<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta name="generator" content="HTML Tidy, see www.w3.org" />
<title>The CoffeeMud SMTP Server</title>
<link rel="StyleSheet" href="style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<!-- Modified by Josh Mueller, 2006-5-5, fix validation errors, add index, and fix spelling errors -->
</head>
<body>
<center>
<table border="1" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="90%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" align="left" bgcolor="#dfdfdf" width="100%">
<h1>The CoffeeMud SMTP Server</h1>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top" width="20%">
<ul>
<li><a href="#connect">How to Connect</a></li>
<li><a href="#limits">What it does and doesn't do</a></li>
<li><a href="#security">Security</a></li>
<li><a href="#configuration">Configuration</a></li>
</ul>
</td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>The CoffeeMud SMTP Server is a simple mail transfer program
which acts as server that runs as part of CoffeeMud. It's primary
purpose is to act as a mail forwarding and relay engine for email
between mud users, and as a distribution point for mailing lists and
other email related functions.</p>
<h2><a name="connect">How to Connect</a></h2>
<p>By default, the SMTP server listens on port port 25 by
default. Changing this port value is generally a bad idea which will
almost certainly eliminate the ability for your server to receive mail
from others.</p>
<p>Messages sent either directly or indirectly to the CoffeeMud
SMTP Server MUST follow ALL of these rules or face rejection:</p>
<ul>
<li>The email MUST be formatted in PLAIN TEXT</li>
<li>The DOMAIN must be correctly defined in the CoffeeMud INI
file (coffeemud.ini)</li>
<li> The email must be from:
<ul>
<li>a CoffeeMud journal name listed under JOURNALS in the
SMTP Server INI file (web/email.ini)</li>
<li><strong>OR</strong> a CoffeeMud journal name at the
local domain: example: <a href="mailto:My_Journal@CoffeeMud.homeip.net">My_Journal@mydomain.net</a></li>
<li><strong>OR</strong> a local player name</li>
<li><strong>OR</strong> a local player name at the local
domain: example: <a href="mailto:brutus@CoffeeMud.homeip.net">brutus@mydomain.net</a></li>
<li><strong>OR</strong> the email address which a player
has on file in their account.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li> The email must be addressed to:
<ul>
<li>a CoffeeMud journal name at the local domain: example: <a
href="mailto:My_Journal@CoffeeMud.homeip.net">My_Journal@mydomain.net</a></li>
<li><strong>OR</strong> a local player name at the local
domain: example: <a href="mailto:brutus@CoffeeMud.homeip.net">brutus@mydomain.net</a></li>
<li><strong>OR</strong> the email address which a player
has on file in their account.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h2><a name="limits">What it does and doesn't do</a></h2>
<p>It accepts mail for storage and eventual delivery if the
security conditions are met. It maintains mailing lists for journals.
It provides security against illegal postings to journals or mailing
lists. It delivers emails to where they need to go, and distributes
mailing list messages to where they need to go.</p>
<p>It does not handle SMTP compliant mailing lists, and will only
deal with plain text messages due to journal interactions.</p>
<p>It supports HELO, EHLO, RCPT, MAIL, HELP, QUIT, NOOP, RSET,
DATA, and DSN.</p>
<p>It does not support EXPN, VRFY, VERB, ETRN, or any expanded
parameters to either MAIL or RCPT.</p>
<h2><a name="security">Security</a></h2>
<p>The SMTP Server may be bound to 127.0.0.1 (localhost) - this
means it will not accept external connections.</p>
<p>The SMTP Server only allows messages FROM valid users or
journals TO valid users or journals. All security checking is done as
the message is arriving, so there is no chance of an invalid message
taking up disk space, much less being relayed. It doesn't get any more
secure than that.</p>
<h2><a name="configuration">Configuration</a></h2>
<p>The default installation of CoffeeMud has two inbuilt web
servers, named 'pub' and 'admin'. The web servers are enabled with the
line 'RUNWEBSERVERS=true' in 'CoffeeMud.ini'; any other value or the
absence of this line will cause the web servers not to be loaded.</p>
<p>Normally, CofeeMud's SMTP server will send mail directly to
the recipients mail servers. If you wish to use your own relay server,
you should set the SMTPSERVERNAME field in your coffeemud.ini file to
the address of your relay server. Obviously this server and CoffeeMud's
can not exist on the same machine, as they will be listening on the
same ports.</p>
<p>INI files for the email server lives in the 'web/' directory
off the CoffeeMud root. The file is called email.ini, and contains the
following entries:</p>
<ul>
<li> <b>PORT</b>=xx : <b>[REQUIRED]</b> <em>(e.g.25)</em>
<p>Sets the port number the server will listen for SMTP
requests on; this cannot be the same port as the main MUD server or web
servers. Identical to MUD server usage. There is normally no good
reason to change from 25, as that is what email clients will expect.</p>
</li>
<li> <b>BACKLOG</b>=xx : <em>(e.g.10)</em>
<p>Sets the number of requests that can be queued by the
internal TCP/IP stack. Identical to MUD server usage.</p>
</li>
<li> <b>BIND</b>=addr : <em>(e.g.127.0.0.1)</em>
<p>Causes the server to be bound to a specific address; this
is useful on multi-homed machines or if you wish to prevent public
access to the pages. Identical to MUD server usage.</p>
</li>
<li> <b>RELAYSERVER</b>=addr : <em>(e.g.127.0.0.1)</em>
<p>Normally the CoffeeMud server will attempt to send mail
directly to the recipients. If you have another SMTP mail server that
you would like to use to relay messages through, you should set this
value to the address of that SMTP relay server. Since they will be
sharing ports, this server should obviously be on a different machine
than CoffeeMud's SMTP server.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>FORWARD</strong>=trueorfalse (e.g. TRUE)<br />
<br />
Should be set to true or false. If TRUE, mail will be forwarded to
players and mailing lists as the mail becomes available. A player will
have their mail forwarded to them ONLY if their AUTOFORWARD flag is
set. If this option is FALSE, the server will not forward mail no
matter what the players AUTOFORWARD flag is, but will act as a mail
accumulator only.</p>
</li>
<li> <strong>MAILBOX</strong>=journalname <em>(e.g. The EMail
Box)</em>
<p>This is the name of your private email Journal. All
private email, from player to player, is stored in this journal. A
GenJournal item of this name can be created in-game to provide in-game
access to email for players who do not have AUTOFORWARD turned on.
