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Text of TeleFinder Chat from Tuesday, September 23, 1997 11 AM PDT.

In attendance:

From Spider Island: Rusty Tucker,

Sysops: Michael Davidson, mikael fredriksson, Jim S, Ken Sutherland,
Jonathan Paisley, Robert Hall

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     Michael Davidson: I noticed that Rusty's server claims its 8
     minutes after the hour.

     Rusty Tucker: hello!

     mikael fredriksson: Mine did the first time i entered in to the
     chat room

     Michael Davidson: But its 3 minutes before the hour

     Michael Davidson: Hi Rusty.

     mikael fredriksson: Hi!

     Michael Davidson: My responses are very delayed again today

     Rusty Tucker: Mine are quick

     Rusty Tucker: Must be a slow connection.

     Michael Davidson: Rusty, you must have not implemented Vremya yet

     Rusty Tucker: Vremya?

     Michael Davidson: :)

     Michael Davidson: The story of my life

     Michael Davidson: Rusty, the ISP has screwed me....the man that
     takes care of switching my mail to smtp was gone all last week and
     won't be in till Friday...anyway...

     mikael fredriksson: Vremya, Program to set your system clock from
     a atomic one

     Michael Davidson: I have found a new provider in my town that is
     owned by an old friend, he will set me up right I'm sure

     Rusty Tucker: o i c

     Michael Davidson: It works VERY well with Mail Server's scheduler
     and only takes a few minutes to set up (Vremya, that is)

     Rusty Tucker: I take a look. I had buku problems with the Network
     Time control panel, so this might be good

     Michael Davidson: mikael, aren't you the one that uploaded Vremya
     to SI?

     Michael Davidson: I have NEVER had a single problem with Vremya

     mikael fredriksson: yes

     Rusty Tucker: that's good to hear

     Michael Davidson: The skinny is, that I wasn't able to get mail
     with the new beta, but I did see the commands issued in the
     log...I just can't get any mail to go to the mailbox because they
     have it configured wrong.

     Michael Davidson: I did have a few questions about smtp gate and
     RFC 1985

     Rusty Tucker: ok

     Jim S.: Hi all

     Rusty Tucker: Hi Jim

     Michael Davidson: Does smtp gate only issue the ETRN at the
     beginning of the time set to allow for smtp connections and when
     mail is sent.

     Michael Davidson: Jim, Hello!!!

     Michael Davidson: It seems that with 1985, it could shoot off ETRN
     at a sysop specified time.

     Ken Sutherland: evening

     Michael Davidson: Like, e.,g., every 5 minutes

     Jonathan Paisley: hey

     Rusty Tucker: Only at the beginning, any other time the remote
     server will send your mail directly

     Rusty Tucker: Hey Jon!

     Michael Davidson: Jim, did you get my second email ranting, i
     didn't get a reply from you

     Michael Davidson: That's true, that makes sense......duhhhhhhhh :)

     Jim S.: Yes, have not replied, yet..

     mikael fredriksson: Any mail cgi news ? ;-)

     Jonathan Paisley: I will probably release the beta as-is in the
     next few days

     Michael Davidson: Rusty, one more thing, from everything I have
     heard and read, you MUST have an IP# for GETTING mail by way of
     smtp...you thought maybe a domain name was sufficient, I believe.

     Rusty Tucker: yes, you need an IP number to use the Internet

     Rusty Tucker: it does not need to be static though

     Michael Davidson: sorry, a dedicated IP#

     Michael Davidson: Yes, I believe it does to GET mail by way of
     smtp

     Jonathan Paisley: you could get yourself a dynamic DNS

     Jonathan Paisley: that has a TTL of about 5 minutes

     Michael Davidson: TTL??

     Jonathan Paisley: time-to-live

     Jonathan Paisley: you update the record in the domain name server
     every time you log on PPP and update the DNS with your current IP

     Michael Davidson: Name an example of one Jonathan

     Jonathan Paisley: how do you mean?

