password for login to mercury IMAP server? (using wine in linux)
Brutus
and I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.
I'm an ex-windows user, and I switched to Linux (Debian) a couple of
weeks ago. I've been using Pegasus Mail in windows for some years now,
and I decided to switch to Thunderbird in Linux for my e-mail client, and
to convert all my old Pegasus e-mail messages and folders over to
Thunderbird.
Part of the reason for the switch is that windows will no longer boot
(there's a bit of a story to this too, but I'll skip this for now). So I
decided to try copying all the old Pegasus files/folders into the new
hard drive, where I have linux installed. Then I installed wine (kind of
a compatibility layer that allows linux users to run many windows
programs; reportedly, pegasus and mercury both work under wine). Then I
installed Mercury (at the time, version 4.01). So, everything is running
on one hard drive, in one computer, with IP address 192.168.0.2
(computer's name is Rohan). Both Pegasus and Mercury are in their
respective default directories under the default wine directory ~/.wine/
drive_c. This "drive_c" directory should just appear to be the root
directory C:\ to Pegasus and Mercury when running them with wine. Each
of them appears to run normally, without any freezing or crashing or other
weird behavior. I've also configured Thunderbird to try to access an
IMAP server running at 127.0.0.1 at port 143.
I thought I'd configured everything properly, but when I tried to login
to the Mercury IMAP server using Thunderbird, I just got a message saying
that my password has been rejected. Since then, I've installed (not
updated) Mercury version 4.51, updated Pegasus to version 4.41 (using
wine), made several changes to the Thunderbird account that I'm trying to
use to login into the Mercury server, changed the IMAP server port number
to 144 (and did the same for the port number that Thunderbird is using for
the login), changed the IMAP server address in Thunderbird from 127.0.0.1
to Rohan.local and still no go. Password keeps getting rejected.
In Mercury, after I try to log in from Thunderbird, the IMAP4 window
shows the following:
Password failure, user 'admin', from 192.168.0.2
One thing I was struck by is that Mercury seems to be behaving as if it
doesn't recognize any user "admin", and so will not accept any password
from someone trying to log in as "admin". I went into Mercury's
configuration menu, selected "Local users", and there are no users listed
there. I thought this was odd, since Mercury is supposed to use the file
PMAIL.USR from the C:\PMAIL\MAIL directory. The contents of this file
are as follows:
; PMAIL.USR Pegasus Mail user database.
A;Admin;Mail Administrator
So I tried adding this user "admin" in Mercury, and it didn't take. No
error message, or anything, but after filling in information for the user
admin, and then clicking on "Add", the list of users is still blank.
Just doesn't seem to work, not sure why.
Another odd thing is that when installing Mercury (both for version 4.01
and 4.51) I'd specified the location of the Pegasus Mail installation.
But when I went into Mercury's configuration menu, and clicked on
"Pegasus Mail", it shows a blank for "Directory for Pegasus Mail .EXE
file". When I type in C:\PMAIL\MAIL, and then restart Mercury, this
entry is blank again.
I'm starting to wonder now if Mercury can run at all in wine. Has anyone
here had any luck with this?
Better yet, does anyone have a better method than IMAP for importing
Pegasus files/folders into Thunderbird in Linux?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Also, I don't know if it makes any difference, but due to differences
between Debian and Mozilla, Thunderbird in Debian now goes under the name
"Icedove". Can't imagine that would matter, though, since it's pretty
much the same software.
DanKegel
> ... [I installed Pegasus under Wine, but logging in
> to the Mercury IMAP server using Thunderbird, I just got a message saying
> In Mercury, after I try to log in from Thunderbird, the IMAP4 window
> shows the following:
> Password failure, user 'admin', from 192.168.0.2
>
> One thing I was struck by is that Mercury seems to be behaving as if it
> doesn't recognize any user "admin", and so will not accept any password
> from someone trying to log in as "admin". I went into Mercury's
> configuration menu, selected "Local users", and there are no users listed
> So I tried adding this user "admin" in Mercury, and it didn't take. No
> error message, or anything, but after filling in information for the user
>
> Another odd thing is that when installing Mercury (both for version 4.01
> and 4.51) I'd specified the location of the Pegasus Mail installation.
