Informed Email

Exchange 2007 Outlook Web App Doesn't Work on Droid X

2011-08-13T15:31:07Z

While I’m not surprised that the Exchange 2007 Outlook Web App doesn’t work on my Droid X, I’m still disappointed.

The Outlook Web App is actually not that bad, and while I initially really liked the Droid X, its actually decreased in reliability, and over time, I’ve discovered I have many complaints about it, such as the poor keyboard performance and the not-so-intelligent type ahead.

There are a couple things I like about the Exchange 2007 Outlook Web App, such as the calendar. In general though, I can’t accept that Microsoft doesn’t support any other mail clients besides Outlook. That is totally anti-competitive, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Department of Justice took their butt back to court!

UPDATE: I was wrong! Exchange 2007 Outlook Web App does work with the Droid X browser. One of my co-workers also has a Droid X and said it worked for him, so I gave it a second try and voila! Indeed, the Outlook Web App (OWA) in Exchange 2007 does work with the WebKit-powered Droid X browser. The screen is tight, but its definitely usable and useful.

Viewpoint Gem for Accessing Exchange

2011-08-07T14:29:18Z

https://rubygems.org/gems/viewpoint

At work we’ve upgraded from Microsoft Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2008 and as such we have to stop using the POP3 gem and instead use the Viewpoint gem.

So far, for checking and downloading emails and attachments, its working fine.

One of my co-workers has the bright idea to convert the Exchange format emails to regular mail, so that we could continue to use the standard TMail gem for parsing and data processing.

I would have preferred to use DavMail to continue to use POP3 or an IMAP client, but Viewpoint seems fine for now.

DavMail for Exchange

2011-04-23T14:30:12Z

I recently switched from Mac OS X to Debian at work, and one of the hurdles was accessing the Microsoft Exchange server.

I tried Empathy because it reportedly has support for Microsoft Exchange, but was stymied by the fact our server is running Microsoft Exchange 2007. Empathy supports 2003 out of the box, and there is a plug-in to support 2007, but only under certain circumstances; all I could get was an MAPI authentication error.

Thankfully, there is DavMail! Its a small java-based proxy that can connect any type of mail client that supports IMAP or POP to an Exchange server.

But Wait! There is MORE! iCal and LDAP are supported, too!

Yes, its true. Its quite nice that it can support basic e-mail (I’m using Thunderbird, actually Iceweasel since I’m on Debian), but with the Thunderbird Lightning extension, it also supports shared calendering!

On top of this, addressing of emails can be supported by LDAP, meaning auto-complete of emails known to ActiveDirectory, that is actually quite nice.

Zimbra Looks Quite Nice

2011-03-26T02:26:17Z

Zimbra versus Microsoft Exchange

I’m glad to have recently checked out Zimbra, an enterprise level email hosting and serving solution that competes with Microsoft Exchange. Frankly it looks a heck of a lot better than Microsoft Exchange on the cost factor, as well as the fact that it leverages, interacts, and can be integrated with open source email projects. For example, Zimbra uses Postfix (I LOVE Postfix), and it can use MySQL, Postgres, or OpenLDAP, among others.

I wish I had been exposed to Zimbra prior to migrating one of my customers to Google Apps for Business with GMail and the supposed support for Outlook. That was a total disappointment.

While I’ve only seen a demo of Zimbra so far, like the title says: Zimbra Looks Quite Nice.

Who Makes Zimbra

Zimbra is brought to us by the same folks who bring us vSphere: VMWware. Surprising, huh? I think so, anyway.

Using Postfix Transport Maps for Email Address Specific Aliasing

2011-02-01T03:51:52Z

Postfix has terrific e-mail gateway capabilities, and yesterday I discovered a configuration option to select a mail transport based upon email address, rather than domain.

This is very desireable for me as it allows me to use my backup mail transfer servers to alias addresses within the domains they provide backup mx services for. This means if I want to alias an address to another off-network domain and the primary server is down, the backup mx agent can take can of it right there and then.

Now, onto the configuration specifics! Note: I use the postfix-cdb package for fast key-value pair hashing, and I also use relay_recipient_maps to specify the list of acceptable recipients on the gateway to prevent backscatter spam.

Postfix Transport Map Configuration for a Gateway Relay to Address Aliases Locally for Relayed Domains

Postfix main.cf: transport_maps

The key configuration option is transport_maps:

transport_maps = cdb:/etc/postfix/maps/transport

/etc/postfix/maps/transport

Example transport mapping:

support@example.com local:
example.com relay:[192.168.1.200]

In this example, support@example.com is treated as a local address, and Postfix will check the alias_maps configuration option, while the rest of the acceptable addresses for example.com will be relayed to 192.168.1.200.

At first I found it odd that Postfix did not require example.com to be specified in the mydestination directive, but just now I have concluded that transport_maps has the same effect, and it makes perfect sense to me.