     Michael Davidson: I mean what product name would allow me to do
     this, any mac based DNS?

     Jonathan Paisley: I'm not sure, but I know monolith Internet
     services provide a free service that does this, but you have to
     have your domain name in their root domain.

     Michael Davidson: cool, but I can get a static IP# already and I
     have a domain name associated with it already, so I guess I don't
     need it, but its nice to know it can be done

     Michael Davidson: Anyway, again, Rusty, I was told and I read some
     info which implies (almost explicitly) that you must have a static
     ip# for getting smtp mail.

     Michael Davidson: I may be wrong, I wish I knew for sure

     Rusty Tucker: As long as you have a domain name that can be
     converted to the correct IP at the time of delivery, SMTP will
     work.

     Rusty Tucker: A static IP makes this easier, but not necessary.

     Michael Davidson: Bottom line Rusty, it will be a little longer
     before I can test RFC 1985; nevertheless even for those with
     dedicated lines, it is a good thing to have for when there
     connection or server go down.

     Jonathan Paisley: this is where updating your DNS when you log on
     useful

     Michael Davidson: I buy that Rusty

     Jonathan Paisley: Michael: Why can't you use Spider Island's mail
     gateway and pick up when you connect to your ISP?

     Michael Davidson: right Jonathan. either a static ip or updating
     your DNS each logon is necessary

     Michael Davidson: by which gateway, smtp?

     Jonathan Paisley: no, using TF-TF transfer

     Rusty Tucker: TFnet

     Jonathan Paisley: yah

     Michael Davidson: I could use smtp, esp. since rusty implemented
     1985, except my isp tech are inept, except for the guy that's out
     of town

     Michael Davidson: I do use tfnet now

     Jonathan Paisley: You could perhaps persuade your ISP to run TF
     Server/Mail server on a spare mac if they have one

     Michael Davidson: I MUST use tfnet now

     Ken Sutherland: please write 2000 times, i must use tfnet or else

     Michael Davidson: Then I would have to remotely handle it, and I
     don't want that, although with TB2, it wouldn't be the worst thing

     Jonathan Paisley: At highlander we use this solution

     Jonathan Paisley: We barely ever have to touch the machine

     Rusty Tucker: I like that, get your ISP to buy a TF license and
     install it there ! :)

     Michael Davidson: Cool Jonathan, first time I even thought about
     something like that

     Michael Davidson: Shouldn't ALL isp's have a TF license?

     Michael Davidson: there should be a law

     Michael Davidson: Jim, any headway yet on Popsicle?

     Jim S.: Most ISP can't spell Mac much less TF:-)

     Michael Davidson: Rusty, does the mail come from an isp pop mail
     account in RFC 822 format

     Rusty Tucker: yep, has to

     Jonathan Paisley: [just out of interest, I've just registered a
     DNS address 'jon.ml.org' Cool huh!]

     Jim S.: Do we need it?

     Jonathan Paisley: you don't need to even look at the content of
     each mail message

     Jonathan Paisley: just stick it in the mail server folder

     Michael Davidson: Jim, hear that. Jim and I are trying to get the
     pop gate going

     Michael Davidson: ok, now the other problem is attachments to mail

     Jonathan Paisley: that's irrelevant since they're encoded in the
     POP3/RFC message

     Michael Davidson: will that be any prob for Jim, or will MS handle
     them

     Michael Davidson: what's ml.org Jonathan

     Michael Davidson: groovy Jon about the attachments.

     Michael Davidson: That makes Jim's job even easier

     Jonathan Paisley: MS handles everything. all popsicle needs to do
     is retrieve the data from the POP3 server and dump it to
     individual files in the mail server spool folder

     Jonathan Paisley: ml.org is Monolith Internet services

     Jim S.: AGAIN: Do wee need Popsicle, as a response in Sysop
     conference says we don't, Rusty??