> But when I went into Mercury's configuration menu, and clicked on
> "Pegasus Mail", it shows a blank for "Directory for Pegasus Mail .EXE
> file". When I type in C:\PMAIL\MAIL, and then restart Mercury, this
> entry is blank again.
Hmm. How did you get Mercury to accept connections on a privileged
port? Are you running it as root? That's something the Wine
developers
are always loathe to suggest.
If you look at http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iAppId=300 and dig
down a bit, you see one guy saying how he ran an earlier version
of Mercury as a normal user with Wine:
http://appdb.winehq.org/commentview.php?iAppId=300&iVersionId=449&iThreadId=7903
So as you said, it did work at one time, though maybe not with the
latest Mercury.
I've filed a bug at winehq for your problem, it's
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8773
Can you go there and say what version of wine you're testing with?
- Dan
Brutus
>
> Hmm. How did you get Mercury to accept connections on a privileged
> port? Are you running it as root? That's something the Wine developers
> are always loathe to suggest.
Actually, I had no idea that this was sort of taboo. And, yes, I am
running Mercury as root. Running it as a normal user, the Mercury server
just didn't seem to accept any connections, and the error messages I was
getting from Thunderbird indicated that there was no IMAP server
running. So I tried using 'sudo wine mercury.exe' instead, and
Thunderbird was able to try to connect to the server (and then get the
password rejected). Similarly, in Mercury, the IMAP server window began
showing messages about my attempted connections from Thunderbird. So, I
thought I was on the right track here by running it as root.
> 'sudo wine mercury.exe'
> If you look at http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iAppId=300 and dig
> down a bit, you see one guy saying how he ran an earlier version of
> Mercury as a normal user with Wine:
> http://appdb.winehq.org/commentview.php?
iAppId=300&iVersionId=449&iThreadId=7903
> So as you said, it did work at one time, though maybe not with the
> latest Mercury.
Actually, I've never been able to successfully log in to the Mercury
server, with version 4.01 and with 4.51. Neither of them will accept any
sort of password (to be honest, I'm not even sure what password it's
expecting, because while installing Mercury, it seemed that it set up a
user called "admin", there doesn't seem to be any password associated for
this user).
In the second URL you posted, the comment from the guy who got it to work
indicated that he had to use higher port numbers. I'd never thought of
that. So I changed the IMAP server port in Mercury to port 20112,
restarted it running just 'wine mercury.exe', changed the port in
Thunderbird, and tried logging in again. I had the same problem again
(password rejected), but the thing is, the Mercury server was actually
running, and accepting connections. This is still Mercury v4.51. I have
to take off for a bit, but when I come back, I'll try removing it and
reinstalling 4.01 and using this higher port number, and see if anything
changes.
Thanks for the reply, and the links!
>
> I've filed a bug at winehq for your problem, it's
> http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8773 Can you go there and say
> what version of wine you're testing with? - Dan
Yeah, I did that (thanks for filing the report, btw). In case you're
curious:
[08:02:23]$ wine --version
Invoking /usr/lib/wine/wine.bin --version ...
wine-0.9.25
Wine exited with a successful status
Brutus
> If you look at http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iAppId=300 and dig
> down a bit, you see one guy saying how he ran an earlier version of
> Mercury as a normal user with Wine:
> http://appdb.winehq.org/commentview.php?
iAppId=300&iVersionId=449&iThreadId=7903
> So as you said, it did work at one time, though maybe not with the
> latest Mercury.
So, I tried running Mercury v4.01 again, this time using the port number
20112, and just running 'wine mercury.exe'. Just as with v4.51, the
Mercury IMAP server appears to be running and accepting connections from
Thunderbird, but it still rejects all passwords, so I still can't log
in. Still, it's a little progress, I guess.
Brutus
I tried a different google search
mercury (imap OR imap4) password
and came across a posting from the Mercury mailing-list archives, where
one poster said that sometimes you must hand-edit the file MERCURY.INI,
and make sure that the line for the Pegasus Mail directory is not blank.
