----------------------------------------------------------------------------- MDaemon Server v2.8 Release Notes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- MDaemon v2.8.5.0 - Sept 14, 1999 -------------------------------- SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS ---------------------- o The documentation accompanying this installation is in Adobe Acrobat 4.0 format. Previously, documentation has been provided in MS Word format. You will need to download and install the Adobe Acrobat reader from http://www.adobe.com in order to access the documentation file. If you wish to download documentation in MS Word 2000 format you may do so via ftp://yoda.altn.com/MDaemon/md2850word2000.zip. MAJOR NEW FEATURES ------------------ o There are no major new features introduced in 2.8.5.0. This is a standard maintenance release. ADDITIONAL CHANGES AND NEW FEATURES ----------------------------------- o Some slight MDaemon GUI and speed optimizations. o Change to content filter editor GUI to make setting up new rules a lot easier. o MDaemon's version numbering scheme has been changed to a DCI standard format like this: X.X.X.X (Major.Minor.Revision.Language). o Moved the immediate local mail processing switch from the Misc. Options screen to the Scheduler where it belongs. o If the "Force Reply-To" switch is set and a message arrives with a blank Reply-To header MD will add double quotes like this: Reply-To: "" This is to combat a bug in MS mail client software. o MD will remember the lockout password across reboots, it will ask you to confirm the password when you create it, and the password will appear as stars when you enter it. o If you use MDConfig to access the content filter GUI you will now be prompted that changes may have been made and should be uploaded back to the server. o Adaptation to MD's parser so that it will accept messages formatted with quoted strings for mailboxes like this: "Arvel Hathcock"@altn.com. Although the RFC does allow for this sort of addressing I strongly discourage it's use. MD will not allow you to setup mailboxes that contain space chars. o MD's mailbox alias editor will now allow you to setup mailbox aliases that contain spaces if you enclose the entire alias inside quotes. Like this: "Arvel Hathcock" = arvel. Without the quotes around the alias MD will replace the space with an underscore. o Sometimes when forwarding a message the forwarded addressee can't be reached. In such cases MDaemon returns delivery notifications or even the entire email itself back to the ORIGINAL sender of the message. This behavior is desirable in some cases but not others. If you do not wish MDaemon to return this sort of mail or to send DSN messages about such mail you can manually set the following switch in the MDAEMON.INI: [Special] DeleteBadForwardedMail=Yes (default NO) This switch will cause such mail to simply be deleted so use with caution. o When processing list mail MD will only strip bracketed information from the subject line if the information is equal to the name of the list. For example, if the list is called "MD-BETA" then "[MD-BETA]" will be stripped from the subject line on certain list messages. o MDaemon will always remove any file called WATCHDOG.SEM from the APP directory with approx 10-20 seconds or so depending on the current mail workload being processed. Therefore, if you have an app that places a file called WATCHDOG.SEM into the APP directory and 20 or more seconds later that file is still there then you will know that MDaemon is not running. o Removed redundant DomainPOP size limit from misc. options screen. FIXES ----- o Fix to looping under certain combinations of content filter usage and mail forwarding o Fix to crash when importing NT users if NT domain was a full 15 chars o Fix to MD not matching case in content-type headers when forwarding a multipart message that was collected via MultiPOP. For some mail clients this was rendering attachments in these forwarded messages unusable. o Fix to problem where first account in userlist could never be deleted. o Fix to problem where having multiple accounts selected for deletion did not actually delete all of them. o Fix so that receipt confirmations will not be sent back to senders when a message is copied to another person using the content filter rules. o Fix to UIDL algorithm not working correctly when POP sessions ended with an error. o Fix to account editor sometimes losing multipop entries o Fix to WC sometimes not showing logon.html or error.html o Fix to multipop editor sometimes allowing other account info to show up. o Fix to windows not restoring from tray back to original window position o Fix to daily or day-of-week style logging not rolling over at midnight o Fix to bug which let the everyone group be listed twice in the list selection window. o Fix to MD not allowing mailing list messages to be forwarded to someone else on the local domain. o Fix to DomainPOP refusing messages to local gateway domains if the "Ignore unknown local addresses" switch was set. o Fix to