Conference gyro::internet_toolss

    I've tried 3 or 4 conversion utilities without much luck except for
    V2U_MAIL written by Rob Riepel ([email protected]). See
    TURRIS::DIGITAL_UNIX, note 2527 for a discussion of some of the
    alternatives. I've successfully used V2U_MAIL to transfer or archive
    100 MB or so of VMS mail.
    
    A copy of V2U_MAIL (source and binary), including some bug fixes and
    setup instructions is available at:
    
    	CFSCTC::PUBLIC$LIB:V2U_MAIL.*
    
    The executable there was built on VAX/VMS V5.5-2. The source, however,
    will have to be edited to include the customer's actual DECnet
    pseudo-domain name. That .EXE is set up for Digital (NODE::USER ->
    [email protected]).
    
    V2U_MAIL extracts an entire VMS mail drawer (e.g., MAIL.MAI) into one
    file for each folder. The extracted files are in standard UNIX text
    mail format, which can then (with any necessary CR/CRLF conversions) be
    used either directly by other mail clients (many UNIX clients, Eudora,
    Netscape, etc.) or imported into other clients (e.g. inc'd into
    MH-based clients). No manual intervention is required during the
    extract, it can be re-run (it doesn't delete anythiing), and it can be
    run without shutting down incoming mail.
    
    The only restrictions worth noting are:
    
    	1) it does not handle VMS "foreign" format messages (it aborts when
    		it encounters one)
    	2) your mail folders must have names that are legal as VMS file
    		names
    	3) if you have a large mail drawer, the conversion can take some
    		time and is best done in batch.
    
    -Tom
     

    
    Tom,
    
    Thank you very much. I'll try it.
    
    Rgrds,             
    
    Fabian

Nt-mail from internet-shopper ?

I had problems with ms exchange so I switched to Eudora.  However, that
has at least one problem too ("tired of waiting, press OK or CANCEL" anyone
else see this problem?)

Is this Nt-mail better ?  Anyone have info on it ?

/Eric

> Nt-mail from internet-shopper ?
> 
> I had problems with ms exchange so I switched to Eudora.  However, that
> has at least one problem too ("tired of waiting, press OK or CANCEL" anyone
> else see this problem?)
> 
> Is this Nt-mail better ?  Anyone have info on it ?
> 
> /Eric

	NTMail is an SMTP, POP3, IMAP4 Mail Server for Windows NT.  You still
  need a client like Eudora, Pegasus, Netscape Navigator or IE Mail to read
  the mailbox.  Most people seem to have problems with ms exchange...

	You can read about NTMail at their Web site at URL:

http://www.ntmail.co.uk/

	I can also answer specific questions on it.

		Danny

>I had problems with ms exchange so I switched to Eudora.  However, that
>has at least one problem too ("tired of waiting, press OK or CANCEL" anyone
>else see this problem?)
    
    
    I had that problem in spades when our UNIX hosts used the mh pop
    server. I switched over to popper on my workstation and the problem
    went away. The admin group later switched over to popper on the
    UNIX hosts and I switched back to theirs, with similar results (I'll
    _occasionally_ see a problem reading mail, but far less often than
    before).

    re: .2-.5                                
    
    You might also want to look into IMAP4 servers and clients. I've just
    installed the University of Washington IMAP4 server on one of our UNIX
    machines in place of a POP server. We had previously been running MH
    POP without any problems, though, with a variety of clients. However,
    unlike POP, IMAP4 lets you keep your mail store on the server.
    
    Pine is one client that is free and that runs on UNIX and MS platforms.
    Microsoft Explorer and Netscape Communicator (in beta now) are others
    that you might be interested in.
    
    See http://www.imap.org/ for a list of IMAP4 products.
    
    -Tom

>    You might also want to look into IMAP4 servers and clients. I've just
>    installed the University of Washington IMAP4 server on one of our UNIX
>    machines in place of a POP server. We had previously been running MH
>    POP without any problems, though, with a variety of clients. However,
>    unlike POP, IMAP4 lets you keep your mail store on the server.
>    
>    Pine is one client that is free and that runs on UNIX and MS platforms.
>    Microsoft Explorer and Netscape Communicator (in beta now) are others
>    that you might be interested in.
>    
>    See http://www.imap.org/ for a list of IMAP4 products.

