New POP3 rules [I]

[fcsnc]

A long, long time ago in a land far, far away (about a week ago last Tuesday) I moved my domain to Powweb. I then quickly and easily set up my main POP3 e-mail account, which is "tom."

Next, I had to access that account using nnnnn.tom as a Powweb "username," which is fine.

Then things got a little confused and I deleted tom and tried to create tom again. When it got activated, it wasn't nnnnn.tom anymore--it was now nnnnnn.tom1.

Funny thing is, both accounts still worked, even though the original one was technically "deleted" and no longer appeared in my "members area" list.

This weekend, when the new OPS was installed, one of those accounts stopped working. Unfortunately, I forget which.

Now, I decided that I would just straighten all this out by deleting nnnnn.tom (and / or nnnnn.tom1) and creating tom from scratch.

Here's what happened. The new OPS won't let me have a new POP3 account "tom" because it's too short (has to be at least 4 characters). Not only that, it won't let me have a new POP3 account "nnnnn.tom" -- too many special characters.

I am known the world over by "Tom@<domain>.com." Help! I'm lost in cyberspace!

Can anyone (hopefully Starr) point me in the right direction here?

-Tom

[fcsnc]

andrew? or winnie? or anyone who knows?

please

[Starr]

You have "tom" forwarded to tbrown9@triad.rr.com.

[fcsnc]

And it's a real e-mail address too, and it works, and it's a good thing that I created that alias while I was waiting for your answer.

I'm still waiting for your answer.

P.S. I didn't mind being the 9th tbrown9 to sign up with a great ISP like RoadRunner, but I'll be ?#$#^Yed if I'm going to be Tom77 at my own ****** domain.

If if makes it any easier for you, I just deleted all the aliases for my domain. Now, how about some basic instructions?

In fact, let's get down to brass tacks here. For the first 30 days I had this domain here .... you know, the 30 days during which you can get your money back? I was perfectly happy with having my very own unique number in front of all the POP3 names on Mercury. Apparently, you have:
- Removed that feature from POP3
- Forced everybody on Mercury to have a unique name, even for all 50 of his/her POP3 accounts
- Changed all the rules, including the administration tools, without advanced notice
- Reduced the 50MB e-mail storage allowance to 10MB
- Ignored requests for features such as being able to check one's disk space and password-protected directories
- Invalidated at least 50% of your online documentation

and I could add more to the list.

[Andrew]

Tom,

You seem very bitter. I can assure you that the changes will benefit you tremendously in the long run. Yes, you can have "tom@yourdomain.com" as a POP account. But you would need to pick a username that is unique to the system (basically we can not have 2 "tom" on our system). You can pick your own username to check the POP account for "tom@yourdomain.com". In the old control panel, the username was already pre-selected for you which were something like 1412.tom. If you still have problem with setting up your POP account, you can email me directly at andrew@powweb.com and I will create it for you.

[fcsnc]

Andrew,

By my reading of the RFC's, if I send e-mail to:
GOOFUS@SOMEWHERE.ORG
Goofus@somewhere.org
GoOfFuS@SoMeWhErE.Org

..etc. (hoping you get my drift), and as long as there is someone named Goofus there and that SOMEWHERE.ORG is a real domain, then Goofus should receive all of my e-mail.

The way you folks have this thing implemented would bounce all 300 of my e-mails unless someone has gone into your OPS panel and spelled a username some *very specific way* and I happened to get it right someplace in there.

Now let's take a real-world example, using mercury.powweb.com.

I created a username TomBrown, which must be unique because it took it. Now, I find that I cannot add another username tombrown or Tombrown or tomBrown, because OPS doesn't consider it unique ... which is GOOD.

Next, I created an alias tom@fcsnc.com and forwarded it to TomBrown. Now, anyone who sends an e-mail to
Tom@FCSNC.com
tom@fcsnc.com
TOM@FCSNC.COM

etc. (hoping you get my drift).

ALL OF THESE E-MAILS BOUNCE because there is no user "tombrown@mercury.powweb.com." And when I say BOUNCE I mean BOUNCE. They actually come back.

