Re: Undelivered internet email notification with AS/400 SMTP

Hello Diana, 

This topic has been a pet peeve of mine for the past several years. 

If you're using the AS/400 SMTP mail server there is NO good way to get 
notifications or visibility to the outbound email messages that are sent. 

Most 3rd party iSeries email tools use the mail server framework and thus 
fall into the disappearing email trap if any of the emails fail because 
the MSF and AS/400 SMTP server gobble them up never to be seen or heard 
from again :-)

This has been a limitation of the AS/400 SMTP server for several years and 
IBM has never remedied the problem. I once asked where the outbound emails 
go and all I received was an "I'm  not sure" response from the IBM tech 
staff I was working with.  In my opinion the MSF/SMTP server on the AS/400 
needs an overhaul, replacement or removal from the OS because it is 
severely deficient. 

Suggestions:

1.) Add a mail server such as Stalker400 or Domino to your AS/400. These 
are both very good SMTP server products that provide visibility to what's 
going on. 

2.) Configure your mail server to relay off the Exchange Server. (This 
still doesn't remedy the invisible outbound email issue if there are 
problems.)

3.) Look at  3rd party products that can send natively to your MS Exchange 
server so you have visibility to the emails. (FYI: We have a product 
called SMTP/400 that does this. There are probably others as well.) 

4.) I recently saw a Freeware Javamail utility that sends via native SMTP 
as well. 

Hope this helps. 

Regards,
Richard Schoen
RJS Software Systems Inc. 
"Your Complete iSeries and PC Solution Provider"
Email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web Site: http://www.rjssoftware.com
Tel: (952) 898-3038
Fax: (952) 898-1781
Toll Free: (888) RJSSOFT
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message: 8
date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 09:55:42 -0400
from: "Diana Hicks" <DianaH@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Undelivered internet email notification with AS/400 SMTP

We have successfully setup our AS/400 SMTP using the Configuring OS/400 
SMTP IBM technical document (21111802).  We will only be using the AS/400 
to send emails from a third party AS/400 application.  We will continue to 
send and receive all other emails from the Exchange server.  We set up 
SMTP using the filtering firewall scenario in the document because our 
network staff did not want to allow relaying through the Exchange server 
(also one less point of failure).  Our SNDDST test emails are working 
correctly to our test internet addresses (outside of our organization).

The only question we have is how can we determine if an email is not 
delivered?  I have sent emails to an invalid email address and the entries 
in the dspdstlog are identical to the entries of delivered email.  Once 
the AS/400 application is live, it would be nice to know if we have an 
invalid email address and the email wasn't devlivered. 

Thanks for any suggestions or assistance.


Diana Hicks
Town of Jupiter
 
IBM Certified Specialist-AS/400 RPG IV Programmer
IBM Certified Specialist-AS/400 System Administrator