Re: POP server not downloading email

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 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) this 
will connect to the as400's POP server, since POP is on port 110.  You 
should 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 they 
total 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 prevent 
the 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 a 
user interface for e-mail. If you make any mistakes while typing, the POP3 
server won't understand the command.  Even if you backspace and fix what 
you typed, it won't understand it.  So, if you make a mistake, just try 
again :)

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

Personally, I don't advocate using a POP server in this fashion. If you 
want to save a copy of every e-mail to make sure people are behaving, then 
have an intermediate SMTP server that receives the mail messages, archives 
them, 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 you 
to see.  Or, if you lock down Outlook somehow, he could do it through 
TELNET just like I showed you.  It would be easy to cover his tracks this 
way.

He can't do that with an intermediate SMTP server because he doesn't even 
receive 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 the 
server.  It's not what it was designed for. POP is designed for 
downloading messages from the server to the PC, not for leaving them 
online.

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

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

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