Configuring the Warp Internet Access Kit for SMTP Mail

Introduction
The Internet Access Kit (IAK) accompanying the new OS/2 Warp 3 provides a useful set of utilities for accessing the Internet. The IAK provides clients for finger, FTP, Gopher, POP-mail, telnet, Web plus lots of useful debugging tools (iptrace, ping, nslookup etc).

IBM has attempted to make Internet access as easy as possible via their (revenue generating) Advantis network service and has configured the IAK software accordingly. This is fine if you use Advantis or have a supplier who works in the same way, but if you don't and want to use the IAK, you're forced to configure the software in a way that is "unsupported" by IBM. Advantis subscribers use the Post Office Protocol (POP) to exchange their e-mail with an Advantis server machine which then exchanges their e-mail with the outside world.

Many Internet access providers prefer to deliver mail to subscribers using the standard SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) services rather than POP - a notable example is Demon Internet Services in the UK (20,000 subscribers in January 1995 and rising at 10% a month). The provider benefits from using SMTP rather than POP because he doesn't need to provide a permanent mailbox account for each subscriber and the subscriber benefits because he can use as many mail user IDs as he wants to.

This small kit describes how to set up your Warp/IAK system to exchange mail with the outside world using SMTP rather than POP.

The instructions are by no means comprehensive and they are probably unclear in places so please feed back any constructive suggestions (including typos) so that I can improve this kit.

Warning
The standard Warp/IAK setup assumes that you will be using POP to exchange your e-mail with Advantis. If you're not sure that you need to use SMTP, please check whether your provider supports POP before acting on the recommendations in this kit. IBM will certainly tell you that using Warp/IAK with SMTP is unsupported, but if you need SMTP support, you have little/no choice. If you're an Advantis customer, you use POP and don't need this kit for your Advantis connection.

If you're a Demon Internet customer, you will need this kit unless you have paid up for the POP delivery service - it's an extra UKP 180 a year so you'll know :-)

Files included in this Kit
This kit comprises a small number of ASCII text files:

00readme.txt       this file

sendmail.hf        a sample sendmail help file

sendmail.txt       instructions for configuring and testing sendmail

sendmail.uml       a sample sendmail configuration file that you'll                        need to customise before using UltiMail/2 Lite with SMTP

ultimail.faq       UltiMail/2 Lite frequently asked questions list recently posted to comp.os.os2.tcp-ip by Jorgen Slings  of the IBM EMEA Internet HelpDesk ultimail.txt       instructions for configuring and testing UltiMail/2 Lite

umail.pro          example client profile file for UltiMail/2 Lite

umailsrv.pro       example server profile file for UltiMail/2 Lite

Where to get this kit
Although this kit may find itself propagating around the net, it has two "home" locations where it may be obtained by anonymous FTP:

ftp.demon.co.uk:/pub/os2/tcpip/umsmtp##.zip Hobbes: where ## is the version number - currently 03. When I produce new versions of this kit, I will upload them to these two FTP sites and announce the release in the comp.os.os2.announce, comp.os.os2.network.tcp-ip and demon.ip.support.os2 news groups.

If you don't have FTP access, I will be happy to e-mail you a MIME or UUencoded copy of the kit.

Important assumptions
Throughout this kit, I have assumed that the IAK has been installed in its default location of C:\TCPIP, and UltiMail/2 Lite is installed in C:\TCPIP\UMAIL.

If your setup is different, you need to check carefully that the drive/directory specifications in the included configuration files are edited to reflect your setup. The files containing drive/directory specifications are:

sendmail.uml umail.pro umailsrv.pro

Future enhancements
I can think of some useful things to add to this kit in due course:


 * remove ambiguities and typos - your feedback needed for this :-)

Your suggestions and examples would be appreciated.
 * add instructions for configuring and supporting other mail clients (CMail, Elm, LAMail & PCElm spring to mind)

Acknowledgements
I had some very useful and constructive feedback from a few readers of the first kit and they have helped me to understand the problems and fixes better. The result is this kit which should be much more helpful than the first version. In practice, the common bugs reported by many users will soon be replaced by much more esoteric problems :-)

Thanks to (especially):

Professor Traci Collins  Bruce S Marshall 

and also to:

Richard Ashton  Richard Cannon  David Jackson  David G McNamara  Keith Walter 

Change log
1.0 [27-Nov-1994] Niel Kempson  Initial Version.

2.0 [04-Feb-1995] Niel Kempson  Extensively revised following feedback and Sendmail & UltiMail-specific stuff separated out into their own files.

3.0 [16-Apr-1995] Niel Kempson  Further clarifications for some bits that evidently weren't clear enough :-(