	Yes, that's the way to go.  NTMail supports IMAP4 as does AltaVista
  Mail and a number of other products.

	PC Clients include: Simeon, Embla, Palladin, Netscape Communicator,
  Siren Mail.  You need to figure out which is the best one for you.

		Danny

So are you saying that the reason my Eudora on NT often says

	tired of waiting     OK     CANCEL


is because of a problem with our pop server on vms, rather than a problem
in Eudora ?

If so, do you have suggestions of what I might tell our sys mgr on the
vms system to run instead of the current pop server ?  (is there an unprivd
cmd I can give on our vms system to even find out what pop server we're
using ?)

Thanks.

/Eric

    re: .-1
    
    If "tired of waiting     OK     CANCEL" happens all the time, I'd
    suspect either a bad TCP/IP/DNS configuration on your NT machine (bad
    router information, wrong netmask, etc.) or a bad Eudora configuration
    (wrong hostname, etc.). There is nothing inherently wrong with the
    combination of Eudora and UCX/POP. I've used it myself.
        
    -Tom

    re .8
    
    Since my experience wasn't with a VMS host I'm not sure how directly
    relevant it was. My problem with the UNIX mh pop server was that the
    server would fail to release its lock on the database, and the
    client would time out trying to get the lock. (This being UNIX, the
    lock was a file, so I'd just go delete it, but that got old real
    fast.) 
    
    Clearly, communications is stalling somewhere along the line. 

I don't believe my problem is a "bad configuration" since Eudora works
for awhile, and then after a few minutes it puts up a box saying

	Eudora is tired of wating for the system to respond.

	Press OK if you wish to continue waiting.

	Cancel will terminate this connection.

I finally choose CANCEL.

My settings say to check mail every minute.  Is this perhaps too often ?

The annoying thing is that once I tell it to CANCEL on the "Tired of waiting",
the keyboard shortcuts don't work anymore.  For example, I can no longer
hit ctrl-D to delete the current msg.  I have to use MB3 and choose "delete"
in the popup menu.

Also, after the error has occurred, Eudora gives up trying to read my new
mail every minute, so instead I have to choose "check mail" manually every
once in awhile.  (The ctrl-M shortcut is also disabled).

/Eric

> My settings say to check mail every minute.  Is this perhaps too often ?
    
    Yes. By an order of magnitude or more. It can easily take several
    minutes to service just one collection request. "0" is a far better
    setting.
    
    Whether that's related to this particular problem, I don't know, but
    checking that often will eventually cause problems of some kind.
    
    -Tom

But if I set it to "0" then doesn't that mean never check ?
Then I'd be back to having to manually choose the "check mail" or
manually hit ctrl-M right ?

/Eric

    
    	All this work just to avoid using Exchange?
    
    	I get a bleep on my desktop at work [and a pop-up window on my
    	laptop at the house], an envelope image on my taskbar, and a num-
    	erical indicator next to the appropriate mail folder to tell me
    	how many new messages I just received.
    
    	All without having to ask Exchange to check my mail for me.
    

    re: .13
    
    Exactly.

The main thing that discouraged me from exchange is that there
are more then 20 people on our jamin:: vms node, with whom
I often mail to.

jamin:: is the pop server node.  Let's take an example.  User
beber, if I want to mail to her from exchange, I either have to
put beber in my address book or I'm forced to always type

	beber@jamin

However, with eudora, I can just type

	beber

In other words, eudora knows that a name without an "@" in it, if
not in the address book, is a local name on the pop server.

If someone knows a way to tell exchange to do this, I might
consider exchange again.

Also, I use eudora at home, have been for over a year, it seems
to work pretty well.  I'm just recently disappointed with this
"tired of waiting" error.  Maybe I'll try changing my freq from
1 min to 3 to see if that alleviates the problem.

