Setting up Mercury/32 as your local SMTP server6 X/ P: H* N- R& H/ A! Q& l
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More and more users manage their e-mail using multiple POP accounts and multiple ISP accounts. At the same time, spamming is also a serious problem and security measures are in place to make it not so easy for spammers to do the evil that they do. One of these measures, is to prevent relaying of e-mail through ISP SMTP servers for which you don't have an account. Ways to prevent unauthorized relaying include the checking of your message From header information for a valid address for the ISP's domain. Another is through the implementation of POP before SMTP. The long and short of it is that it becomes impossible or miserable for many dialup users to manage mail using a single ISP SMTP server. One way of getting yourself out of this misery and inconvenience is to run your own SMTP server.
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" R3 ?/ v+ U- I Z- P3 MLet's go through the modules that are needed in order to set up Mercury/32 for SMTP services:
9 _. I7 o4 q$ d0 p. Z# Mercury Core Module - This module is needed for Mercury to work, so this must be installed.! A3 I; F- N/ a8 d6 I4 c
# MercuryS (The Mercury SMTP Server Module) - This module is what listens for incoming SMTP connections and accepts incoming mail either locally (in this case your e-mail client) or remotely from another machine and then places the mail in the Mercury Spooler for processing. Proper configuration of this module is critical for your e-mail client to interact and successfully transfer mail to the Mercury Spooler.
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' x9 R' ^. x2 B$ U# Z2 QYou now have to choose between running one of the two following modules, depending on your needs. You cannot run both of them at the same time.: {/ Z3 q& }0 M1 B' E. n/ _
# MercuryE (Full SMTP delivery client) - This module is what will deliver your mail directly to the remote SMTP server. MercuryE completely bypasses your ISP's SMTP server and carries out a direct delivery of e-mail. All you need to do is provide it with a valid nameserver to carry out the DNS lookups for the domain names for each recipient address and it will do the rest.% B8 U! y" d/ q( ?
# MercuryC (SMTP Relay Client) - This module will relay your e-mail to an SMTP server that you designate as a SmartHost. This can be one of your ISP SMTP servers. This module is useful if you're using a dialup connection and are concerned about the time being spent doing direct mail deliveries with MercuryE, when mail could be delivered more quickly to your local ISP's SMTP server.- G' w2 J1 R; J6 ~( `
" Q0 v7 ?9 X6 b: ^/ v' LWhile installing Mercury/32, you'll be asked which modules you wish to use. You can now select the ones you need to use." @% _9 P1 m5 r/ E
5 u+ L5 |* q9 N4 ^- {Let's now go into the actual configuration of the modules. I'll only mention those critical options that must be properly configured to get yourself up and running. You may then, at your leisure, read the documentation for information on the other options:
: H: s/ S, v2 a8 ?. h" B" l% MThe Mercury Core Module
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These configuration options may largely be left unchanged if your interest is only in SMTP services. @$ p8 h7 k U; Y1 v
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Under the 'General' tab in the mercury core module configuration pane, there are two important settings. The internet name for your system should be a qualified domain name. If you have your own domain, you can enter it here. If not, then use the domain name for your favourite ISP, for eg., aol.com. The other important setting is the postmaster username. You should set this to 'admin'. (see capture below) Error messages and notifications need to be sent to an account and the Mercury admin account is automatically created for this.
% Q- J: Y( x* t2 q. aMercury Core Module Configuration
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You can setup your e-mail client to intermittently download mail from this account so that you can get these error messages. To do this make make your POP server 'localhost', the username admin and the password blank.+ ]9 M2 i) G: b1 K! g. d
The MercuryS Module
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8 z; Z3 W) D& e# r3 W" N2 t7 lUnder the General tab, use the same domain name as you used for your internet name in the mercury core module as the name to announce yourself as. Also, enable the option 'accept mail for invalid local addresses' as shown in the capture. This will make MercuryS accept mail from any e-mail address you may wish to use.
& x/ L4 ~4 P* } M, i( sMercuryS Configuration" K; `& O: M J7 V/ A4 S
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- W p, H- f" J h# ]4 S! ]Now go to the 'Relay/Connection Control' tab. Here, you need to include your machine as one that is allowed relay privileges. If Mercury/32 is installed on your machine, you give Mercury your local IP address, i.e., 127.0.0.1 . So hit the 'add restriction' button and enter the IP as shown in the capture. Enable 'allow connections from this address group' and hit OK.
3 X1 }0 `7 n& L) H! y- D- n: M. NRelay Configuration
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1 k) v8 A( _( |, GAlso enable the option 'Do not permit SMTP relaying of non-local mail'.
6 C- a& Q) p+ v- iThe MercuryE Module1 s- ^1 a5 |' |. I
. f' V6 W, d MThis module will directly deliver mail for you, so it needs to be given the IP addresses of nameservers to use for resolving the domain names of e-mail addresses. If the machine that you've installed Mercury/32 on is on a network and doesn't get a direct connection to the internet, you have to include your ISP nameservers as I've done in the capture. Otherwise, you could just leave it blank and the nameservers defined in the network control panel will be used instead. You can also specify how often the module should check for mail to be sent, as well as the server timeout.% H2 D c& \( a# I
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If you need to include your ISP nameservers and you don't know the IP address/es, then you can find this out by either looking at your TCP/IP's DNS configuration (this is in your network configuration panel) and taking the IP's from there, by running a Whois search on your ISP's domain, or for NT users, running the command 'IPConfig /all' and taking the DNS information from there. As a last alternative just call your ISP and ask. :-)
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The MercuryC Module
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This module will send your mail via a SmartHost, so the configuration here will involve filling in the information on the remote SMTP server you wish to use as the host. As you can see from the capture below, the options are straight forward.
7 I. Z& J, I9 tCore Configuration
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Mercury/32 should now be ready for SMTP services. The only thing left to do would be to configure your e-mail client to use Mercury/32 for SMTP services. To do this simply put 'localhost' or '127.0.0.1' as the SMTP server. |