Re: Email direct from IBM i without relay (was: New lower cost IBM i announced)

Prompt CHGSMTPA. Let me know the values for mail router, firewall and
forwarding hub domain. That will clear the air.

MAILROUTER: *NONE
FIREWALL: *NO
FWDHUBSVR: *NONE

Exactly what I thought. You're delivering mail directly from your IBM i
without a mail router. So either you don't have a mail router to use for
your organization and have your IBM i set up as the mail server (which
means that it should also be able to be used as a mail router/relay) or
it's just plain wrong and you're getting lucky sending emails and not
getting hit by the reverse DNS issues.

Maybe let us know what
you're using to send email as well (ie, SNDDST, etc)

We're using net.data and MMAIL.

MMAIL uses the QtmmSendMail API. Net.Data I haven't used for years but I'm
sure it's a similar process using IBM SMTP/MSF.

No, because your mail router delivers it! That's for your mail router to
deal with. All we care as the sender is that we're using the proper mail
router to pass the email off to.

I'm not sure what you mean by "delivers it". Aren't we talking about IBM i
sending it? What do you make of the MAILROUTER *NONE setting?

The connection between the client (your PC, an IBM i or your phone) needs

to connect to the proper mail router to deliver mail in most cases.

I'm not sure of your point about PCs or phones, except you appear to saying
that the IBM i email function is the same. I don't see it that way. Let's
continue...

So you don't think of your IBM i as a client like a PC, phone, tablet, etc
when sending mail. THAT is the major disconnect we're having. You're
probably thinking of the i as a "server". It's much more than that.

What

do you use for your PC email?

I don't have a PC email client. I use web interfaces for gmail and yahoo,
personally. I do have email clients on iPad and Android devices. But again,
what is their relevance to a discussion about sending from IBM i?

Great, so do I. But if you did use a PC client for your gmail address you
would have to enter the settings for gmail, correct? Same if you used your
ISPs email service, or anything else. You wouldn't leave those settings
blank, would you? Well, that's what you're doing on your IBM i.

What ISP? What are the SMTP, POP, and IMAP

settings? You've set that up before, right?

In regard to an ISP, IBM i doesn't need one in order to send mail. In
regard to SMTP, POP, and IMAP, are you asking about IBM i setup or PC
setup? I have some experience with both.

See above. Same disconnect/confusion.

Why shouldn't we be able to send from a Gmail account, Nathan? Or any
account or domain?

I'll assume you mean sending mail from IBM i applications, using a gmail
address. Frankly, I've never considered that. We always send from email
addresses with domain names that map back to our IBM i server (MX records).
If I want to send from gmail, I login to gmail, which obviously doesn't run
on IBM i.You're making me think.

And here we see the difference. You must have set up your i as your mail
server instead of using a 3rd party service like most do. That was
mentioned a few threads back as something that you can do, but in most
cases isn't done. Most shops use a dedicated mail router. That can be in
house or in the cloud.

BTW, gmail.com is a domain. People (including myself) use Gmail as the
email service for their organization, just as you can with Office 365,
Godaddy, Yahoo!, etc. These are Gmail accounts but of course use your own
domain instead of gmail.com. Look up the MX records for bvstools.com.

And you CAN send email from gmail accounts, yahoo, etc from your IBM i if
done correctly. Sending from Gmail will even show up in your SENT folder.
Office 365 doesn't do that on their SMTP server (which stinks) but they do
when using their web service API.

You should be able to use the IBM i to send from ANY email address. All

we

need to do is make sure that when we do we are using the proper mail

router

for that account. A company can have more than one domain and for each
domain one of many sending addresses.

In regard to sending email from ANY email address, are you saying that you
hold the credentials for the accounts?

I don't have to. Whoever is sending the email does.

See, with MAILTOOL and it's addons there are two ways to send mail with a
server that requires "credentials".

1. The old fashioned way... just type the credentials in on the MAILTOOL
command when you're sending the email. Of course you're also specifying
the mail router, port, etc. With MAILTOOL this can be done on the command
itself, using the ILE APIs, or in configuration files stored in the IFS.
Same thing on a PC when you set up an email account with a PC client. Or
even signing into your GMail account using the web interface.

Examples:
http://www.fieldexit.com/forum/display?threadid=63
http://www.fieldexit.com/forum/display?threadid=349
http://docs.bvstools.com/home/mailtool/docs/chapter-3
http://docs.bvstools.com/home/mailtool/docs/chapter-1

2. Using OAuth 2.0. Yes, on the IBM i! This means for each account that
you want to send email from you go through a quick setup just like you do
when you online. We've all seen the "sign on with your Google/FaceBook/etc
account". That's some form of OAuth.

Here's a video showing how that works using Office 365:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvs1Qdgx0FY

Articles:
http://fieldexit.com/forum/display?threadid=148
http://www.fieldexit.com/forum/display?threadid=349

The only thing missing in the video is when I click on the account I want
to use, it doesn't prompt for my user id and password because I'm already
signed on. Once that's done my application take care of all the nasty
OAuth 2.0 stuff automatically in the background. That means zero
credentials need to be stored except for the OAuth tokens for each account.

Only when the user changes their password do they need to go through this
setup again.

I can send from Yahoo, Gmail, BVSTools.com, Maplestonemn.com, Outlook,
Office all from my IBM i.

Again, are you saying you hold the credentials for those accounts on your
IBM i server?

See above.

Some of my customers send from many different accounts at a domain.

Others

send form many domains. Some only send from one address and one domain.
And some actually use a gmail.com address.

For clarity sake, I hope you answer my previous questions. It sounds like a
spammers dream to be able to send mail from any account at any domain.

I never said you could. You do need credentials as you say. If you didn't
(for example, for a gmail account) you're right, that would be ludicrous.

That's why a system wide setting for things like mail router,

authentication user and pw, etc don't always work.

We can pick that up later...

Nah, I think I've explained this enough. Feel free to download and try it
out for yourself. Peruse the video and articles I posted. It may be eye
opening. :) Think of it as a learning experience.

With regards,

Nathan.
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