     Michael Davidson: except maybe breaking up large attachments into
     temp files

     Michael Davidson: Do they need to be individual files Jonathan

     Jonathan Paisley: why? Mail Server can handle even the largest of
     files.

     Michael Davidson: Yes Jim

     Rusty Tucker: I didn't see that note Jim, which topic?

     Jonathan Paisley: No, Popsicle could take each message and append
     it to a file, separating each msg with a NULL (0) character. The
     file type/creator is 'mMsg' 'UL99'

     Michael Davidson: we need a pop gate Jim (i haven't seen the
     response either Jim)

     Rusty Tucker: u mean Drew's message?

     Michael Davidson: Jonathan, sounds like you could write it in a
     day

     Jim S.: Rusty: Sysop

     Jonathan Paisley: drew's talking about a different thing

     Rusty Tucker: He's an ISP that has SENDMAIL that supports ETRN

     Rusty Tucker: If he's your ISP, you don't need it.

     Rusty Tucker: But, there seem to be a lot of ISP's that prefer
     setting up universal POP accounts.

     Michael Davidson: Jim, you didn't make it clear what popsicle was
     in that message.

     Michael Davidson: That is true rusty, you can get unified pop
     accounts easily and don't need an IP#, which is harder to get

     Rusty Tucker: I think that the UNIX pop servers have better
     abilities to report on traffic, mail store size and so on.

     Jim S.: Michael: Look at TF.Sysop message from Drew

     Michael Davidson: A popgate will definitely enhance TF's
     salability. For $20 a month, you can provide Internet email for
     all your business reps

     Rusty Tucker: And as MD says, there's none of the dynamic IP
     hassles.

     Ken Sutherland: please note, our tf server at our isp is a legal
     second site , i own 21823 and 20504 as verified by spiderisland

     Michael Davidson: The main hassle is handling the return paths, it
     would seem

     Jonathan Paisley: how do you mean Michael?

     Michael Davidson: Well, the mail goes to the first mail account,
     the unified account, then is taken and "forwarded" to the TF BBS
     local mail address. The TF user should not reply to the unified
     account, so you have to handle this little problem

     Jonathan Paisley: Again, this is all irrelevant, because all the
     necessary information is in the RFC822 headers

     Ken Sutherland: also for those reading the chat log, all demo
     keycode requests are checked with spiderisland, rusty will deal
     with all bogus tf serial numbers

     Michael Davidson: Then, given everything you have said, popgate
     only has to put one line into each message (for MS to use for
     sending to local mailboxes). Thus, it is simply a get pop mail and
     that's it

     Jim S.: If Popsicle is a uses Pop3 is any reformat required for
     822

     Jonathan Paisley: Michael: which extra line is this that is
     required?

     Rusty Tucker: no, just capture the data and save it as a file

     Jonathan Paisley: ...what I've been saying all along...

     Michael Davidson: don't you need an X-Local-To even

     Jonathan Paisley: no, that's added by intermediate mail servers

     Rusty Tucker: Just make type and creator

     Rusty Tucker: hParm.fileParam.ioFlFndrInfo.fdCreator = 'R*ch';

     hParm.fileParam.ioFlFndrInfo.fdType = 'R822';

     Jonathan Paisley: Mail server will resolve the local user name
     from the proper 'To' field

     Rusty Tucker: Creator can be anything actually.

     Michael Davidson: Then, Rusty, POPSICLE or whatever the name
     should definitely be implemented ASAP. It is a way for businesses
     with a $20 account to handle all their mail

     Michael Davidson: I think that it could be BUILT INTO MS

     Jim S.: Michael: can that program I sent you be used to see if
     your ISP support rfc1985?