/Eric

>In other words, eudora knows that a name without an "@" in it, if
>not in the address book, is a local name on the pop server.

    Actually, I think a name sent from Eudora without an "@" will be
    interpreted as either a local name on the _SMTP_ server or as a name
    with the same domain as your return address, depending on how the SMTP
    server is configured. Since your POP server, SMTP server, and return
    address can all be different (and often are), it can be important to
    know that.
    
    -Tom 

>    Actually, I think a name sent from Eudora without an "@" will be
>    interpreted as either a local name on the _SMTP_ server or as a name
>    with the same domain as your return address, depending on how the SMTP
>    server is configured. 

Eudora has a setup field for "domain to add to unqualified address", so it's 
explicit in the client.

Aha !  Does xchange have similar feature ???  That's what I need !

/Eric

p.s.	Another thing about xchange, it seems not to like names
	separated by commas.  Can it be convinced to allow this ?
	That's a habit hard to change....

    Outlook 97 client does have "Allow comma as address seperator" option.
    
    Tools/Options.../Send
    
    Steveg

	And it's Exchange, not xchange.

							mike

    re .16
    
    I think the answer is -- get each of the 20+ people in your address
    book using their usernames (if you do each one as it's complained
    about, it's a one-time cost per name, or you could come up with a
    list and do 'em all at once).
    
    This is one of the shortcomings of the Outlook client (which I infer
    is pretty much the same as the Exchange client). Another is total
    lack of control on where outgoing messages wrap (around column 74
    with fixed font messages). 
    
    I'd like to move from Eudora to Outlook if for no other reason than
    Eudora's search capabilities are sub-primitive, and Outlook's is a
    lot more robust. Also, Outlook uses separate windows, and Eudora the
    'way-out-of-date MDI interface.
    
    HOWEVER ... in addition the the hassle with text wrapping (meaning
    you can't annotate someone else's message without risking the
    original text getting rewrapped at the wrong place), I so far
    haven't been able to reliably share a personal folder from home and
    work. I can define such a folder, but inevitably the home client
    will start complaining that the mailbox file was changed by some
    other program (and then won't open it ... good from a corruption
    avoidance perspective, bad from a read-your-stored-mail-from-home
    perspective). (Our group isn't going over to Exchange, so that's not
    a real option unless I decided to set up my own account for some
    bizarre reason.)  With Eudora I have no problem setting up a share
    on the directory holding my mailbox tree, and accessing it using
    Eudora at home. (It's sloooow, but it works.)
    
    Is there an Outlook user out there who has got mailbox sharing
    between work and home working (using Outlook as a client to a POP
    server, NOT Exchange)?
                        

    and partial-match addressing using Exchange or Outlook client is a
    godsend (I know - we had it in ALL-IN-1 as well).
    
    For your correspondent "beber", just type "b" or "be" or whatever you
    feel comfortable with, hit ALT-K and non-ambiguous matches are
    resolved, else you are prompted with a set of potential matches - real
    nice.  You can control the order of searching - i.e. your local address
    book first or the Global Address List first or ELF or whatever you have
    installed.  Try it - it works real well.

Tell me more about this global address list and elf thing.

Is there a special all-digital address list I can point my
xchange to ?  Or interface it to elf ?

/Eric

By the way, changing eudora to do 3-minute checking instead
of 1-minute didn't fix it.  It still eventually experienced
"tired of waiting".

Hmmm.  I wonder if this is a pop or smtp problem instead
of eudora ?  Maybe I should try with xchange for awhile and
see if it gets tripped up too.

/Eric

    Re:   <<< Note 4691.24 by JAMIN::prnsy5.lkg.dec.com::osman "Eric, dtn
    226-7122" >>>

    >Tell me more about this global address list and elf thing.
    
    Ah, missed the Exchange mail training, eh Eric?
    
    >Is there a special all-digital address list I can point my xchange to ? 
    >Or interface it to elf ?