For local aliasing, my configuration of Postfix is set in this way:

alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases
alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases

Example /etc/aliases

support:    external.email@gmail.com

I haven’t rolled this solution out to my backup MX servers, though I plan to do so once I test this solution out some more.

SMTP Servers: Reverse DNS + Server Name Announcement

2011-01-29T04:02:49Z

Thanks to our special friend SPAM, SMTP servers have special requirements. If you are setting up an STMP server, such as Exim, Postfix, or qmail, make sure to have these factors setup correctly:

Static IP
SMTP server host name DNS entry
Reverse DNS entry, aka PTR record, for the static IP
Matching server name announcement from the SMTP server itself - note bene - the server name announcement must match the reverse DNS entry

Here’s the actual steps to confirm the DNS and server name components using “dig” and telnet. I perform these steps on a semi-regular schedule for my primary SMTP server, vpn-glass.savonix.com.

Static IP for SMTP Domain Record

dig vpn-glass.savonix.com @4.2.2.1

; <<>> DiG 9.7.1-P2 <<>> vpn-glass.savonix.com @4.2.2.1
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 30
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;vpn-glass.savonix.com.     IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
vpn-glass.savonix.com.  28800   IN  A   71.184.118.13

;; Query time: 138 msec
;; SERVER: 4.2.2.1#53(4.2.2.1)
;; WHEN: Fri Jan 28 23:05:52 2011
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 55

Reverse DNS Lookup


dig -x 71.184.118.13

; <<>> DiG 9.7.1-P2 <<>> -x 71.184.118.13
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 43033
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;13.118.184.71.in-addr.arpa.    IN  PTR

;; ANSWER SECTION:
13.118.184.71.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN    PTR vpn-glass.savonix.com.

SMTP Server Name Announcement

telnet 71.184.118.13 587
Trying 71.184.118.13...
Connected to 71.184.118.13.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 vpn-glass.savonix.com ESMTP Postfix (Debian/GNU)

Yay! Postfix knows its own name, and DNS publishes the correct name for both the hostname and the IP address!!

Evolution

2011-01-02T00:47:33Z

Evolution is the default email client used in Ubuntu. Its not a bad client, but I’m surprised it was chosen over Thunderbird 3.0.

I believe the decision was based on the fact that Evolution supports GPG. If I understand correctly, Thunderbird only supports GPG via a plugin, which is no longer maintained - enigmail.

Evolution is close to being as good as Thunderbird, in my opinion. If it supported custom “Sent” folders, that would be a step in the right direction!

Sending Mail on an Alternate Port

SMTP uses port 25 by default, but many ISPs block port 25 in a lame attempt to limit spam. Therefore, many email users must use an alternate port, like port 587.

Auto-Generate Passlists

2010-12-30T02:36:25Z

In the past, I have used this shell script to generate a passlist of trusted emails gathered from a user’s “sent” Maildir.

#!/bin/sh

SADIR=/home/example.com/home/user/.spamassassin
SENTMAIL="/home/example.com/home/user/.maildir/.Sent Messages/cur/"

touch $SADIR/sent_whitelist
rm -f $SADIR/sent_whitelist
#ls "$SENTMAIL"

for x in `grep -r "^To:" "$SENTMAIL" |
        grep -o "[[:alnum:]\.\+\-\_]*@[[:alnum:]\.\-]*" |
        tr "A-Z" "a-z" |
        sort -u` ;

        do echo "whitelist_from $x" >> $SADIR/sent_whitelist
done

cat $SADIR/user_prefs.base $SADIR/sent_whitelist > $SADIR/user_prefs

Why did I do this? To save cycles by avoiding the overhead of spamassassin for trusted senders.

Not a bad idea, eh?

Additional Information Regarding Google Apps for Business

2010-12-28T12:08:05Z

I’m writing this post as a quick follow-up to my recent review of Google Apps for Business, adding an additional, external, link and a note-to-self to read it in more detail.

After providing significant support for Google Apps for Business, I have to say I’m very disappointed about an apparent incompatibility with Outlook 2007 and Gmail’s delete functionality. In a nutshell - there is no trash folder, and that is unacceptable to some of my customers.

While the nominal fee and the reliability of the service is fantastic, it may be that a standard IMAP service, something like Dovecot, on a rock-solid network would work better for some of my clients’ uses, even if it is more expensive.

Anyway, the additional link I referred to is by Mez:

Why Google Apps might not be right for your Enterprise

Default Mail Account in Outlook

2010-12-14T02:00:35Z

I’m doing some research into why one of my clients is unable to change their default mail account in Microsoft Outlook.

So far I’ve only been able to dig up that it might be an issue caused by “Business Contact Manager” (BCM).

To find a resolution to this issue, I’ve asked my client to confirm the error message before I continue my digging.

Review of Google "Apps for Business", aka GMail IMAP

2010-12-05T04:05:20Z

I recently migrated one of my clients to the “Google Apps for Business” service, specifically the GMail IMAP service. Here is a quick review.