     Jonathan Paisley: rusty: Presumably it could also be a 'mMsg'
     file? and therefore one file could be used for all the incoming
     messages per session

     Michael Davidson: Mine does support it JIM, but I didn't try it
     with your program, probably could be. But then so can SMTP gate in
     5.5.3 beta

     Rusty Tucker: I'd stick with the R822 file, mMsg files are
     slightly different, but R822 is pure RFC822/MIME

     Michael Davidson: I would think it would be one big file rather
     than creating multiple little mail messages, but I may be wrong

     Jonathan Paisley: ok, but one RFC822 message per file? Can more
     than one message be inserted into an R822 file by delimiting with
     Nulls rusty?

     Michael Davidson: This sounds too easy not to implement

     Rusty Tucker: I'd make multiple files for a few reasons.

     Jim S.: You are wrong

     Jonathan Paisley: who is

     Michael Davidson: Jeez, the advantages are great, the programing
     is minimal

     Ken Sutherland: all of you

     Ken Sutherland: i think Rusty shot JR

     Jim S.: a small file on my system is 8k

     Rusty Tucker: a- it aids in error handling ( lose connect , just
     delete current local message )

     Michael Davidson: probably I'm wrong Jon

     Jonathan Paisley: Jim: good point there

     Rusty Tucker: b- ms can begin processing the incoming msgs as soon
     as the file is closed.

     Michael Davidson: Good point Rusty,

     Rusty Tucker: c- there is not a lick of conversion to worry about.

     Ken Sutherland: rusty, how many Pop3 can ms handle all at once

     Rusty Tucker: d- you'll never have too many files on the system
     because MS will parse them out as soon as they come in.

     Jonathan Paisley: rusty: but the program could easily shorten the
     file to the last successfully retrieved message if the connection
     is lost

     Jim S.: the size does not make any dif. as they do stick around
     long.

     Jim S.: add: not

     Jonathan Paisley: heh

     Rusty Tucker: righto Jim

     Michael Davidson: Would the networking code be the only real
     problem with creating this POP gateway?

     Rusty Tucker: Single files will actually use less disk space.

     Rusty Tucker: Oh one more thing

     Jonathan Paisley: rusty: please explain point 'c' a bit further

     Jim S.: Rusty: right

     Jonathan Paisley: rusty: How will single files use less disk
     space?

     Rusty Tucker: make the file type a private type until your done
     processing it.

     Jonathan Paisley: but of course ;)

     Rusty Tucker: cua ms will sweep them out before your session is
     done

     Rusty Tucker: cua = because

     Jonathan Paisley: interesting abbreviation

     Jonathan Paisley: even

     Michael Davidson: If the networking code is not a real problem to
     implement, I see absolutely no good reason not to implement pop 3
     gateway asap...surely it enhances TF more than anything else on
     the web

     Rusty Tucker: c- ( explained ) If you use the mMsg format, there
     are some minor ( very ) diffs from straight RFC822

     Michael Davidson: Why mess with conversion when you don't have to?

     Rusty Tucker: ( working from memory ) CR is the delimiter, and
     there is a message separator.

     Ken Sutherland: fyi , i ran hfs+ this weekend and a folder that
     held 384 emails shrank from 11.4mb to 1.4mb, I cant wait till
     November for OS8.0.1 to be released as it will incorporate hfs+

     Ken Sutherland: anyone else tried it?

     Michael Davidson: I haven't Ken, how big is the drive partition

     Ken Sutherland: 2gb

     mikael fredriksson: only 8.01 no HFS +

     Ken Sutherland: 1k files became 1k

     Michael Davidson: wow, I would have assumed much bigger

     Jonathan Paisley: what was the allocation table size?

     Ken Sutherland: just think about all those users and there email
     folders

     Ken Sutherland: standard format

     Ken Sutherland: all i did was select erase disk in system

     Jim S.: Key: Once switched no going back to HFS ?

     Ken Sutherland: this works great with the mailbox cleanup we added
     to online assistant for telefinder

     Ken Sutherland: would you want to

     Jim S.: Removal disk.

     Jim S.: Testing?