This is *NOT GOOD*

Anyone familiar with the RFC's would have to agree, I think, that this thing you are calling POP3 is not an actual POP3 account (at least, not within MY domain), since POP3 is not case-sensitive for the username .... only for the password.

So, I repeat my contention that a couple of weeks ago I had purchased the right to 50 POP e-mail accounts for MY domain. Today I have the right to only 10 of them, and in actuality they are NOT real POP accounts because they are not following Internet standards of behavior.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong.

[Starr]

As everyone should know, domain names and email addresses are NOT case sensitive. Alias@YourDomin.com is the exact same thing as alias@yourdomain.com. Same goes for http://YourDomain.com is the same as http://yourdomain.com.

Second, mercury.powweb.com is NOT an email server; it is a web server and does not accept email sent to it. So sending email to anything@mercury.powweb.com will obviously bounce. If you can show me where it states to use your web server as part of your email address, I will make sure it is immediately corrected.

Try sending your tests to anything@YOURdomain and let us know the results.

FYI, you cannot use CAPS in your usernames. TomBrown as a username wont work, tombrown will. This is why you’re getting the error:

<TomBrown@mail.powweb.com>: unknown user: "tombrown"

[fcsnc]

Okay, Starr, I apologize for making one little error in the bounce report. You are so right: The bouncer WAS mail.powweb.com, and not mercury. I am so very, very, sorry. The bounce contains 3 parts. The first part is a friendly notice from your Postfix program!
==============================
Date sent: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 08:47:50 -0800 (PST)
From: MAILER-DAEMON@mail.powweb.com (Mail Delivery System)
Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
To: brownth@zeus.co.forsyth.nc.us

This is the Postfix program at host mail.powweb.com.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned
below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.

For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the message returned below.

The Postfix program

<TomBrown@mail.powweb.com>: unknown user: "tombrown"
==============================
That's the first part of the multi-part message in the bounce.

Here's the second part (the actual RFC822 error!). Now I know you're going to accuse me of causing your server to encode an invalid recipient, but read on.
==============================

Final-Recipient: rfc822; TomBrown@mail.powweb.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; unknown user: "tombrown"
==============================
Finally, I submit for your inspection the third part of what bounced ... the original bounced message itself!!!

==============================
From: "Tom Brown" <brownth@zeus.co.forsyth.nc.us>
Organization: Forsyth County
To: Tom@FCSNC.com
Date sent: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 11:48:14 -0500
Subject: Test C
Send reply to: brownth@co.forsyth.nc.us
Priority: normal

Sent to "Tom@FCSNC.com"


Starr - the sender of this message addressed it to what at the time was a valid forwarding address set up in the "SMTP" portion of your wonderful new OPS as "tom@fcsnc.com".

The forwarding address was selected -- again in your wonderful OPS -- as a POP account that had been faithfully processed through the "USERS" portion. You know, that wonderful portion that lets people create virtually whatever username they have been wanting to for all these months.

Now, if TomBrown is such an invalid User name, then why does your wonderful OPS accept it? I mean, it's there!!! Look at it!

Next, if TomBrown is such an invalid User name, then why does your wonderful OPS happily redirect aliases to it?

(I'm sorry, but I deleted the alias ... I just can't afford to have my mail business e-mail bouncing.)

I know you'll delete this post right away, so I'll just go ahead and tell you straight out that -- again -- I RESENT BEING TOLD THAT EVERYTHING IS MY FAULT. If this is your attitude (and apparently it is), then good luck surviving in the computing business as long as I have.

[Starr]

Tom, I won’t delete anything if it’s at least partly constructive. Rude, obnoxious, mean spirited posts, yes, I will delete.

As for this error, again, this is because you created a username that couldn’t exist. Once you create a correct username, it will work like it is supposed to.

As for why our system allowed you to create it, this will be addressed (it a new system, yes there will be bugs). Our developers will make sure that you can’t create usernames that the system won’t allow. I will have something added to the “users” tab today in the meantime. :)

FYI, this is in the FAQ section.

Folks, please understand that Ops is a new system. You may find things that don’t seem to work, or flat out are wrong. Just let us know and we will either show you how to correctly use it, or fix it if it needs fixing.