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- From: jik@GZA.COM (Jonathan I. Kamens)
- Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.sources.wanted,comp.answers,news.answers
- Subject: Mail Archive Server software list
- Supersedes: <archive_servers_743403610@GZA.COM>
- Followup-To: comp.mail.misc
- Date: 22 Aug 1993 01:02:35 -0400
- Organization: Geer Zolot Associates
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- Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu
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- Expires: 5 Oct 1993 05:00:19 GMT
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-
- Archive-name: mail/archive-servers
- Version: $Id: archive_servers,v 1.56 1993/07/28 11:50:08 jik Exp $
-
- A Summary of Available Mail Archive Server Software
- ---------------------------------------------------
-
- Mail archive servers are programs which receive incoming mail
- messages, interpret them, and take action based on them. For example,
- two tasks which might be performed by mail servers are handling
- subscriptions to mailing lists and redistributing messages sent to the
- lists; and delivering files to users based on incoming requests
-
- This posting focuses, primarily, on mail servers which run under
- UNIX. For each server listed below, I provide the following
- information, if known:
-
- Name
- Author
- Maintainer
- Latest known version
- How to get it
- Implementation language
- Supported platforms
- Comments
-
- If you can fill any of the blanks or have comments about anything
- written below, or if you have new servers to add to the list, please
- let me know. If you would like to ask me to change this posting in
- some way, the method I appreciate most is for you to actually make the
- desired modifications to a copy of the posting, and then to send me
- the modified posting, or a context diff between my posted version and
- your modified version (if you do the latter, make sure to include in
- your mail the "Version:" line from my posted version). Submitting
- changes in this way makes dealing with them easier for me and helps to
- avoid misunderstandings about what you are suggesting.
-
- There are two sections below. The first describes the various
- archive servers, and the second lists known sites from which the
- archive servers can be obtained, and how to access them. The "How to
- get it" fields of the archive server descriptions refer to the site
- listings.
-
- John Bazik <jsb@cs.brown.edu>, Stephen R. van den Berg
- <berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de>, Warren Burstein <warren@itex.jct.ac.il>,
- Nigel Metheringham <nigelm@ohm.york.ac.uk>, Mike Northam
- <mbn@fpssun.fps.com>, Chip Salzenberg <chip@tct.com>, and Serge
- Vakulenko <vak@kiae.su> provided comments about and corrections to
- this posting.
-
- ------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- Archive Server Summary
- ----------------------
-
-
- Name: Almanac
- Authors: Erik Bennett and Chris Hansen
- Maintainer: almanac-admin@oes.orst.edu
- Implementation language: C (configured with Bourne shell)
- How to get it: ftp from /pub/almanac-x.x.tar.Z at oes.orst.edu
- (where x.x is the current version)
- Latest know version: 1.4
- Supported platforms: SunOS, HP/UX, UTek, AIX (RS 6000), most BSD 4.3
- Comments: (Chris Hansen <hansenc@oes.orst.edu>)
- Requires sendmail and gdbm
- Can split files on user-defined size limit
- Good user & admin documentation
- Has blacklist
- Logging (through syslog) and usage utilities
- Comes with supplement for automatic mailing list management
- Load checking or queuing left to sendmail
- Main advantage is configuration table:
- Maps user commands to shell commands
- Can have any number of user commands
- Encoding, Filtering, Compression all configurable
- Most other things configurable
- (Possible disadvantages:
- Table can get complicated.
- Good knowledge of shell advised).
-
-
- Name: B-Server
- Author: Budi Rahardjo <rahardj@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
- Implementation language: bourne shell
- How to get it: Get "b-server.shar" from grasp1.
- Comments: (Dave Shaver <shaver@convex.com>)
- - Don't need to create system-wide alias (uses sendmail
- .forward file)
- - One shell script
- - Can refuse to provide service to certain people
- - Has file and request limits
- - 4 user commands: help, index, send, get
- Comments: (john.Latala@Waterloo.NCR.COM)
- - Only does text files
-
-
- Name: Bart (Brode's Archive Retrieval Thang)
- Author: Jon Brode <brode@icpsr.umich.edu>
- Latest known version: beta release
- How to get it: Send E-mail to <brode@icpsr.umich.edu> and ask for it.
- Implementation Language: C
- Support platforms: Expects BSD, sendmail and ndbm, but might work with
- some tweaking in other environments.
- Comments: (from author)
- Beta release can be obtained from the author but should not be
- redistributed; the final release will have more lenient
- distribution conditions.