list editor leaving auth-sub and auth-unsub switches set even when sub and unsub support disabled. o Fix to WebConfig not saving forwarding address at times. o Fix to MD improperly handling the sending of email addressed like this: arvel@[192.168.0.1] --------------------------------- MDaemon v2.8.4.0 - Aug 10th, 1999 --------------------------------- SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS ---------------------- o Why 2.83 and not 2.80? The 2.8 series is starting at 2.83 rather than 2.80 in order to maintain compatibility with certain third-party and Alt-N created add-on products. Some add-on software will not operate correctly if the revision number is less than three. o What is this WP2WC.EXE file in my APP directory? This is a utility to convert your WebPOP address books and custom folders to WorldClient Standard format. To use it run WP2WC from the APP directory and note the instructions which will appear. o We added a setting to the mailing list editor to allow you to specify a Reply-To: address for list mail. This field will default to being blank which means that replies will be directed back to the list message poster. If you have lists configured to direct replies back to the list then you need to put the mailing list's name into this new ReplyTo field. o MDaemon now uses the UIDL command rather than LAST to detect and down- load only unread mail from DomainPOP and MultiPOP servers. As a result of this change your MDaemon may download and re-process previously collected mail from your DomainPOP and MultiPOP servers. Read the topic *UIDL RATHER THAN LAST* in the MAJOR NEW FEATURES section below for complete details on this new feature and how to avoid downloading old mail. o The DomainPOP switch "Ignore Local Addresses Sent To Undefined Accounts" has been changed. Previously this switch was tied to use of the Domain Name Replacement Engine. However, it is sometimes useful to ignore such addresses even when the DNR engine is not being used. Therefore this setting has been reworded to "Ignore Unknown Local Addresses Parsed From Messages" and will operate independantly. If selected, all unknown local addresses parsed from DomainPOP collected mail will simply be ignored. Click this switch and MDaemon will no longer generate any "No Such User" warning messages. MAJOR NEW FEATURES ------------------ *GUI UPGRADE* - Router window has been redesigned as a pane window. This will allow you to expand the router window to the full size of the screen. You will be able to see more information now. - One pane of the router window will contain a treeview which itemizes the important server statistics. Right clicking on the queue entries within this treeview will bring up a context menu from which you can elect to process the queue or load MDSTATS. You can move this pane to the left or right side of the screen by manually setting the following key in MDaemon.ini: [Special] RightSideToolWindow=Yes (or no) You need to restart MD to have changes to this key take effect. - Right clicking the log pane of the router window will bring up a context menu with functions for manipulating the log text. - The slide gauge which governed the number of minutes between processing intervals has been moved to the scheduler dialog. - The selection dialog will allow multiple selections for deleting. - Added some additional configuration file editing options to the FILE | OPEN menu. - Some functionality improvements made to the list editor. - Removed unneeded "Close All" option from Window menu - Added "Restore All" option to menu. This option will redraw any hidden session windows. *INTEGRATED WEB-BASED REMOTE CONFIGURATION SERVER* - Integration of a Web-based administration server giving the admin full access to remotely configure MDaemon across the web. The server is controled via the FILE menu and when active can provide access for users to edit their account settings or administrators to edit all the configuration files of MDaemon. See the MDAEMON.DOC file for further details. *INTEGRATED WORLDCLIENT STANDARD SERVER* - Integration of WorldClient Standard for mail access. This gives us a good web-based mail access and authoring component. This feature is activated/deactived via the FILE menu. See the MDAEMON.DOC file for further details. *INSTANT MAIL DELIVERY* - Added switch to Misc. Options screen to force a local queue run after each inbound SMTP session completes. This will have the effect of instant local mail delivery since the queue is checked and processed right after a potential local message is delivered. Click this option and you will have instant local message delivery. *UIDL RATHER THAN LAST* - MDaemon has been converted to the UIDL method of unread message detection. Previously MD relied on the LAST command to distinguish unread mail and download only new messages. This was problematic at best since the LAST command is an optional server implementation. The UIDL method is far more reliable. Therefore several changes have been made to accomodate this new way of detecting unread