     Ken Sutherland: i am going to dup my users area and put it on the
     hfs+ drive and compare size

     Ken Sutherland: my test drive is a Micropolis 2gb

     Ken Sutherland: and i goofed

     Ken Sutherland: it was partitioned to 800mb, not 2gb

     Jim S.: BTW is there any change to NU's Speed disk for OS8?

     Ken Sutherland: NU 3.5.1

     Ken Sutherland: not yet

     Rusty Tucker: Yep, and you need another for 8.01

     Rusty Tucker: Are there ANY HFS+ tools out?

     Ken Sutherland: is there an issue we need to know about?

     Rusty Tucker: Yes, there are not any low level disk editors for
     HFS+

     Rusty Tucker: IE you can't recover a trashed disk

     Ken Sutherland: well it is still alpha (big grin)

     Rusty Tucker: I would not put anything of value on an HFS+ disk,
     unless it is being religiously stored to tape.

     Ken Sutherland: me 2

     Ken Sutherland: i was just testing it

     Jim S.: Is HFS+ same kind of stuff MS is hype on Win98?

     Jonathan Paisley: a user on SI rusty?

     Rusty Tucker: yep

     Rusty Tucker: Terry White

     Jonathan Paisley: cool. I'll get in touch

     Rusty Tucker: http://www.macgroup.org

     Rusty Tucker: Jim, did you catch the note about the 'private file
     type'

     Jim S.: yep

     Rusty Tucker: when you process a message into mil servers spool
     folder, its good practice to keep it as a private file type

     Rusty Tucker: until it's finished writing and closed.

     Jim S.: Like done for News>

     Rusty Tucker: This keeps MS from trying to use it while its busy.

     Jim S.: change to BBEitd type

     Rusty Tucker: And will keep MS from processing a partial file if
     the system crashes for any reason before the message is complete.

     Rusty Tucker: Great, just want to get that bit of info into the
     log.

     Jim S.: I lost my connection so could not get log will get later.

     Rusty Tucker: the log will be online at
     www.spiderisland.com/~chat/

     Jim S.: Nap time... CU

     Michael Davidson: Given the simplicity of the task for Pop gate,
     why not build it in Rusty?

     Rusty Tucker: Any last q's?

     Michael Davidson: Or is there networking code that would be a pain
     to implement

     Michael Davidson: MS is almost the whole gateway already

     Rusty Tucker: Nope, I can either put it in the every growing
     queue....

     Rusty Tucker: or someone else can build it.

     Rusty Tucker: Its not any easier or harder either way

     Jonathan Paisley: heh, the latter is preferable for obvious
     reasons

     Jonathan Paisley: 'build it' and debug it

     Rusty Tucker: I'd build it as a gateway app, anyway

     Michael Davidson: I will test any and all beta's, alphas etc for a
     pop gate

     Michael Davidson: I will test your 1985 as soon as I get my ISP to
     cooperate Rusty

     Jim S.: For me to test I will have to get a Domain name, etc.

     Jonathan Paisley: Jim: no you wont

     Michael Davidson: why not Jon

     Jim S.: ??

     Jonathan Paisley: just make a POP3 account on your TF server, have
     a POP3 node running and shove some RFC822 mail messages in the
     user's mailbox

     Michael Davidson: It should work with a single account, but it
     will need a unified domain-wide account to be effectively tested

     Jonathan Paisley: The job of the program is to get those messages
     out of the user's mailbox and into mail server's spool folder ;)

     Michael Davidson: Also, couldn't it be made to go to multiple
     mailboxes. This would be nice for some users

     Jonathan Paisley: Michael: there is no difference from the
     client's point of view with a domain-wide account

     Jonathan Paisley: Michael: I don't think you quite understand the
     protocol completely...

     Jim S.: NO NO, my program get from the ISP and put in file(s).

