tech articles
Feature: SMTP: We can specify the maximum number of recipients per mail. MailNow! will count the number of recipients supplied using RCPT TO command to it and if the number exceeds the number set, it will reject subsequent recipients. To enable this feature, edit the expmail.ini file and add the following line under [SYSTEM] line:
MaxRCPTTOCount=2
Here the maximum number of recipients is 2
Fix: Webmail: Well strictly-speaking this is not a fix. Its more of a compromise for Internet Explorer users. In the previous versions of the webmail, the webmail will automatically set the encoding for a page based on the charset specified in the email. This will ensure that the mail will be displayed in the right language by the browser. However as it turns out if the page is encoded in UTF-7 and is viewed in Internet Explorer, the links and forms on the page will function anymore. We have changed the webmail not to encode any pages in UTF-7 anymore. As a result, you will not be able to automatically viewed mailed encoded in UTF-7 correctly, and instead you will need to change the encoding to UTF-7 manually in IE for such a mail.
Feature: AntispamNow!: We now support a switch which allows the administrator to direct all the spam mails to the individual users' spam folder eventhough the gateway-spambox account has been created. (In the past if the gateway-spambox account is created, all the spam mails caught will be directed to this account). However there are administrator that want the spam mails to be directed to each users mailbox, yet they have to create the gateway-spambox because they need to do global white/blacklisting. To enable this feature, add the following switch in the expmail.ini file, under the [SYSTEM] line:
DirectSpamToInvidualAccount=1
Feature: AntispamNow!: Implemented a new point-scoring spam engine. The score will be written to the header of the mail (in the MN-X-SPAM-DTL field) next to "scr=".
Fix: SMTP: Due to the fact that some server do IP resolving based on the parameter passed by the EHLO/HELO command, we have changed the parameter from the sender address domain to mn.senderdomain.
Feature: AntispamNow!: We no longer download the ghscan.mdb (50MB+) now that we are using the new point-scoring spam engine. Instead a new DLL (vrcpp.dll) will be download instead (<1MB).
Fix: POP3: We have optimised the downloading of POP3 mails from third party POP3 mail servers. Coupled with the option introduced in the recent versions to download more than 4 mails per connection, you should be able to download POP3 mails much faster now.
Fix: Engine: We have fixed a bug where the MailNow! will not start if the spam.mdb does not exist in a particular user's folder who already has a personal address book (addrbook.ini) created (using the webmail). A possible reason why the spam.mdb file is missing is if the MailNow! has just been upgraded from version 3 to version 4 (version 3 has no support for AntispamNow! so there is no spam.mdb files). Normally when you upgrade to version 4, the spam.mdb files will be created during start-up (provided that you set the FastLoad=0 switch, as you should during the first time loading MailNow! v4 after the migration) or when you try to access personal address book in the webmail. However, previously if your AntispamNow! is disabled (or expired), the file will not be created during the start-up which results it being missing and the service failing to start.
Fix: SMTP: The RELAY INT log lines has been reporting incorrect and very large duration figures. This has been corrected.
Feature: SMTP: We have improved the verbose logging to include the SMTP replies that MailNow! sends to incoming SMTP clients/servers. So in addition to logging the commands that these SMTP clients/servers issue to MailNow!, you can also see the replies that MailNow! sends back to them. As before, this feature can be turned on using the switch:
LogVerbose=1
Fix: Webmail: If you were to edit the description of a group using an administrator account in the webmail and then view the email address of the group members using the MailNow! client, you will see that those email address have multiple domains. For example if the group member was john@internetnow.com.my, after edit the group description using the webmail, it will become john@internetnow.com.my@internetnow.com.my. This has now been fixed.
Note: If your group members has been rendered incorrect as above, instead of removing the additional domain using the MailNow! console manually one by one, you can use the following trick to correct them. Using the webmail, remove a member of the group and put him/her back into the group and then save the group. All the member email addresses will be corrected.
Feature: Console/Engine: We have implemented a feature to allow the administrator to generate a report of the last login dates of the users. This report can be used to find out which accounts have been dormant (i.e. have not been logged in a long time). When a user logs in using the webmail, IMAP or POP3, MailNow! will record their login date. And then in the MailNow! console, under the Admin | Last Login Report menu, a report can be generated to show the list of users along with the date and time of their last login. (Note: We've disabled this feature for the final release of v4.501 due to a technical issue).
Feature: SMTP: We now display the account used for SMTP authentication in the verbose logging. This way if a user account has been compromised and is exploited by a spammer to relay mails from outside, we can find out which account it is. Below is a sample of a verbose log which captures the SMTP authentication process between Outlook Express and MailNow! with SMTP authentication enabled in OE:
13-11-2007 11:28 SMTP_T 880 C: 16 AUTH LOGIN 0000004
13-11-2007 11:28 SMTP_T 880 S: 334 VXNlcm5hbWU6 0000005
13-11-2007 11:28 SMTP_T 880 C: 2048 0000006
13-11-2007 11:28 SMTP_T 880 S: 334 UGFzc3dvcmQ6 0000007
13-11-2007 11:28 SMTP_T 880 C: 4096 0000008
13-11-2007 11:28 SMTP_T 880 S: 235 Auth Passed for ilyas@internetnow.com.my 0000009
Notice that the last line records the account name used for the authentication.
Fix: AntispamNow!: Fixed the issue whereby you will continuously see an antispam update settings message in the System log of the MailNow! console should your activation key not support AntispamNow!