- Runs from alias or .forward file
- Very careful about not overloading server. (does load checking on BSD
- machines, in addition to the other things)
- 5 commands: help, index, path, send, sendb ("sendb" automatically
- encodes the file, "send" determines whether the file needs to
- be encoded first)
- Can request files by parts. Useful for requesting files larger
- than quota and retrieving pieces that get lost in the mail
- Can do per-user quota checking.
- It has a man page!
- Has uuencode encoding built into C code, does not support other
- encoding types yet.
- No user error notification on bad requests.
-
-
- Name: Clarkson
- Author: Michael DeCorte
- How to get it: Get "archive-server" from CLARKSON.
- Implementation language: bourne shell, awk
- Comments: (Tom Fitzgerald <fitz@wang.com>)
- Advantages:
- Most flexible options for archiving, compressing, encoding and
- slicing result.
- Very nice load-limiting.
- Disadvantages:
- Many BSDism's (I tried porting it to SysV without much luck).
- Can't return several requested items, one item per mail message.
- It insists on packaging up all requests into a single archive,
- splitting the archive at random points and mailing the result.
- Can't store items compressed and have them mailed back to the
- requestor decompressed.
-
-
- Name: DECWRL
- Author: Brian Reid.
- Implementation language: bourne shell, awk, a little bit of C
- How to get it: (1) Get "decwrl.shar" from grasp1. (2) Get
- "/pub/src/mail/archive.tar.Z" via anonymous ftp from
- ftp.cs.widener.edu (slightly modified).
- Comments: (Dave Shaver <shaver@convex.com>)
- - Written with many shell scripts and a few AWK scripts
- - Very careful about not overloading server machine
- (Remember, this used to run on an over-worked VAX.)
- - Very easy to install; best of the group?
- - Code is all quite generic
- - Good at letting person making request know what happened
- (No black holes for mail.)
- - Good user-level docs (especially the "help" file)
- - Very fair queuing system; people can't make "pigs" of
- themselves
- - 4 user commands: help, index, send, path
- Comments: (Tom Fitzgerald <fitz@wang.com>)
- Advantages:
- Simplest.
- Very nice load-limiting, can be set up to run only at night.
- Easily configurable, and portable to Sys V with a little work.
- Disadvantages:
- All items in archive must be text, and are sent out as-is. No
- packaging options at all.
- Written in sh, may be a heavy system load (when running).
- Comments: (Chris Siebenmann <cks@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu>)
- We use the DECWRL server for the CA*NET info server; I picked
- it over the other ones (primarily the Clarkson one) because it
- was sufficiently small and clear that I could read all the
- shell scripts and be pretty confidant that it had no surprises
- and I understood what was going on. One could probably run it
- out of a .forward file with some work writing at-based
- frontends, but it prefers to be installed and run with cron
- and an alias.
-
-
- Name: deliver
- Author: Chip Salzenberg <chip@tct.com>
- Latest known version: 2.1, patchlevel 10
- How to get it: From the comp.sources.reviewed archives.
- Implementation language: C
- Comments: This isn't a full-fledged archive server, it's just a
- program to reroute incoming mail. Which isn't to say that it
- can't be used to write an archive server....
- Comments: (Brian.Onn@Canada.Sun.COM)
- I've written our mail based archive server entirely in Deliver
- shell scripts. It's not as full featured as the other ones,
- but it can easily be expanded to become that. The beauty of
- deliver is that it is entirely shell script based.
-
-
- Name: ftpmail
- Author: Lee McLoughlin <lmjm@doc.ic.ac.uk>
- Latest known version: 1.19
- How to get it: ftp from src.doc.ic.ac.uk:packages/ftpmail/ftpmail.shar
- Implementation language: perl
- Supported platforms: SunOS, HP/UX, AIX (RS 6000), BSD 4.3, System 5.4
- Comments: Can use both mail and sendmail to send reponses.
- With sendmail can also return MIME multipart responses.
- Supports mime, uuencode, atob, user selectable splitting.
- Built in logging.
- Very easy to install.
- Command compatible with ftpmail server at Decwrl.
-
-
- Name: KISS
- Author: T. William Wells <bill@twwells.com>
- Latest known version: 1.0
- How to get it: (1) Get "kiss.shar" from grasp1. (2) Get
- "misc/kiss.shar" from JASON-ARCHIVE (slightly modified). (3)
- Get "/pub/archives/alt.sources/kiss-server_bill" via anonymous
- ftp from hydra.helsinki.fi.
- Implementation language: bourne shell
- Comments: (Dave Shaver <shaver@convex.com>)
- - Simple. 8-)
- - One shell script, plus a user-supplied program
- - No batching, quotas, or scheduling.