     Michael Davidson: you could get your mail at your isp mail account
     and from your TF account in your TF BBS mailbox

     Michael Davidson: I understand that Jonathan, but...

     Jonathan Paisley: I know, but the idea is that for testing you
     pretend that your local POP3 account IS your ISP's account

     Robert Hall: hello....what did i miss :)

     Michael Davidson: I see, but then do you know exactly what I mean
     when I say domain-wide account

     Jonathan Paisley: yes. [i think so] all mail messages for a
     particular domain (or more than one domain) are put in that
     mailbox

     Michael Davidson: Any_name@mydomain.com goes into a single pop
     mailbox. Then the pop gate ...Yes you got it

     Jonathan Paisley: For testing, what I would do is copy some RFC822
     mail messages randomly from some of my users mailboxes and put
     them all into this test account that I have been speaking of.

     Michael Davidson: True you can use a single Pop3 account, but then
     only one name is tested

     Jonathan Paisley: 'one name is tested' how do you mean?

     Michael Davidson: That would work too, for testing. But I have a
     domain-wide account and that would be "real-world" testing

     Jonathan Paisley: as I say, there is no difference to the client

     Michael Davidson: the normal pop 3 account is to one name, for
     example smuck@domain.com;

     Robert Hall: ? (off the topic, may have been covered earlier)

     Michael Davidson: I want to see mail that comes to each of my
     users names go into their TF BBS mailboxes

     Jonathan Paisley: Michael: A normal Pop3 account in the form
     username@domain.com means that the client logs in as 'username' to
     the server 'domain.com'. It's nothing to do with the mail address

     Rusty Tucker: GA Robert

     Jonathan Paisley: Michael: As I keep reiterating, all this will be
     done automatically. Provided your ISP has set up the domain wide
     POP3 mailbox properly, there will BE NO problems

     Robert Hall: just curious how Johnathan's FTP plug in was coming
     along, and also, the ETRN command works good Rusty, tested it out
     (we have a static connection, but i tried it temporarily on a
     schedule and it worked fine)

     Michael Davidson: Yes, but the names that come into my domain wide
     account aren't just username.

     Robert Hall: Do you plan on implementing the VRFY command??? don't
     know what frc it is

     Rusty Tucker: Good to hear!

     Michael Davidson: I believe you Jonathan. I just want to watch it
     happen. I've wanted this for 2 years at least

     Rusty Tucker: VRFY is used to verify an email address.

     Jonathan Paisley: ‚aren't just usernameé It doesn't matter; it's
     TF Mail Server's responsibility to deal with them

     Rusty Tucker: It is not widely supported.

     Robert Hall: i mean RFC, i guess the VRFY command allows you to
     check for a certain name at that mails server, example: I type
     VRFY rusty and it say RUSTY

     Robert Hall: oops I'm a slow typer today....

     Michael Davidson: I understand that MS is responsible to deal with
     the many users names Jon

     Jonathan Paisley: Robert: The FTP plug is coming along nicely. I
     have implemented the /~user name/ directories we discussed last
     week. Access Privs seem to be fully secure, and I'm now working on
     the binhex/macbinary/text transfer modes

     Rusty Tucker: Hey guys, time for me to get some lunch.

     Rusty Tucker: Will be back at 6pm!!

     Michael Davidson: Hey thanks Rusty.

     Jonathan Paisley: I might too!

     Robert Hall: cool Jonathan....maker sure you let us know when you
     need some testers :)

     Jonathan Paisley: ok. will do

     mikael fredriksson: ;-)

     Jim S.: Michael: I just got you email.

     Jonathan Paisley: bfn folks

     Michael Davidson: Okay Jim..all the concerns I mentioned in it
     have been discussed here and seem not to be a problem.

     Michael Davidson: Bye Jonathan, thanks!

     Jim S.: Ok. I have made a copy and will study it. bfj.

     Michael Davidson: Bye all

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	September 26, 1997 -- ©Copyright 1997, Spider Island Software