    Actually, I'd say its the other way around.  There is this corporate
    wide list of employees maintained on-line (members of the Digital
    domain), and a mail system that is based on it.  Essentially, the
    corporate employee database built in to Exchange is what validates
    users.  Anyone can boot up a PC, bring up Netscape mail, point it to an
    SMTP server and be sending mail under any guise they wish.  In order to
    send mail from @mail.dec.com, you have to have been blessed by the
    corporate beauracracy (at least in theory).
    
    To answer your question, when you click on "To:", the resulting dialog
    box has a pulldown window labeled "Show names from:".  The default
    value can be modified.  Mine points to "Personal Address Book".  If you
    pull down this pulldown, among the dozens of mostly useless lists, you
    will see the "Global Address List".  Most everyone on Exchange mail (at
    least the Digital1 authenticated ones) are listed.  Since corporate
    email names may or may not match a person's last name (contractor's
    names all start with "C-"), it may be difficult to look up a name on
    this list (~55,000 is still a big number).
    
    You can click on "Find" and search for various pieces of information,
    such as (actual) last name.
    
    If you have defined a personal address book, then a button allows you
    to add the found listing to the address book automatically.
    
    Occasionally I have to use the global list.  Mostly, I have all the
    people I send mail to in my personal address book, including personal
    distribution lists, so I rarely have to bother.
    
    jeb
    
    (P.S.  Of course, none of this belongs here.  There is a whole Notes
    conference dedicated to Exchange mail, as well as on-ine tutorials, and
    I'm sure if you looked hard, documentation, though I understand there
    is a CC charge for it.  Great concept - the company mandates the Email
    system, but you have to buy your docs!)
    

One or two things you (Eric) might try to make Eudora a bit more resiliant:

In Options under Advanced Network, try increasing the open and network 
timeouts, just in case the problem is an overloaded POP server that's simply 
not getting to your connect request fast enough.

In Options under Miscellaneous, you can set a timer that allows Eudora to OK an 
alert in N seconds. Dunno if this would be much help.

BTW, these are in the Eudora Pro Options menu. I can't be certain if the same 
options are available in the free version (Eudora Lite) in case that's the one 
you have. 

    >>Is there a special all-digital address list I can point my xchange to? 
    >>Or interface it to elf ?
    
    >   Actually, I'd say its the other way around.  There is this corporate
    >   wide list of employees maintained on-line (members of the Digital
    >   domain), and a mail system that is based on it. 
    
    Yes but there is more!  There is an All-Digital X.500 employee list 
    which is independent of any particular mail system and yes you
    can point Exchange to it for your lookups.  As has already been stated,
    further discussion is more appropriate in CHEFS::MS-EXCHANGE
    

Jim, you lost me with:
 
   To answer your question, when you click on "To:", the resulting dialog
    box has a pulldown window labeled "Show names from:".  The default
    value can be modified.  Mine points to "Personal Address Book".  If you
    pull down this pulldown, among the dozens of mostly useless lists, you
    will see the "Global Address List".  Most everyone on Exchange mail (at


When I look at that pulldown, mine *only* has "personal address book" (even
when I click on the little triangle.  So maybe I have to specially
*install* the global address list ?  Or install some special elf hookup ?

That's what my original question was when I said "tell me more about this
elf and global address book stuff".

/Eric

	Please continue this Exchange discussion in the Exchange Notes conference
  on CHEFS.

		Danny

		Moderator

I tried upping Eudora's timeout values from 60 sec to 120.

I still eventually (after about an hour or two) get into the

	tired of waiting

state.

I don't think the problem is "slow response", as during the
time when it's working properly, response is almost instantaneous.

Anyone else experienced this problem with Eudora ?

/Eric

A bit more info:

When Eudora is in its unexpected waiting state, if I manually
choose "check mail", it gets an error saying

	error 10053

which my winsock.h says is

	ECONNABORTED

If I then kill Eudora, and then look at task manager, there
is still a hidden Eudora process chewing up 97% of the cpu.  I
can then kill that process in task mgr.

not a pretty sight...