- - 5 user commands: help, index, send, path, quit
- - Good install docs
-
-
- Name: listserv
- Author: Anastasios C. Kotsikonas (tasos@cs.bu.edu)
- Latest known version: 5.41
- How to get it: From /pub/listserv on cs.bu.edu via anonymous ftp.
- Also in alt.sources archives with subject "unix-listserv" in
- three parts.
- Implementation language: C, plus some UNIX-style shell scripts.
- Supported platforms: UNIX, presumably.
- Comments: This is a mailing list server rather than a mail archive
- server. It is meant to automatically run mailing lists,
- dealing with subscriptions, unsubscriptions, message
- distribution, etc. Like the BITNET listserv system, but for
- UNIX. The newest version does appear to have some support for
- archives as well.
-
-
- Name: Logix
- Author: Jan-Piet Mens
- Latest known version: 1.01
- How to get it: Get the posting entitled "Mail-Server Part 01/01" from
- the alt.sources archives. An improved version (Bill Silvert's
- -- see his comments below) is available via anonymous ftp from
- /pub/unix/mail-server.tar.Z on biome.bio.ns.ca.
- Implementation language: C
- Comments: (Bill Silvert <silvert@biome.bio.ns.ca>)
- Changes I have made include support for optional (as opposed
- to compulsary) uuencoding using the Dumas uuencode, which
- makes it possible to run uudecode (the Dumas version) on a
- complete multi-part mail file without editing it first, and
- improved messages.
-
-
- Name: MailServ
- Author: Dave DeBry <debry@peruvian.cs.utah.edu>
- Latest known version: 1.4
- How to get it: Get the posting entitled "MailServ 1.4" from the
- alt.sources archives.
- Implementation language: C
- Comments: (from the author)
- o allows for as many users as you want per list,
- o users can be mailed to "quietly" (ie: their name won't be
- found anywhere in the mailing... good for nosy sysadmins at
- other sites),
- o has a request server so users can get any files you make
- available for them,
- o handles subscribes and unsubscribes without bothering you,
- o can archive off reflector mailing list posts,
- o can announce to all list readers when someone subscribes or
- unsubscribes,
- o can be set to let people request a list of readers,
- o does all the digest handling work for you,
- o can upload (via ftp) each days digest to a given site for
- archiving,
- o can backup the userlist to a different disk/area/whatever,
- o can post a FAQ to USENET periodically,
- o announces when a message has been taken from USENET, so
- people don't get that horrible deja vu feeling while reading
- their mail,
- o sends you a log of all the day's activities every night,
- o lets you toggle all of these things for complete
- customization,
- o and much, much more! (I should be an announcer for those
- Remco ads, I know it.)
-
- MailServ isn't for the weak at heart. It's not pretty, and
- I'm releasing it to the net because several people have asked
- for copies, and I'd like to know what changes are made to it.
- If you don't know much about UNIX or mail, I wouldn't suggest
- using MailServ until it gets a little bit nicer.
-
-
- Name: NETLIB
- Author: Jack J. Dongarra, Eric Grosse
- How to get it: Get "netlib from misc" from NETLIB.
- Implementation language: C
- Comments: (Dave Shaver <shaver@convex.com>)
- - User-level docs a bit rough. Assumes user is quite mail savvy.
- (Not a fair assumption in my case.)
- - Catches "pigs" effectively, but no queuing system for requests.
- - Notices attempted security violations using magic shell characters
- - Install docs adequate, but not outstanding
- - Hard to install since site-specific stuff not centralized
- in a config file.
- - Has almost no interal documentation (i.e. comments)
- - Eclectic mix of shell scripts and C programs
- - Some sections of code very specific to serving libs. Does
- not generalize well to ASCII files.
- Comments: Tom Fitzgerald <fitz@wang.com>
- Advantages:
- Arbitrary directories can be made part of archives, archives don't
- have to all be under a single directory tree.
- Written in C, probably imposes the least system load.
- Reasonably portable and configurable.
- Disadvantages
- Really complicated, with inadequate documentation
- No queuing or load-balancing. All requested items are sent out
- immediately regardless of system load.
- Poorest at figuring out return addresses.
- All items in archive are sent out as-is. No packaging options.
- (They can be binary, they will be sent out uuencoded).
-
-
- Name: procmail
- Author: Stephen R. van den Berg <berg@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de>
- Latest known version: 2.91
- How to get it: (1) Get "procmail" from volume 38 of comp.sources.misc
- archives. (2) "/pub/unix/procmail.tar.zip" via anonymous ftp from
- ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (possibly more up-to-date).
- Implementation language: C, plus some UNIX-style shell scripts.