Otherwise, when FORWARD is true, and the player has AUTOFORWARD turned
on, email will remain in this box only until it can be successfully
sent to the players private email address.</p>
</li>
<li> <strong>EMAILDAYS</strong>=xx <em>(e.g. 30)</em>
<p>This is the maximum number of days a message will remain
in the MAILBOX above for any reason.</p>
</li>
<li> <strong>FAILUREDAYS</strong>=xx <em>(e.g. 5)</em>
<p>This is the number of days that your server will attempt
to forward a message to a private email address before giving up.</p>
</li>
<li> <strong>MAXMSGS</strong>=xx <em>(e.g. 100)</em>
<p>This is the maximum number of private emails which will be
stored in the MAILBOX for each player. Use 0 for unlimited.</p>
</li>
<li> <strong>MAXMSGSIZE</strong>=xx <em>(e.g. 20000)</em>
<p>This is the maximum number of bytes for each email sent.
No email arriving through your server may exceed this size.</p>
</li>
<li> <strong>JOURNALS</strong>=coded list <em>(e.g. Local
Chat, The Elf Journal (forward keepall -RACE +Elf), Announcements
(forward) )</em>
<p>This is the name of one of more GenJournal (see Archon
Guide). Each entry should be comma delimited. The mails sent to a
journal name will appear as TO ALL messages in the designated journal.
The names listed here are case sensitive with respect to your
GenJournal names. Mail may be sent to journal names with spaces by
substituting an underscore "_" for each space. For instance, to send an
email to a journal called "The Journal" at the domain "mydomain.com",
you would address it as: <a href="mailto:The_Journal@mydomain.com">The_Journal@mydomain.com</a>.</p>
<p>For each journal entry, parameters may follow the name, so
long as they are enclosed in parenthesis. ().</p>
<p>The parameters may include the word 'forward' if you would
like emails to be forwarded to the private mail boxes whose names are
maintained in resources/mailinglists.txt. Nonmembers may post a message
to the journal # or send an email with "subscribe" as the subject to
subscribe. Members may likewise use "unsubscribe" to remove their names.</p>
<p>The Parameters should include the word 'subscribeonly' if
posts to the list are not accepted, but subscribe/unsubscribe messages
are. This parameter should always be used with the 'forward' parameter.</p>
<p>The Parameters should include the word 'keepall' if posts
to the journal are saved in the journal archives instead of
automatically deleted after forwarding. Like 'subscribeonly', this
parameter ONLY matters when 'forward' is included. Posts to journals
are never deleted unless 'forward' is set. See the JOURNALDAYS ini
entry below for ways to delete these messages even when 'keepall' is
included.</p>
<p>Parameters may also include Zapper masks to control
subscription and/or posting criteria. Use AHELP ZAPPERMASKS to list the
valid Zapper mask parameters.</p>
</li>
<li> <strong>JOURNALDAYS</strong>= xx (e.g. 90)
<p>This is the number of maximum number of days a message
will remain in an SMTP server managed JOURNAL before being deleted.</p>
</li>
<li> <strong>SUBSCRIBEDTITLE</strong>=xx <em>(e.g. You are
now subscribed)</em>
<p>This is the title of the response your SMTP server will
automatically send to users who subscribe to a journal by sending an
email to the journal with "subscribe" as the title.</p>
</li>
<li> <strong>SUBSCRIBEDMSG</strong>=xx <em>(e.g. You are now
subscribed to <NAME>)</em>
<p>This is the body of the response your SMTP server will
automatically send to users who subscribe to a journal by sending an
email to the journal with "subscribe" as the title. You may use the
code <NAME> as a placeholder for your journals name.</p>
</li>
<li> <strong>UNSUBSCRIBEDTITLE</strong>=xx <em>(e.g. You are
now unsubscribed)</em>
<p>This is the title of the response your SMTP server will
automatically send to users who unsubscribe to a journal by sending an
email to the journal with "unsubscribe" as the title.</p>
</li>
<li> <strong>UNSUBSCRIBEDMSG</strong>=xx <em>(e.g. You are
now unsubscribed from <NAME>)</em>
<p>This is the body of the response your SMTP server will
automatically send to users who unsubscribe to a journal by sending an
email to the journal with "unsubscribe" as the title. You may use the
code <NAME> as a placeholder for your journals name.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Not listed here, but even more important is the <strong>DOMAIN</strong>
entry in your CoffeeMud.ini file. This is your servers domain for the
purposes of interpreting local email addresses. It should be identical
to your servers domain. For instance, if your server is
myserver.myhost.com, then so should this value. Email addressed to your
mud would then be <a href="mailto:playername@myserver.myhost.com">playername@myserver.myhost.com</a>.
This domain must match the incoming mail addresses to be accepted.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</center>
</body>
</html>