messages: - Use of the LAST command has been completely done away with for the purposes of checking DomainPOP and MultiPOP mailboxes. MDaemon's POP server will continue to honor LAST command requests from POP client's but MDaemon itself will no longer send the LAST command to POP servers when it checks for new DomainPOP/MultiPOP mail. - The POP command sequence has been changed to include requests for UIDL information. - UIDL information will be stored in the UIDL.DAT file for DomainPOP and within an account's HIWATER.MRK file for MultiPOP. - The DomainPOP and User Editor screens have been changed to remove references to the LAST command and an edit control has been added for specifying the max number of messages MDaemon will allow to be kept in the remote mailbox. This number defaults to 0 which means no limit. Once MDaemon detects that the number of messages in the mailbox exceeds this maximum limit it will subsequently delete any further messages that it downloads. - The format of the MULTIPOP.DAT file has changed but you do not need to rebuild the file or re-enter your MultiPOP accounts. The last parm in the file (the "Use LAST" setting) will simply be ignored by this version of MDaemon. Since MultiPOP UIDL information is now stored within the account's HIWATER.MRK file care should be taken to not capriciously delete this file. Doing so will result in the re-downloading of previously read messages the next time MultiPOP collection takes place for the account. Since we are converting from LAST to UIDL it is possible that your next DomainPOP and/or MultiPOP collections will re-download previously processed mail. To prevent this from happening you should delete previously processed messages which you may be retaining in your ISP's mailbox(es). In the event that a remote POP server doesn't honor the UIDL command MDaemon will: - Download everything in the mailbox - Refuse to leave mail in the mailbox regardless of your "leave messages on server settings". If the remote server does not honor the UIDL command (which is not RFC legal) then MD will not support leaving mail on that server. *REPEATING DNS LOOKUP TO DEAL WITH ROUTERS THAT DROP UDP PACKETS* - In the event of a DNS timeout while looking up an A or MX record host, MDaemon will retry the lookup a specified number of times (default=3). You can configure the number of attempts MDaemon will use by setting the following key manually in the MDaemon.ini file: [Special] MaxDnsLookupAttempts=3 You no longer need to issue a PING command to fire up your router prior to processing mail. If the first DNS attempt fails or times out the second/third/fourth etc.. will succeed. *WILDCARD SUPPORT IN KEY AREAS WITHIN MDAEMON* - Added support for using ? and * wildcards in gateway domain names and updated the gateway editor GUI to reflect this. - Added support for using ? and * wildcards in domain aliases and updated the domain alias editor GUI to reflect this. - Added support for using ? and * wildcards in kill files and updated the suppression file and list editor to reflect this. *NEW INTEGRATED MDSTATS QUEUE MANAGEMENT TOOL* - A complete rewrite of MDSTATS in now a part of the MDaemon standard installation. The new MDSTATS 3.0 is substantially faster than the old one and has several new capabilities. See the MDSTATS section of the MDAEMON.DOC file for a complete discussion. *RFC-1870 ESMTP SIZE CLIENT-SIDE SUPPORT* - If the "Use ESMTP.." switch is enabled in Misc. Options screen MD will use the SIZE (RFC-1870) parm when sending SMTP mail. This will help cut down on the number of redundant sessions needlessly sending mail to servers that have a master cutoff limit (such as AOL). *NEW SECURITY FEATURES* - Added switch to IP Shield editor which will allow you to refuse SMTP mail sessions from local senders if the IP which they are connecting from has not accessed a POP mailbox within the last XX minutes. This will provide another measure to stop people from mascarading as a local user in order to send spam through your system. With this switch active a user must have checked his/her POP mailbox before they are allowed to send SMTP mail through the server. *AUTOMATIC LIST PRUNING* - Added switch to List Membership tab which will auto-prune lists when activated. If a message expires out of the retry queue or results in 500 errors for all MX hosts the member being sent the message will be automatically removed from the list membership. *NEW AND IMPROVED MDSTATS ENGINE* - MDStats, our queue management tool, has been integrated into our standard installation routine. You no longer need to download this as a separate add-on. - This new version is much faster and can do alot more. See the MDAEMON. DOC file for more information. *SUBSTANTIAL OVERALL PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENTS* - Overall performance has been increased due to several internal code changes. *LARGE SITE PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENTS* - Added new code to speed up processing account additions and edits. As a result adding, editing, and