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- Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!destroyer!sharkey!mudos!mju
- From: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst)
- Subject: POP clients for the PC?
- Message-ID: <Brry5u.4Gy@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us>
- Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 05:05:49 GMT
- Organization: The Programmer's Pit Stop, Ann Arbor MI
- Lines: 49
-
- I'm looking for a few good...POP clients. Right now I have tried
- POPMail, but some of our users don't like the user-interface. It also
- doesn't look all that good on a mono screen, which is what most of our
- users have. So, I'm looking for alternatives. Any ideas?
-
- In addition, I'm having a few problems with POPMail. In particular,
- it doesn't seem very robust. Our network has two Ethernet segments
- connected by a Netware machine that routes IPX/SPX and TCP/IP between
- the two, as well as performing fileserver operations for our 15-20
- PCs. We also have two SCO Open Desktop boxes, one of which is
- providing mail services. The PCs are almost all hard diskless,
- booting off a floppy drive and getting everything else from the
- Netware server. One of the problems I've discovered with POPMail is
- that it will hang if it's given the /batch flag and can't contact
- the host. This can happen if, for example, the user puts "popmail
- /batch" in their Netware login script (so as to check for new mail
- when the log in), and then logs in from a station on the opposite
- Ethernet segment from where they usually log in. The network part of
- the IP address, because it's stored in the POPMail config file rather
- than the PC's environment or some-such, will still say the person is
- on the other segment, and so packets will not be routed properly. We
- solve this problem with telnet/ftp by running CUTCP, and putting the
- "myip" CONFIG.TEL statement in the $CUTCP1 environment variable rather
- than a static file. The machine can then set the IP address on
- bootup, rather than having it encoded in a file on the network. Is
- there any way to do this with POPMail?
-
- We also can't get printing to work. None of the PCs have a dedicated
- printer; instead, we have 5 printers hanging off the Netware server
- and available for client use. The Netware system login script uses
- CAPTURE to redirect LPT1: and LPT3: (for historic reasons, sigh...) to
- the laser printer. Printing works fine from the DOS prompt, or from
- within other applications. But when I print something from POPMail,
- it claims to have sent the print job, but nothing ever appears in the
- Netware queue and nothing ever comes out of the printer.
-
- The final problem I have with POPMail is that it doesn't use a
- plain-ASCII configuration file. With CUTCP, I can have a boilerplate
- config file that I edit automatically using sed or an ed script.
- (Yes, I have these Unix utilities in DOS versions...) This can't be
- done with POPMail; instead, I have to copy over the boilerplate, then
- manually run POPMail and go through the configuration menus. Maybe
- that's okay for the end-user, but I, as the network admin, don't like
- it.
-
- --
- Marc Unangst | Real men don't make backups. Real men never
- mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us | accidentally delete files that they're going
- <backbone>!sharkey!mudos!mju| to need later.
-