/Eric

    Done a netstat to see what the connection state is during the wait?

o.k.  Eudora is now in the "tired" state again, and here's
the netstat:


C:\x11\wx\include\netdnet>netstat

Active Connections

  Proto  Local Address          Foreign Address        State
  TCP    prnsy5:2309            jamin.lkg.dec.com:telnet  TIME_WAIT
  TCP    prnsy5:4458            jamin.lkg.dec.com:3333  TIME_WAIT
  TCP    prnsy5:4526            jamin.lkg.dec.com:pop3  CLOSE_WAIT
  TCP    prnsy5:4536            jamin.lkg.dec.com:3333  TIME_WAIT
  TCP    prnsy5:4322            lanmgr.lkg.dec.com:nbsession  
ESTABLISHED
  TCP    prnsy5:4336            qar1.lkg.dec.com:telnet  TIME_WAIT
  TCP    prnsy5:1027            localhost:1028         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    prnsy5:1028            localhost:1027         ESTABLISHED

C:\x11\wx\include\netdnet>




jamin is the alpha vms node on which the email arrives.

Does this suggest that there may be a problem on jamin ????

/Eric

    re .34
    
    Unfortunately, all that really says is that there WAS a connection
    with the pop3 port on jamin and that it's been closed normally (the
    close wait state is there just in case there's a retransmitted FIN
    message from the other side that you don't want to accidentally
    match up with a new connection).
    
    You might want to try contacting Qualcomm to find out [if they'll
    tell you] what [non] events precipitate this message. When I saw it
    with the mh pop server, the problem was the lock file; I INFERRED
    that Eudora would try for some number of seconds to lock the
    database (each lock attempt using a separate connection) and gave me
    the message when n tries in a row failed (or m seconds). I often
    found that if I told it to keep trying, it would then succeed. Since
    I was dealing with a different server than you, however, my
    experience may not apply (hence the "go to the source"
    recommendation).
    
    In my experience, Eudora is REALLY bad at recovery from
    communications errors with the server side. It might be worthwhile
    pounding this fact into their heads a little...

    Hmmm.
    
    Paul's mention of locks has some possibilities. You said it's a VMS POP
    server, right? Do you have a large mail store on it? VMSmail can take a
    long time to close, especially if you have a lot of files in your mail
    directory. During that time, if it's doing cleanup of purged messages,
    it can lock the mail database (MAIL.MAI) so nothing else can get in.
    Compressing the mail database will also lock it, and I've seen clusters
    that are running batch jobs that gratuitously compress everybody's mail
    on a daily basis, sometimes during prime hours.
    
    Any chance that's what's going on - that you're trying to access it
    before it's done releasing the database from your (or something else's)
    previous access?
    
    -Tom
                     

> o.k.  Eudora is now in the "tired" state again, and here's
> the netstat:
> 
> 
> C:\x11\wx\include\netdnet>netstat
> 
> Active Connections
> 
>  Proto  Local Address          Foreign Address        State
>  TCP    prnsy5:2309            jamin.lkg.dec.com:telnet  TIME_WAIT
>  TCP    prnsy5:4458            jamin.lkg.dec.com:3333  TIME_WAIT
>  TCP    prnsy5:4526            jamin.lkg.dec.com:pop3  CLOSE_WAIT
>  TCP    prnsy5:4536            jamin.lkg.dec.com:3333  TIME_WAIT
>  TCP    prnsy5:4322            lanmgr.lkg.dec.com:nbsession  
> ESTABLISHED
>  TCP    prnsy5:4336            qar1.lkg.dec.com:telnet  TIME_WAIT
>  TCP    prnsy5:1027            localhost:1028         ESTABLISHED
>  TCP    prnsy5:1028            localhost:1027         ESTABLISHED
> 
> C:\x11\wx\include\netdnet>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> jamin is the alpha vms node on which the email arrives.
> 
> Does this suggest that there may be a problem on jamin ????
> 
> /Eric

	This may have nothing to do with your problem, but I infer from this
  listing the your are running NT 3.51 pre-SP5.  I'd suggest an upgrade to
  Service Pack 5 to at least fix the TIME_WAIT problems.

