $USERFIRSTINITIAL$$USERLASTNAME$. This means that if we later create a new user called Peter Smith, this would produce PSmith as the mailbox name and the email address would be PSmith<at>siliconchip.com.au. However, we wanted our addresses to use full names, with a dot as a separating character. To do this, we simply changed the Mailbox entry to: $USERFIRSTNAME$.$USERLASTNAME$ (note the full stop between the two dollar signs in the middle). Therefore, when we later create our email account, we get Peter.Smith<at>siliconchip.com.au Note that you should never use spaces in email addresses; use an underscore (_) or dot (.) character instead. The default POP password setting is defined so that it generates passwords from the first initial and last name of each user. For testing purposes, we changed this setting to use the string “pass” for all passwords. Note that POP passwords are case sensitive; user names are not. This dialog box is also accessible from the main MDaemon window (ie, the Message Router) via Accounts, New account defaults. The next dialog box shows the Miscellaneous Options settings. No changes are required here for a basic installation, so just click OK to close this window. Putting it work We now need to add at least one user, define who the “postmaster” will be and tell MDaemon when to connect to the Internet to send and receive email. You do this by first double-clicking the envelope icon in the System tray to open the main MDaemon window. This is called the Message Router window and is shown in Fig.13. Next, select Accounts, New Account from the menu bar to display the Account Editor (see Fig.14). When you enter a user’s real name, you will notice that MDaemon automatically completes the other fields according to the account templates we defined earlier. Generally, you will not need to alter items on other tabs in the Account Editor, so click on the OK button to create the account. Internet email systems also require a “postmaster”. This user receives notification of “exceptions” that occur within the system, such as undeliv­ erable email. Note that MDaemon does not require a separate account for the postmaster. Instead, you can “alias” this user to any other defined user. Select Accounts, Account Aliases from the menu bar to display the Account Alias Editor (see Fig.15). In the Alias field, enter “postmaster”, then from the Mailbox drop-down list, select the appropriate user and click on the Add button. Finally, you need to tell MDaemon when to connect to the Internet. Open the Send/Receive Scheduler window by selecting Setup, Send/ receive scheduler from the menu bar (see Fig.16). If you are using either options A or B in Table 1, select which days and times you wish email to be transferred. In our example, we have chosen to connect at 8am, 12pm and Fig.16: this is where you set up a schedule so that MDaemon automatically connects to your ISP to send and receive email (options A or B in Table 1 only). Glossary Of Common Terms Looking for an old valve? DNS: the Domain Name Service is an Internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses. Names are obviously easier to remember than long strings of digits and names can be cleverly chosen to represent the owner’s interests. or a new valve? Domain Name: a name that represents one or more IP addresses. Domain names form part of all resources, including email addresses, on the Internet. For example in the address http://www.mdaemon.com, the domain name is mdaemon.com. In email addresses, everything after the “<at>” symbol is the domain name. IP Address: a string of digits that identifies a computer or device on a TCP/IP network. The format of an IP address is a 32-bit numeric string written as four numbers separated by periods (full stops). Each number is in the range 0-255. For example, 203.2.191.122 could be an IP address. Regulatory bodies assign all IP addresses used on the Internet, primarily to avoid duplicates. ISP: Internet Service Provider. POP3: Post Office Protocol (version 3) is a protocol used by most recent email applications (also called email clients) to retrieve email from a server. Proxy Server: a server that acts as an intermediary between a client application, such as a Web browser, and the Internet. Proxy servers often provide security, administrative control and local caching of web pages. SMTP: the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a protocol for sending email messages between servers. It is also usually used to send messages between email clients and servers. Most email systems connected to the Internet use the SMTP protocol. TCP/IP: an Abbreviation for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, TCP/IP is the defacto standard for communication on the Internet. 6pm from Monday to Friday. In the same window, click on the RAS Setup button. If you are using option A in Table 1, you do not need to change any settings (see Fig.17). If you are using option B , leave the “Keep Sessions Alive For At Least” option selected and enter the number of minutes that your server needs to be connected each time it dials in. Your ISP will be able to tell you what the minimum time is but from our experience it is usually around 10 minutes. Finally, if you are using option C, select the “Once Established, MDaem­ on Will Not Close the RAS Session” option. By the way, you can force MDaemon to connect immediately and send/ receive email. You might want to do this for urgent email or for testing purposes, for example. To do this, either hit the F9 key or select Queues, Process local and remote queue and MDaemon will connect immediately. Well, that’s about it for a basic setup. If you’re running WinGate or BUYING - SELLING - TRADING Australasia's biggest selection Also valve audio & guitar amp. books SSAE DL size for CATALOGUE ELECTRONIC VALVE & TUBE COMPANY PO Box 381 Chadstone Centre VIC 3148 Tel: (03) 9571 1160 Fax: (03) 9505 6209 Mob: 0417 143167 email: evatco<at>mira.net Silicon Chip Binders REAL VALUE AT $12.95 PLUS P&P Fig.17: the entries in this dialog box depend on which option you are using from Table 1. They determine how a dial-up session terminates. other software that shares the Internet connection, additional changes can be made to optimise connection usage. Check out the MDaemon user’s manual or visit the web site at http:// www.mdaemon.janteknology.com. au for tips. SC  Heavy board covers with 2-tone green vinyl covering  Each binder holds up to 14 issues  SILICON CHIP logo printed on spine & cover Price: $A12.95 plus $A5 p&p each (Australia only) Just fill in & mail the handy order form in this issue; or fax (02) 9979 6503; or ring (02) 9979 5644 & quote your credit card number. November 1999  61