- Supported platforms: generic UNIX (or any posix compliant OS)
- Comments:
- Procmail is a program to parse incoming mail and sort/invoke other
- programs based on the results, it can be used as a very reliable
- frontend to some of the archive servers mentioned here.
- - It includes a utility program called formail, which is
- particularly intelligent in figuring out return addresses and
- generating auto-reply headers.
- Comments: (from the author)
- Included is an extensive mailinglist/archive server package (based
- upon procmail/formail). Regarding the archive server part:
- Advantages:
- - Easy to install.
- - Straightforward to operate (one tree, symbolic links allowed).
- - Numerous others :-), but you'll have to get the FEATURES file
- from the package.
- Disadvantages:
- - Doesn't do special handling for binary files.
- - Doesn't autosplit large files.
- - Partly dependent on sendmail, though sufficiently compatible
- mailers will do.
- - No load balancing or queueing, relying on sendmail for that.
-
- Name: qdms
- Author: Lars Magnusson <lmn@z.amu.se>
- Latest known version: 1.0
- How to get it: (1) Get "qdms - a simple mailserver for cramped disks."
- from the alt.sources archives. (2) Get a (possibly more
- up-to-date) version from mailserver@z.amu.se.
- Implementation language: Bourne shell, requires shell functions
- Comments: Looks like it has some sort of access control and
- blacklisting. Don't know what else.
-
-
- Name: Relcom
- Author: vak@kiae.su (Serge Vakulenko)
- Maintainer: vak@kiae.su (Serge Vakulenko)
- Latest known version: 1.0
- How to get it: Send a message to mailserv@kiae.su with "get
- mailserv.tar.Z" in the body.
- Implementation language: C
-
-
- Name: RNALIB
- Author: Paulo Ventafridda <venta@otello.sublink.org>, Marco Lorenzini
- <marlor@gear.sublink.org>
- Latest known version: 2.2 beta-3
- Implementation language: bourne shell
- How to get it: (1) Get "rnalib2" from volume 15 of comp.sources.misc
- archives. (2) Get "RNALIB 2.2 beta" and "upgrade to beta-3"
- from alt.sources archive on valhalla.ee.rochester.edu.
- Comments:
- - Completely implemented in one bourne shell script plus
- several data files.
- - Allows libraries to be all over the filesystem hiearchy
- (i.e. not in fixed data directory).
- - Understands a variety of packing formats, and detects binary
- file automatically (and uuencodes them).
- - Requires bourne shell with support for functions.
- - Very poor address parsing.
- - No queueing.
- - Has "blacklists" to prevent people from transferring and
- "whitelists" to allow specific people to tell the server to
- deliver to third parties.
- - Detects "hogs" and imposes maximum credit limits.
-
-
- Name: The ServiceMail Toolkit, by Enterprise Integration Technologies
- Author: Jay C. Weber <weber@eitech.com>, et al.
- Maintainer: servicemail-help@eitech.com
- Latest known version: v2.0 5-10-93
- How to get it: ftp eitech.com:svcmail-2.0.tar.Z
- Implementation language(s): C, Tcl, make
- Supported platforms: SunOS, Ultrix, (probably anything that supports Tcl)
- Comments: (Bob Bagwill <bagwill@swe.ncsl.nist.gov>)
- Easy to install (using default installation configuration).
- Multimedia Email SHell (MESH) uses MIME message formats.
- Services are implemented in Tcl.
- Includes subset of listserv functions.
- Documentation is skimpy.
- Comments: (Jay Weber <weber@eitech.com>)
- Documentation is better in 2.0
- Includes support for queueing, logging
-
-
- Name: Squirrel Mail Server
- Version: 3.1
- Author: Johan Vromans <jv@mh.nl>
- How to get it: (1) Send a mail message to <mail-server@nluug.nl> with
- contents
-
- begin
- send mail-server
- end
-
- (2) Get "mserv" plus updates from volumes 34 and 35 of the
- comp.sources.misc archives.
-
- Implementation language: perl
- Description (from the author):
-
- The Squirrel Mail Server is a mail response program. You can
- send email to it, and it will try to react sensible to your
- message.
-
- Main purpose of the mail server is to obtain files from a
- local archive or FTP server, but other functions can be added
- easily.
-
- The Squirrel Mail Server Software is distributed under the
- terms of the GNU Public Licence.
-
- New and improved features in version 3.1:
-
- - Transparent (anonymous) FTP interface. You can fetch files
- from remote FTP servers. Files retrieved are cached
- locally, so subsequent requests can be honoured from the
- cache. Well-known files can be sent from the local
- archives without accessing remote FTP server at all.