		Danny

No !  I'm running NT 4.0.

/Eric

As of right now (by the way, Eudora stayed healthy for all of
yesterday afternoon !)  the netstat shows this:

C:\>netstat

Active Connections

  Proto  Local Address          Foreign Address        State
  TCP    prnsy5:4866            mooney.lkg.dec.com:nbsession  
ESTABLISHED
  TCP    prnsy5:1301            jamin.lkg.dec.com:3333  TIME_WAIT
  TCP    prnsy5:1354            jamin.lkg.dec.com:pop3  CLOSE_WAIT
  TCP    prnsy5:1426            jamin.lkg.dec.com:3333  TIME_WAIT
  TCP    prnsy5:1427            jamin.lkg.dec.com:3333  TIME_WAIT
  TCP    prnsy5:1428            jamin.lkg.dec.com:3333  ESTABLISHED
  TCP    prnsy5:1245            jamin.lkg.dec.com:3333  ESTABLISHED
  TCP    prnsy5:4587            qar1.lkg.dec.com:telnet  ESTABLISHED
  TCP    prnsy5:4588            jamin.lkg.dec.com:telnet  ESTABLISHED
  TCP    prnsy5:1027            localhost:1028         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    prnsy5:1028            localhost:1027         ESTABLISHED

C:\>



So my prediction is that if I click on the eudora icon in the
task bar, it will be hosed.  Let's see...

Yup, as soon as I clicked, I get a box saying

	Eudora is tired of waiting for the system to respond.

	Press OK if you wish to continue waiting.

	Cancel will terminate this connection.

	OK       Cancel



I checked my processes on vms and there's no mail processes running
under username osman.


/Eric

>    I checked my processes on vms and there's no mail processes running
>    under username osman.
    
    If something had your MAIL.MAI locked, it wouldn't necessarily be under
    your name.
    
    -Tpm

I really don't think the problem is a lock problem.

If I log into vms and send myself a msg and read it with vmsmail,
all the while eudora is in its "sleep" state, will that prove
that we're not dealing with a lock problem ?

/Eric

    
    	Eric, please see .14.
    

Eudora gives all those automatic stuff too when whatever is
causing this problem is solved.

By the way, one more detail that might help you help me.

When Eudora is in this bad state, task mgr shows Eudora chooing
up 97% of the cpu.

If I kill eudora (by clicking on its "x" in upper right corner), the
process called "eudora" in task mgr is still there !
I have to kill it from task mgr.

/Eric

    
    	Is there a
    
    	File
    	Exit
    
    	option in Eudora?  That's always preferable to X'ing out a session
    	if you have a choice.
    
    	When you X out of a conference in NetNotes, did you ever notice
    	that the UNSEEN map doesn't get updated?  Same, but different.
    

    re .44
    
    I'd concur that closing with File/Exit is likely to be cleaner than
    nuking the window.
    
    Also -- check www.eudora.com for updates if you're not running the
    latest version -- this may be a pipe dream, but they do sometimes
    fix bugs. I'm running 3.0.2b4 of Eudora Pro. 

I just tried "exit" instead of the "x" when Eudora hung again.

That didn't make a difference.

First of all, the hang comes *before* I try to exit with either
method.

Secondly, once I've exited (this time with "exit" from menu), there's
still that spinning process in task mgr.

I can check that web page.  My eudora is "light" 3.0.1(32).

/Eric

    
    	Regardless, use Exit to exit.
    

>>    I'd concur that closing with File/Exit is likely to be cleaner than
>>    nuking the window.

Uh, there's a difference between "X", File->Exit, and Alt-F4?  I thought these
were all synonymous.

						Brian

    
    	Sometimes X is synonymous to a <ctrl>y or <break>, so it's a good
    	habit to use
    
    	File
    	Exit
    
    	instead.
    
    	Most of the "typical" windows applications are just fine with X,
    	like File Manager/Explorer, since there's usually not much going
    	on in the application.  But applications like Exchange are access-
    	ing remote files, etc.