deleting accounts now takes approximately the same amount of time on a 10 user site as it does on a 10,000 user site. Previously MDaemon took too long to process account changes on very large sites. To aid sites with 10,000+ accounts I have changed the way the selection dialog box appears. It uses a combobox now rather than a listbox. This is a slight inconvenience in that you see less on the screen at once but it is a major speed improvement. ADDITIONAL CHANGES AND NEW FEATURES ----------------------------------- o If a DNS timeout occurs the secondary DNS server will be used on the next lookup attempt if one is configured. o Added the following switches to MDaemon.ini: [Domain] BindOutboundSockets=Yes (or No) OutboundSocketIP=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx If an IP is specified and the bind option is enabled then MDaemon will bind all outgoing sockets to that IP address. o Sometimes an MX lookup will also produce the A records for the MX entries. When this is the case MDaemon will use the A records returned during the MX lookup rather than issuing subsequent A record lookups needlessly. This should greatly cutdown on the number of DNS queries performed. If for any reason this causes problems for your site you can switch this feature on and off via [Domain] UseMXARecords=Yes (or No) - default is Yes. o The POP "TOP" command can generate alot of logging activity. A new switch has been added to the log editor to toggle whether or not data sent in response to a TOP command should be logged (default is NO). o When a message arrives for a mailing list via SMTP, MDaemon can use the address in the message's FROM header to determine if the sender is a member of a private list or not rather than the message passed in the SMTP envelope. If you'd like your list posts authenticated based on the content of the FROM header you must set the following switch in the MDaemon.ini file: [Special] AuthListViaFromHeader=Yes o Some SMTP/POP servers are placing ">From " lines in the header section of email messages. This causes problems for MDaemon when such messages are collected via MultiPOP or DomainPOP. MDaemon will strip these lines from the header section when it collects messages via MultiPOP or DomainPOP. If you require these headers for any reason you can set the following switch manually in the MDaemon.ini file to override this behavior: [Special] StripInvalidFrom=Yes (or No) o When MDaemon computes the number of files and the amount of diskspace being consumed by an account it normally only processes the mailbox folder and the FILES directory. This information is used when computing disk quotas restrictions for your accounts. If you want the mailbox directory, and all sub-dirs thereof, to be recursed you may set the following switch in the MDaemon.ini file: This switch applies to all accounts. [Special] StrictQuotas=Yes (default NO) If you wish quota calculations to include hidden files and sub-directories set the following switch: [Special] CountHiddenFiles=Yes (default NO) o MD will properly handle mal-formed RCPT addresses provided by Microsoft Outlook mail clients. Sometimes MS Outlook illegally provide the recipient's real name during the SMTP transaction, like this: RCPT TO: address@domain.com (Real Name) This is in violation of accepted Internet standards and practice. o Previously, refusing to allow relaying of mail through your server also blocked the acceptance of mail delivered via SMTP to invalid local users. This prevented the use of the "Unknown Local User" message dispensation controls. Therefore a separate switch has been added to the Relay Control screen to govern whether mail for invalid local users is accepted or refused during the SMTP session. o When an account configured for "Local Mail Only" sends a message to another local account which in turn forwards that mail outside the domain, MDaemon will allow this to take place. Previously MD was not considering the forwarded message as originating from the account that forwarded it. MD assumed the forwarded message was sent from the restricted account. o The max message size limit previously shared by DomainPOP and MultiPOP sessions has been split up. Now you can specify separate max downloadable size limitations for DomainPOP and each account using MultiPOP. The DomainPOP and MultiPOP editors have been changed to provide edit controls for the purpose of setting this limit. o Previous versions would not allow you to configure an account that forwarded mail to a local address when the "Advanced Forwarding" options were employed. This prevented you from forwarding mail to another server using the same local email address. Now you can specify local addresses in conjunction with the "Advanced Forwarding" controls. o The misc option "Check for and use Semaphore files" has been removed. For some time the accurate operation of some of Mdaemon's features has required this flag to be set. v2.8 is dependant upon semaphores to such a degree that their use is no longer an optional issue. o When header/footer text is applied to mailing list messages which are multipart MIME format the header/footer text will be applied to all the text/* parts of the message. If the part is text/html, header/footer text will be inserted within the and tags and will be wrapped with 
