Archive for July 13th, 2012

Fixing QMAIL mail server SMTP auto-configure issues in Thunderbird and other mail IMAP / POP3 mobile clients

Friday, July 13th, 2012

One of the QMAIL mail servers, setup-uped on a Debian host has been creating some auto configuration issues. Every-time a new mail user tries to use the embedded Thunderbird client auto configuration, the auto config fails leaving the client unable to use his Mailbox through POP3 or IMAP protocols.

Since about 2 years Thunderbird and many other modern pop3 and imap mail desktop and mobile clients are by default using the auto configuration and hence it was unthinkable to manually change settings for new clients with the QMAIl install; Besides that most of the Office users are always confused, whether they have to manually change SMTP or POP3 host for a server.

Below is a screenshot displaying the warning during email auto-configuration:

Thunderbird new Mail account setup auto config warning SMTP not OKThe orange color in the button for the newly auto-detected smtp.mail-domain.com indicates, something is not right with the SMTP host.

Obviously, something was wrong with smtp.mail-domain.com, hence I checked where smtp.mail.domain.com resolves with host command. What I found was actually smtp.mail-domain.com Active ( A ) DNS records was pointing to an IP address, our company previously used for the mail server. At present time the correct mail server host name is mx.mail-domain.com and the QMAIL installation on mx.soccerfame.com is configured to be the actual SMTP server.

By default Thunderbird and many other POP3, IMAP mail clients, however automatically assume the default SMTP host for a mail server is to be configured under a host name smtp.mail-domain.com. This is really strange, especially when the primary MX record for mail-domain.com domain is pointing to mx.mail-domain.com, e.g.:

qmail:~# host -t MX mail-domain.com
soccerfame.com mail is handled by 10 mx.mail-domain.com.
soccerfame.com mail is handled by 20 mail.mail-domain.com.
soccerfame.com mail is handled by 30 mail-domain.com.

The whole warning was caused due to the fact mx.mail-domain.com was resolving to an IP like xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, whether smtp.mail-domain.com was resolving to yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy

Both xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy hosts were configured to have a different qmail SMTP host i.e.:

The server under IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx – (mx.mail-domain.com) was configured in /var/qmail/control/me to be mx.mail-domain.com and the other old one yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy – (mail.mail-domain.com) had (mail.mail-domain.com) in /var/qmail/control/me

As smtp.mail-domain.com was actually being still resolved to mail.mail-domain.com, the EMAILs were improperly trying to be sent with a configured DNS hostname of smtp.mail-domain.com, where the actual one on the server was mail.mail-domain

It took, me about an hour of pondering what is causing the oddities until I got the here explained issue. As the DNS recors for the domain the sample mail-domain.com were handled by Godaddy, to fix the mess, I logged in to Godaddy and;

a) deleted – DNS record for smtp.mail-domain.com.
b) Created new CNAME record for smtp.mail-domain.com to be a domain alias for mx.soccerfame.com

A few minutes, afterwards I tried configuring once again the same email account in Thunderbird and this time both imap.mail-domain.com and smtp.mail-domain.com turned green; indicating everything is configured fine.

To be 100% sure all is working fine I first fetched, all email via the IMAP protocol without hassles and onwards sent a test email to my Gmail account; thanksfully the sent email was delivered to Gmail indicating both Get Mail and Send Mail functions worked now fine.

Thunderbird icedove new mail account setup auto config Okay
 

GNU and Free Software founder Richard Stallman tries to peacefully protest European software Patents – Is european Union really democratic?

Friday, July 13th, 2012

rms-sign-peacefully-protests-anti-freedom-EU-legislation

Richard Stallman the main person thanks to whom the GNU (GNU is not UNIX) organization, free software as we know it and GNU / Linux free operating system exists has been notable for being a pain in the ass for politicians. RMS has dedicated his life for the only goal to propagate his ideas that all computer software should be free as in freedom. He is known to have engaged in various petitions and peaceful protest events as well doing his best to raise awareness in people that our Freedoms as we know it are large endangered due to a daily introduced laws throughout the world aiming to limit us and take away our constitutional (democratic) freedoms.

In his lectures RMS at many times puts his thoughts on the lack of real democratic decision taking in the European Union.

A good example on how un-democratic the EU is a Software Patent session being held in Brussels just a a year ago. The Software patent session is officially said to be opened, (so anyone from the public) can participate. What is really weird about the whole thing is that an European institution is trying to campaign a software patents to be legislated in Australia. Hmm isn't that weird, wasn't the European Union to be mainly engaged in minding for the European member countries and european economy or software situation. Why on earth they try to in-force software patents in Australia if Australia has nothing to do with the EU. Didn't the EU has enough problems already caused by patenting … The patent session held was completely "bribed" as Stallman points out, the people attending was "computer specialists" and patent experts who were all only  in favor of software patents and there was no practical representative of any tech-expert who was not in favour of software patents. Stallman tried to peacefully protest the unwalful meeting by just holding a big signature saying  "NO TO SOFTWARE PATENTS". He entered the hall and tried to stay in the back of the room with the NO SOFTWARE PATENTS slogan without even saying a word. A short after a policeman come and took him away for no apparent reason, obviously showing that peaceful protesting to any of what the EU is lobbying about is no longer possible. Now how this is a democracy and how comes the European Union is proclaiming being democratic if even a peaceful protesting of someone or bunch of people opposing an idea, agenda or meeting can't take place?

 

GNU founder tries to peacefully protest in European Patent session, being pushed away by police