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IMAP over SSL - October 15th,2003
The IMAP servers support the use of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to encrypt communications between the IMAP client and server. Information on client configuration is available.
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Mail Gateway Attachment Filters - September 22nd,2003
Starting the week of September 15th, 2003 the mail gateway adminisitrators have observed long wait times for mail to be delivered. These delays were 1 - 2 hours for mail to make it from offsite
through the gateways. This was caused by the overhead of the AntiVirus scanning software as the amount of mail infected with W32/Gibe and W32/Swen coming onsite has been rather high.
In order to try and prevent these delays (and viruses from spreading onsite) a configuration change was made to block attachements with the following extensions from coming ino the FNAL site from offsite:
vbs pif com exe scr
In keeping with our policy of not deleting incoming mail the message will still get delivered. The body of the message will not change. The following will be added:
The original document has been removed from this message.
The document was removed because
Possible Malicious Email Content Detected
The message contained the following:
This is the same as the current gateway AntiVirus message but without the virus being named. We realize that this may cause a inconvience to some users but there are numerous ways to transfer files that are blocked. If you need any assistance in this please contact the FNAL Helpdesk (x2345 or http://www-csd.fnal.gov/helpdesk/cd/
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IMAP and Listserv Downtime Notice - July 18th,2003
On July 24th, 2003 there will be a short downtime for each of the three IMAP servers (IMAPServer1, IMAPServer2, and IMAPServer3) and Listserv to apply a security patch. Each machine will be be unavailable for 10 - 15 minutes sometime between 6:00 am and 7:00 am.
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IMAP Message Size Restriction - May 6th,2003
Due to Denial of Service problems with very large messages being sent to IMAP users a size restriction has been placed on messages sent to IMAP users. More information is available.
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Relay List going away - April 24th,2003
With the availability of Authenticated SMTP we have started the process of phasing out the relay exemption list for users who travel. The relay exemption list will be removed on May 15th, 2003. After that date the use of Authenticated SMTP will be required to relay mail through the Fermilab mail gateways. See http://computing.fnal.gov/email/smtp-server/tls.html for more details as well as client configuration information.
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IMAPServer2 and IMAPServer3 maintenance - April 24th,2003
Maintenance will be performed on IMAPServer2 and IMAPServer3 between 6:00am and 7:00am on Thursday, May 1st, 2003. This is to install a patch for the IMAP software. A reboot will be required. Please exit your email client before 6:00am on May 1st.
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LISTSERV maintenance - April 24th,2003
Maintenance will be performed on LISTSERV from 6:00am-8:00am on Thursday, May 1st, 2003. There will be a couple of reboots but for the majority of time lists will deliver as normal. Any mail that does get held on the gateways will be released manually when maintenance is complete.
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Authenticated SMTP - April 3rd,2003
Authenticated SMTP has been enabled on the Mail Gateways. This will allow any authenticated user to relay through the gateways as necessary. Please see http://computing.fnal.gov/email/smtp-server/tls.html for more details as well as client configuration information.
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Email System Status
Check here for the current operational status of our Email systems
and scheduled downtimes.
http://www-csd.fnal.gov/CDSystemStatus/system/E-MAIL.html
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New Email Virus
Monday, July 15th saw the dawn of a new email virus. The virus known as Frethem, like many other viruses, infects a computer and uses the computers email information to mail itself to other people in the
person's address book. The virus takes advantage of a hole in Internet Explorer 5 - 5.5. If a computer has the patch posted from Microsoft on March 29, 2001 applied to their system they are not vulnerable.
By the time the lab email gateways and imapservers had the new signatures applied, Some machines on site were infected. Presently antivirus on the labwide email systems works this way: ONLY incoming mail from offsite is scanned on smtp.fnal.gov before it is handed off to the system where a person reads their email. The POP and IMAP servers scan all email they receive for viruses before the message is put in a user's inbox.
It was decided to enable virus scanning on all email traffic through smtp.fnal.gov so we could identify infected systems. We knew this would slow the system down but it was the only true way to identify
infected systems. This actually worked quite well for a period of time yesterday, but then in early afternoon a couple of things happened to slow everything way down. Mail was posted to a couple of large lists on the LISTSERV box and a user mailed an extremely large message to many people on site. The anti-virus software reads in each message to memory and analyzes the message for viruses. The combination of this large message and lots of traffic on the gateway being scanned for viruses caused the anti-virus part of the gateway to basically take over the system causing other parts to shutdown which resulted in error messages that many of you saw. Before the system got to this point the email gateway was
reconfigured to only scan incoming email for viruses, but it was too late. The system already had loaded the large messages into memory and was busy processing them.
The postmaster shut the email system delivery system down, held many of the messages, made sure the email database was in sync, then restarted email processing. Once the system was back processing new email the
postmaster released the old email in small groups to make sure the system didn't slow down.
The email support group is working to prevent this from happening again.
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Email Help
If you have email issues please open up a request with the
Computing Division Helpdesk instead of sending email to
postmaster@fnal.gov. Use of the Computing Division helpdesk will
help the email support team to respond to user requests in a
timely manner.
The CD Helpdesk web
page is: http://www-csd.fnal.gov/HelpDesk/cd/
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Web Mail
The IMAPServers also support web
based access to the mail stored on the IMAPServers. This is
available at http://imapserverX.fnal.gov where X is the number
(1,2,3) of the IMAPServer that your mail is on. SSL encrypted web
mail is also available
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Problem with rcvtty program
(14 May 2002) : It has been noted that there is a problem with sending mail if you use
"rcvtty" in your .forward file on fsui02 and fsui03. The problem is that sender receives a "Returned Mail" with errors
pointing to rcvtty even though the recipient receives mail okay. We noticed this problem after the upgrade of these
machines to solaris2.8. The computing division is no longer supporting mh, exmh and rcvtty so no updates have been
made to the code in a long time. It is our recommendation that you remove the rcvtty line from your .forward file to
avoid confusion. If you have any questions or concerns, please forward your mail to fnalu-admin@fnal.gov
FNAL
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Users can check/modify their forwards and change
their passwords by looking at the webpage:
http://computing.fnal.gov/email/smtp-server/usr-options.html
Note: In the username box users must put their
USERNAME NOT their username@fnal.gov
Their INITIAL password corresponds to:
your
FNAL imap account password (if you have one)
For account help please contact the Fermilab
Postmaster at postmaster@fnal.gov
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IMAPserver Upgrades Complete 9/11/2001
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Benefits include improved IMAP performance such
as downloading and foldering of mail has been quite noticeable.
Large folders (~700), while still not recommended, seem to have
less of an impact on performance than with the current software.
Webmail is part of the new software and works
quite well for smaller accounts. Those with large folders and/or
a large number of folders may not like the performance.
Instructions for using webmail will be provided once the server
is operational.
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Email relaying disabled
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As of 4/29/1999 Mail
Relaying through the site mailserver has been disabled.
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Change your SMTP Host
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POP and IMAP users need to change the SMTP
server/host on their clients. Please use smtp.fnal.gov
instead of fnal.fnal.gov. For further instructions.
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![[Fermilab at Work]](http://www.fnal.gov/faw/fermilabatwork.gif)