 and
tags. o Added option to log editor "Track Sessions In Real Time". With this switch enabled .log files for each session window will be created while the session window is active. Once the session window is closed the .log file will be removed. This is useful to see what a session window was doing if a crash occurs. If MDaemon crashes and there are active sessions there will be .log files left in the log directory and you will be able to see what each session was doing at the exact moment of the crash. Although MDaemon rarely crashes this could be a useful debugging tool. It will effect performance so don't enable it unless you need it. o MDaemon will strip out the new Pegasus Mail x-pmrqc: header within list messages since this can result in read confirmations being sent back to the list. o MDaemon will form RECEIVED headers which span multiple lines. This is to solve some problems with certain mail clients that crash when a header line exceeds a certain length. o Changed the way the logging algorithm updates the log files in order to increase performance. o When MD processes list mail it creates a SENDER: header (as it should). In this circumstance any existing SENDER: headers will be stripped out. o Added switch to the prepost processing controls to run the process in a hidden background window. o When using the "Insure Sender's Address Is Valid..." function within the IP Shielding feature-set, MDaemon will insure the address is valid if it claims to be from a local domain alias to the primary domain. Previously only addresses claiming to be from the primary domain directly were being checked. o When MDaemon shuts down a RAS connection some additional text as to what prompted the shutdown will be added to the log. o When MD creates the PREDIAL.SEM file it will check for and remove any orphaned POSTDIAL.SEM file. o If an account's directories are missing when a delivery attempt to that account is required MDaemon will attempt to create the account's mail and file directories on the fly. o Added new email command "BEGIN AUTORESPONDER" which will let a user send a message to MDaemon and record a new autoresponder file. Check the MDaemon.doc file for complete instructions. o The GET ADDRESS command will return all the IP's and host names assigned to the MDaemon computer. o Added some additional checks to make sure that only non-hidden files are available for downloading during a POP session. o Added some descriptive text to the log telling what sort of connection an outbound session is attempting to create. o Added some descriptive text to the log telling what ISP the dialup engine is attempting to reach and the redial attempt currently being used. o Catalog directories will now include the size in bytes of the file. o DNS Lookup tool: Added horz scroll bar. Defaults to "Lookup" rather than "Close" when you hit ENTER. o List header/footer text will not be applied to "multipart/related" message forms or base64 encoded single part message forms. Attempting to do so will result in too great a performance drain. o The address mask "mailer-daemon@*" will no longer be able to send mail to any MDaemon hosted mailing list. o When you create a new account you will get a warning if the message and/or files directory already exists. o If an error occurs during reception of a message via SMTP or during collecting of a message via DOMAINPOP or MULTIPOP the temporary work files related to the incomplete message will be removed from the SMTPIN directory. o If you do not want MDaemon to warn you when creating new accounts that the account's mail/file directories already exist you can set this switch: [Special] WarnIfDirectoryExists=No (default is Yes) o MDaemon will no longer send messages that have route slips to the ISP regardless of the settings in Setup->Primary Domain. Previously, MDaemon would potentially send route slipped mail to the ISP if attempts to connect the the host specified in the route slip failed. For example, if you have a mailing list set to use the ROUTE TO SMART HOST method of delivery and the smart host is down MDaemon would send the mailing list mail to the ISP. This is an error. Now MDaemon will leave it in the queue or retry queue until it can be delivered according to the route slip properties. FIXES ----- o Fix to potential crash processing badly formatted RAW messages. o Fix to potential memory leak when using gateway domains with the ETRN option. o Fix to potential buffer-overrun crash during SMTP session. o Fix to potential buffer-overrun and userlist.dat corruption when importing from the NT user database on accounts with very long real name fields. o Fix to potential crash processing POP sessions that FD_CLOSE during an internal critical processing event. o Fix to potential buffer overruns when translating