-
- - Delivery can take place via email or uucp or both.
- Delivery via UUCP can be made preferred.
- FTP requests can be restricted to UUCP delivery.
-
- - Files can be automatically compressed, and directories can
- be automatically packed using one of several common
- methods (e.g. zip, zoo or compressed tar).
-
- - Multiple servers can be installed using the same software.
-
- - The server can be used interactively, e.g. from a
- terminal, or via telnet/inetd.
-
- - Command parsing and execution is table driven, so it is
- very easy to extend the mail server functions.
-
- - Rewritten and enhanced user documentation and
- installation docs. Also available in nicely formatted
- (PostScript) format.
-
- A brief survey of old and new features:
-
- - All written in perl, hence portable and easily
- maintainable. Code is readable; useful, plentiful
- comments. Very extentable and easily modified.
- - Easy to use and to install. Over 2000 lines of
- documentation.
- - Good at letting person making request know what happened.
- Good "help" reply.
- - Archives can be split over a number of directories or file
- systems.
- - Requests are queued and processed by a separate daemon
- process (e.g. from cron). This cuts down on the system
- load. Moreover, you can control when the queue is being
- run.
- - Requests can be honoured `as is' (name the file and you'll
- get it), but the server can also perform directory
- searches and index file lookup. You need GNU find and
- locate for the index lookup feature.
- - While looking for files, the server knows about commonly
- handled filenames (e.g. ".tar.Z" in "foo.tar.Z") and
- pseudo-standard version numbering (e.g. "gcc-2.1.tar.Z").
- It is quite well possible that a simple request for
- "emacs" will actually transmit the file
- "gnu/emacs-18.58/dist/emacs-18.58.tar.Z".
- - Requests can be encoded using a number of encoding
- schemes, e.g. uuencode, xxencode, Dumas' uue and btoa.
- - Requests that are too large to send in one piece are
- automatically split and transferred in parts. The server
- provides a smart unpacking program on request,
- - Parts of requests can be re-transmitted in case of
- failure.
- - Requests can designate a directory. In this case the whole
- directory tree is packed using some popular packing
- programs (compressed tar, zoo or zip).
- - Requests can be sent by email, or via uucp.
- - The server can be asked to return a list of archive
- entries that match a given request, thus obsoleting the
- need to transfer huge "ls-lR" type index files to find out
- whatsitcalled.
- - All transfers are logged. Maintenance procedures
- include a reporting tool.
-
- Probable future directions:
-
- - Automatic (and transparent) downloading of unknown archive
- entries from other archive servers.
- - Archive lookup by keyword.
- - Notifier services (you'll be notified if archive entries
- are added).
- - Remote maintenance of the archives.
-
- Requirements:
-
- - Perl 4.0 patchlevel 36 or later.
- NOTE that perl 4.0 pl35 contains a bug that makes it
- impossible to run the mail server software.
- - GNU find 3.6 or later (only if you want to exploit the
- index features).
- - A decent mail system that can deliver mail to a process
- (sendmail, smail3, or smail2.5 w/ mods).
-
-
- ------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- Archive Site Instructions
- -------------------------
-
- CLARKSON: Send mail to "archive-server@sun.soe.clarkson.edu" with
- "send <what you want>" as the text of the message, e.g. "send
- archive-server". If you want it to be archived as a shar
- file, then add a line saying "archiver shar" before the "send"
- line. You can also use "archiver tar". If you don't specify
- an archiver, then the files in the request will be separated
- by "--- cut here ---" lines and you'll have to extract them by
- hand or write some sort of script to do it.
-
- grasp1: Ftp to grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr and look in
- pub/unix/mail/mail-servers, or use the FTP-by-mail server at
- ftpmail@grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr, or use an FTP-by-mail server
- closer to you if there is one.
-
- JASON-ARCHIVE: Send mail to "penneyj@slc.com" with a subject line
- containing the string "jason-archive-request" and a body
- containing "send <what you want>", e.g. "send misc/kiss.shar".
- If you want multiple files, you can specify multiple requests
- on separate lines of the file.
-
- NETLIB: Send mail to "netlib@research.att.com" with "send
- <what you want>", e.g. "send netlib from misc", as the text of
- the message.
-
- UTRECHT: Anonymous ftp to ftp.cs.ruu.nl and look in the directory
- /pub, or send mail to "mail-server@cs.ruu.nl" with the lines:
-
- begin
- send <filename>
- end
-
- You replace "<filename>" with the file you want to retrieve,
- e.g. "send UNIX/mailserver.tar.Z".
-
- --
- Jonathan Kamens OpenVision Technologies, Inc. jik@GZA.COM
-