While I trust the service is reliable, I have to say I’m disappointed with the functionality and the performance.

First of all, the “All Mail” folder is simply not relevant to IMAP subscribers. Certainly the GMail “labels” feature beyond the simple folder functionality is not relevant either, but the “All Mail” folder just isn’t right and causes major performance problems. Why is it even published to the IMAP protocol? Google even advises users to configure their client to exclude it.

Second of all, the GMail delete function does not work as an IMAP server should. AFAIK, the only way to get the IMAP server to behave as it should is to manually drag the email to the trash folder.

Lastly, and this has to do with Microsoft’s support for IMAP, the combination of Google’s IMAP service and Outlook is not acceptable. It seems like every open source IMAP client I have used can easily handle massive amounts of email over IMAP, but not Outlook, and the first issue I raised - the “All Mail” folder, causes it to utterly disappoint. My experience has led me to believe that volunteers are able to make higher performance software than Microsoft. What do you think of that?

As a solution, I’m planning on modifying my client’s Outlook IMAP settings to change the way Outlook synchronizes with the server, including which folders to check for new messages, and which folders to subscribe to.

If that does not alleviate the situation, I’m not sure what else to do. Any ideas?

Your IMAP Server Wants to Alert You to The Following

2010-11-21T03:15:39Z

I was finally able to finalize the migration of one of my clients to Google’s “Apps for Businesses” last night!

When discussing the particulars, it came to light that one of the user accounts kept getting an error message from Microsoft Outlook:

“Your IMAP server wants to alert you to the following: Web Login Required:”

Huh? Why would an IMAP server tell an Outlook server that they needed a web login?

I still don’t know the cause, but based upon the “answer” provided by Google, I suggested the user solve a CAPTCHA provided by Google. That solution didn’t make really make sense to me, and it didn’t resolve the problem.

After that failed, I suggested the user reset their password, which was also provided as part of Google’s answer to this issue.

Can't Recreate a Google Apps for Business Email Account For Five Days??!??

2010-11-12T02:12:30Z

I am working on migrating a client’s email services to Google’s Apps for Business Service.

We planned to change the MX record tonight, but then we discovered that previous synchronizations with Google’s IMAP sync tool had not been real “synchronizations”, merely copies, making one of the target IMAP accounts a total mess.

To fix, I deleted the messed up target account to recreate it as an empty one, only to discover that doing so was not allowed and would not be possible until five days later.

ARGHHH!!

I think I’ll try a real IMAP sync tool like imapsync.

RoundCube Rocks

2010-11-06T22:56:02Z

RoundCube is a webmail client (IMAP) written in PHP. Its very slick in that it leverages modern javascript and CSS capabilities to serve as a near desktop email application.

I prefer webmail to desktop mail, but I’ve traditionally used SquirrelMail. While I’d dabbled with RoundCube here and there in the past, I’m now using it regularly and so I can easily say:

“RoundCube Rocks!”

Like most IMAP email clients, it can manage folders with ease. However, unlike some webmail clients, it has the ability to connect with a relational database (SQLite, MySQL, etc) to store contacts and signature information. It can also connect with LDAP servers for this!!

I’m eager to try out RoundCube plugins, particularly the managesieve plugins so that I can automatically organize my emails.

Have you tried RoundCube? What do you think?

Perfect Reason for a Sinatra Application: NGINX Mail Proxy Authentication

2010-10-06T03:23:17Z

I am a big fan of Sinatra, the adept development framework for building small and tight web applications.

So recently when I was setting up Dovecot with LDAP authentication on an OpenVZ virtual server, I gave the NGINX IMAP proxy a try.

While I got it working, I found the authentication module a bit clunky at first. It passes credentials from the user to an authentication system using HTTP, expecting HTTP headers back about whether the users’ credentials were legitimate and where to proxy their connection.

After I tried out an example PHP authentication mechanism, it made more sense. NGINX is a web server, too! Its super simple, and I wouldn’t mind seeing more authentication mechanisms like this. Here’s how it works (examples are from the NGINX wiki):

Request:

GET /auth HTTP/1.0
Host: auth.server.hostname
Auth-Method: plain
Auth-User: user
Auth-Pass: password
Auth-Protocol: imap
Auth-Login-Attempt: 1
Client-IP: 192.168.1.1

Response:

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Auth-Status: OK
Auth-Server: 192.168.1.10
Auth-Port: 143
Auth-User: newname
Auth-Pass: newpassword

Seeing how much I dig Sinatra, how about a Sinatra application that proxies this simple HTTP authentication mechanism to a SASL mechanism?

The NGINX mail authentication mechanism is actually more sophisticated than the basic HTTP authentication module because it supports CRAM-MD5 which some e-mail clients support.

If only NGINX supported authorization via digest authentication like this using an HTTP request to handle the actual authentication - that would be so cool!! It might even compete with the fact that Apache can use digest authentication via a MySQL/Postgres/SQLite backend!