Re: POP server not downloading email -- MIDRANGE-L

There's no error message in Outlook Express, it appears to complete
normally. I will be trying Thunderbird tomorrow, but I'd hate to have to
roll out a new Mail Client to everyone unless absolutely necessary.

Try typing the POP protocol manually using a TELNET client. That way,you'll know for sure whether the problem is on the client or the server,since there won't be a client!

From Windows, Click Start->Run

In the box, type "telnet as400.example.com 110" (without the quotes) thiswill connect to the as400's POP server, since POP is on port 110. Youshould get a resonse like:


+OK POP3 server ready

then you can sign in by sending:

USER scott
+OK POP3 server ready
PASS mypassword
+OK start sending message
STAT
+OK 1026 49598636

That means that there are 1026 messages available for this user, and theytotal 49598636 bytes if you were to download them all.


You can then type the following to read the first 10 lines of a message:

TOP 1 10
+OK
<e-mail message data here>

That selects message #1, and reads the first 10 lines of it.

Or, you can type the following to see the entire message:

RETR 1
+OK
<e-mail message data here>

When you're done looking at the messages, use the RSET command to preventthe server from deleting them:


RSET
+OK witty text here.

And the QUIT command disconnects:

QUIT
+OK Bye bye

One caution, however: It isn't really intended for you to use TELNET as auser interface for e-mail. If you make any mistakes while typing, the POP3server won't understand the command. Even if you backspace and fix whatyou typed, it won't understand it. So, if you make a mistake, just tryagain :)

Another useful way of troubleshooting this sort of thing is to sniff thenetwork packets using a tool like Ethereal. Then you can see exactly whatoutlook is sending to the server, and what it's responding with.

Personally, I don't advocate using a POP server in this fashion. If youwant to save a copy of every e-mail to make sure people are behaving, thenhave an intermediate SMTP server that receives the mail messages, archivesthem, and forwards them on to the iSeries.

That's a much more reliable way of tracking the mail. With your solution,any user can change his settings and delete a message he doesn't want youto see. Or, if you lock down Outlook somehow, he could do it throughTELNET just like I showed you. It would be easy to cover his tracks thisway.

He can't do that with an intermediate SMTP server because he doesn't evenreceive the message until after the data has been saved to disk.

Furthermore, I don't think POP3 is a good way of saving messages on theserver. It's not what it was designed for. POP is designed fordownloading messages from the server to the PC, not for leaving themonline.

For leaving them online, you really want to use IMAP. That's what it'sdesigned for. Granted, IBM (in their infinite wisdom) didn't bother toprovide an IMAP server for the iSeries, but I believe there are 3rd partyIMAP servers available.

Though, frankly OS/400 is NOT a good platform for e-mail. They did not doa good job with the e-mail tools on the iSeries. I'd be much moreinclined to run e-mail on a FreeBSD/Linux box. It's free, robust, and farmore widely used. Has tons more features, etc.

That's unfortunate, because I'm an OS/400 advocate, but unfortunately it'sthe truth.