Feature: Console: In the license dialog you can now see if your activation key supports ProtectNow! and AntispamNow!
Feature: AntispamNow!: We have updated the information included in the X-MN-SPAM-DTL header field. Now it includes:
- "ver" which is the version number of the AntispamNow! engine
- "ins" which indicates that a mail is not scanned for spam because it comes from a trusted internal source
Feature: AntispamNow!: The X-MN-SPAM-DTL field has been added to all mails now (including those which are not detected as spam).
Feature: AntispamNow!: When releasing a spam mail using the "Release Spam" link in the webmail, by default, the mail will only be released to the local recipients of the spam mail. If the spam mail "To" or "CC" list contains non-local recipients, those addresses will not be included automatically during the releasing of the mail.
Feature: AntispamNow!: When a spam is released using the webmail, by default, the sender address is now whitelisted. The user can however decide not to whitelist the sender by unticked the "Whitelist sender" checkbox.
Feature: Engine: You can now configure to have a welcome mail to be delived to a newly created user in MailNow!
To enable this feature, you need to:
1) Edit the
EnableNewUserMsg=1
under the [SYSTEM] line.
2) Create the welcome mail template and put it under
There are two types of template file that you can use. Either a plain text message (newuser.txt) or a rich-text mail (complete with attachments) (newuser.eml). If you need to include just a simple message then newuser.txt is the way to go. Just create this file and type in your message in there.
However if you want to use HTML formatting or include attachments in your welcome mail, then you should compose the mail using email clients (such as Outlook Express) and then save the email as newuser.eml. And then copy the file to the TEMPLATE folder.
Note that if both newuser.txt and newuser.eml are found in the TEMPLATE folder, MailNow! will user newuser.txt.
If you enable welcome mail in the expmail.ini (i.e. by carrying out step #1) but did not create the template file, in the System Log of the MailNow! console, you will see this error message:
Failed to send welcome mail to newly created user. Cannot find template file.
You might also come across the following messages in the System Log:
a) Failed to send welcome mail to newly created user. Out of memory.
b) Failed to send welcome mail to newly created user. Failed to generate temp file name.
c) Failed to send welcome mail to newly created user. Failed to create temp file.
And here are the corresponding possible explanations for these error messages:
a) The system has ran out of memory.
b) There are too many files in the
c) See (b). The system could also be low in hard disk space.
Feature: AntispamNow!: We now provide the option for the administrator to configure whether or not to block these types of mails: (i) Russian (Cyrillic) mails, (ii) CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) mails (iii) non-delivery return mails. Please not that by default Russian and non-delivery mails are blocked. If you choose to block CJK mails, it will block for all three languages. You cannot choose to block just one. Non-delivery return mails are basically bounced back mails sent to you should the mails you sent failed to be delivered for some reasons.
Feature: Console: You can turn on and off verbose logging from the console itself (under Setup | System | General).
Feature: AntispamNow!: A log file called AntispamSubscriptionCheck.log is now generated everytime AntispamNow! checks to see if the antispam subscription has expired. This log file can be found under the
Feature: AntispamNow!: You can now configure the AntispamNow! to go through a proxy server when it tries to connect to the InternetNow server to validate the antispam subscription and to download spam update. This setting can be found under Setup | AntispamNow! | Proxy server.
Feature: AntispamNow!: We have introduced a more sophiscated "blacklisted-phrases" database designed to combat local Malaysian spam. This database is more specific in terms of the location where the phrases are to be searched (header of the mail, body of the mail, 'subject' field or the 'from' field in the mail header).
Feature: AntispamNow!: The normal daily log file generated under the LOG folder will no longer include mails detected as spam. Spam mails will only be logged by the daily antispam log files(ASxxxxxxxx.log). Attachments info is also recorded in the antispam log files now.
Feature: AntispamNow!: Previously mails which are larger than 100KB will not be scanned for spam since most spams are not this big. Now the default size limit is 1024KB (1MB) and can be configured by the administrator (under Setup | AntispamNow! | Miscellaneous).
Feature: AntispamNow!: We now provide an option for the administrator to include the spam detail in the subject lines in the daily logs. This feature is useful if you want to be able to find out why a particular mail was or was not classified as spam. Not that this information is the same as that specified in the X-MN-SPAM-DTL field in the mail header. This setting can be found under Setup | AntispamNow! | Miscellaneous).
Fix: AntispamNow!: Previously a mail that is blacklisted or whitelisted might not be logged in the right log files. For example a valid mail that is blacklisted might be logged under the normally daily (YYYYMMDD.log) log while a spam that is whitelisted might appear in the antispam log (ASYYYYMMDD.log). This has now been fixed.
Fix: AntispamNow!: You can turn on the feature to check the FROM address in the header of an email against your whitelist/blacklist by modifying the SpamMethod switch in the expmail.ini file. This feature sometimes did not work. This has now been fixed.
Fix: AntispamNow!: Fixed the issue of MailNow!-generated read-receipts and undeliverable notification mails being caught as spam. Previously we would get around this problem by disabling the filtering of non-delivery notification mails (by ticking the checkbox "Allow non-delivery notifications bounce backs" under Setup | AntispamNow! | Miscellaneous"). This is no longer necessary anymore since read-receipts and bounce-backs generated by MailNow! itself will not longer be filtered as spam anymore.
Feature: AntispamNow!: SPAM_AHP (the feature to check the FROM address in the mail header against whitelist/blacklist) is turned on by default.