Re: AS/400 as a mailserver

[PaulMmn <PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Hi all!
>Using the AS/400 as a mailserver looks like an excellent idea, but it does
>raise some questions.
>The set-up is really easy, and it seems to work like a charm, but how
>reliable is it?
>Does anyone out there use the AS/400 mailserver capabilities SMTP and POP3
>in production?
>Anyone using the AS/400 as their central mailserver?
>
>When problem occur, I don't seem to know how to penetrate the internal
>structure.
>Anybody know good reading?
>How about the function of the POP and SMTP jobs in QSYSWRK?
>What about the QMSF job? And how do I manage anything on the SMTP out-que?
>Comments please!
>/Ulf Rothoff


We've been using the AS/400 as our Internet Mail Interface for about a year
now.  We're on release 3.1.0, so we're currently limited to text only.

Generally, it works OK, but there is a bug... for some reason (suspicion
points to DNS, but no smoking gun), some times outgoing mail to The
Internet gets 'stuck.'  It does go out (albeit -very- slowly; ie delayed)
eventually, but at times we had a backlog of over 100 outgoing messages.

[We finally removed the clog by using the 'warm start' for SMTP, which
throws away the first piece of outgoing mail to (hopefully) remove the
message clogging things up.  (IBM says there's no reason a single piece of
mail should be clogging things in this manner.)  Once we had the backlog
down to zero, I did a cold start on both SMTP and MSF.  Since then, the
clog hasn't been back to bother us, but I watch it closely.  You can see
the backlog by looking at the joblog for job QPSMTPSRVR in subsystem
QSYSWRK.  There's a message that counts the number of incoming and outgoing
messages in the SMTP files.]

One problem with SMTP on release v3.1.0 is that there is no way to see what
SMTP has pending.  Once the message moves into SMTP (in our case from
Office/400 and the AS/400's WRKDSTQs), there is no way to see the message,
its status, etc.

IMHO, there is a need to see:
        - what mail is inside the SMTP system
        - Who it's from
        - Who it's to
        - Its status (pending/rejected/held/etc)

This is similar to the current commands available to review the DSTQs and
see the same information.

--Paul E Musselman
PaulMmn@ix.netcom.com


+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to "MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com".
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MAJORDOMO@midrange.com
|    and specify 'unsubscribe MIDRANGE-L' in the body of your message.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---