domain names. o Fix to potential crash when processing EDITUSER.SEM or changing a user's mailbox or realname values. o Fix to crash when processing RAW messages that have addresses with multiple @ signs. o Fix to potential 100% CPU when processing the $PARTBOUNDARY$ command. o Fix to potential buffer overrun processing some MX and A record packets. o Fix to scheduler problem leading to potential skipped processing sessions. o Fix to digest dispatch algorithm sometimes missing scheduled times. o Fix to domain name replacement being case sensitive. o Fix to MD not sending message to next host or gateway host on certain error codes during SMTP session. o Fix to bug causing the "Can't remove directories" error to appear when deleting some accounts. o Fix to account editor allowing account real names to end with blank spaces thus preventing the account from being edited in the future. o Fix to having sessions flagged as hidden and then having them restore to full screen size when coming up out of the system tray. o Fix to RCPT TO address with multiple spaces being accepted as a blank recipient during SMTP sessions! o Fix to a problem wherein some SMTP session windows refuse to transact mail and give a "command out of sequence" error after the initial greeting from the remote server. o Fix to wasted CPU time when processing RAW mail. o Fix to bug allowing user's file and mail dir's to not end with a backslash. o Fix to RAW system not carrying thru the real name in the FROM header. o Fix to USERLIST.SEM not always being detected. o Fix to Auto-decode engine only allowing 9 copies of the same file to be present in the FILES directory before croaking. Now an unlimited number can be present. o Fix to MD using 221 code rather than 421 code when "Server Too Busy" message sent. o Fix to MDCONFIG not deleting catalogs properly. o Fix to lengthy multiline POP commands blocking server operations. o Fix to outbound domain replacement not working properly in SMTP delivered mail that splits header information up into multiple lines. o Fix to MDaemon's list engine sometimes parsing the wrong part boundary in multipart MIME messages. This caused errant formation of mailing list messages that contained attachments. o Fix to non-moderated private lists refusing posts from non-members even when the list's password was properly employed. o Fix to LAN Domain mail being processed when processing the bad message queue. o Fix to local process being executed when processing the bad message queue. o Fix to MDCONFIG Supervisor level being able to toggle the SMTP, POP, and DomainPOP servers on and off. This is not something the supervisor level should be able to do. Only MultiPOP should be switchable for a supervisor level. o Fix to problem wherein gateway domains were not always considered as local mail. This problem only came up when a gateway was configured to forward mail to another server. o Fix to bug wherein long CC lists including ProcNow@ or GetAddress@ were causing subsequent addresses to be skipped. O Fix to "Max SMTP Messages Spooled Per Thread" not always being honored. o Fix to MD sometimes putting two Content-Type: headers within RAW generated messages. o Fix to archived RAW messages not always parsing properly. o Fix to errant SMTP/POP Rcvd: counts sometimes occuring. o Fix to outbound domain conversion not applied to local addresses in the TO: header for outgoing mail. o Fix to potential crash associated with using the "Insure Sender's Address is Valid If It Claims To Be From The Primary Domain" switch in the IP Shielding screen. o Fix to IP Shield local user verification failing if no domain passed as part of address in SMTP MAIL FROM <> command. Now, the primary domain is assumed in such cases. o Fix to MD not honoring changes to Relay settings made via MDConfig. o Fix to Domain Alias screen not splitting the alias list window evenly in MDConfig. o Fix to MDCONFIG not displaying accounts in alpha order at times. o Fix to MDCONFIG rebuilding entire tree when user edited/added. o Fix to bug causing some SMTP "abnormal termination" messages to contain bogus "bytes transferred" reading. o Fix to allowing multiple "Are you sure boxes" appearing when closing a session window. o Fix to bug in encrytion method leading to long password and DomainPOP names being truncated. This bug also leads to some list un-sub authorizations failing. o Fix to split subject lines not inserting the list names and thread numbers properly. o Fix to potential crash when message containing a space as part of the filename is processed by MD during a POP session. o Fix to DomainPOP not being collected when the POP engine was switched off. DomainPOP has it's own master cutoff switch. o Fix to lookup editor causing server to block operations until answers returned. o Fix to potential list messages not containing subject text. o Fix to possible mail loop problem processing preference values in MX records. o Fix to MDConfig improperly allowing access to the RAS editor at times. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------