If it is blank, then you edit the file so that next to "newmail_path: "
you should have this:
C:\PMAIL\MAIL\~8
Link here:
http://bama.ua.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0306a&L=mercury&T=0&F=&S=&P=2306
The "~8" at the end seems a little odd, but without it, it just won't
work.
After making this change, the "local users" dialog box in Mercury now
allows me to add and delete local users, and Mercury also adds these
users to the file "PMAIL.USR" in the Pegasus Mail MAIL directory. This
seems to be normal. In Thunderbird, I am also able to log in to the
Mercury IMAP server, using the same password that I specify when adding a
local user in Mercury. So, that part works OK.
The thing I'm missing now is how to get my old Pegasus Mail folders to
show up in Thunderbird. Thunderbird just tells me that the server has no
new messages, and apparently no message folders to display, or anything,
so it looks like I'm still missing something here.
Brutus
the end, the fix was fairly simple, and it only took me so long to figure
it out because I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. But looks like it
all turned out OK.
I was having a lot of trouble getting all my old Pegasus folders to show
up in Thunderbird. Eventually, I fixed something, and then they just
popped up. As I posted earlier, I finally got Mercury to properly manage
the "local users" in Pegasus, I created a user, and Mercury automatically
created a directory for that user in Pegasus's mail directory. So, into
this directory created by Mercury, I copied all the Pegasus mail folders
(basically, I just did cp *.PM* ), and was expecting these folders to
just show up in Thunderbird, and they didn't. The problem appeared to be
the file-permissions for these files. They were owned by root, not by
the normal unprivileged account I usually use. So after running the
chown command to change the ownership of all these files, it all worked.
This is with Mercury 4.51 and Pegasus 4.41. I suppose Mercury 4.01
probably would have worked too.
Anyway, wine didn't appear to cause any serious problems for me while I
was tinkering with this, so I think anybody else looking to do this
(switch from Pegasus in Windows to some Linux e-mail client, by going thru
IMAP) can probably make it work. Maybe this post will help out somebody
else who is struggling with this.
bart
I've been thinking about moving to linux too but wasn't considering
(yet) to use mercury on Linux. I thought there might be better* (free)
mailservers for Linux without using Wine.
But at least now I know I can always switch back to Mercury.
Bart
*The main thing I don't like about Mercury is the fact it doesn't
support subfolders.
Brutus said the following on 24-6-2007 6:21:
Brutus
> Very kind of you to give the sollution! I've been thinking about moving
I've benefited from countless Usenet threads for variety of hardware and
software problems. What always helped me is when the user(s) with the
problems came back to post about what worked for them. That's always a
big help. So I decided to do the same. I thought giving those little
progress reports might also help, so I decided to post those too. And
since this whole thread should get saved in Google's Usenet archives, so
much the better.
> to linux too but wasn't considering (yet) to use mercury on Linux. I
> thought there might be better* (free) mailservers for Linux without
> using Wine. But at least now I know I can always switch back to Mercury.
Oh, I'm quite sure there are other IMAP servers that you can run natively
in Linux. I didn't spend much time looking at this, but I'm pretty sure I
remember discovering more than one. I was particularly interested in
getting Mercury to work because it seems tightly bound to Pegasus, and I
expected to have little trouble getting Mercury to read all the Pegasus
files/directories and then serving them up through IMAP to any other e-
mail client (e.g., Thunderbird). Didn't quite work out that way:). But
again, I just have to chalk this up to inexperience on my part. If I
knew what I was doing from the start, I think all this could have taken
10 or 15 minutes altogether.
>
> Bart
> *The main thing I don't like about Mercury is the fact it doesn't
> support subfolders.
>
Oh, OK. I never created any sub-folders in Pegasus, so I never had a
chance to try that. Please report back if you do:).
Rob
news:FOFgi.1024521$9i2.6...@fe06.news.easynews.com:
>> Bart
>> *The main thing I don't like about Mercury is the fact it doesn't
>> support subfolders.
>
> Oh, OK. I never created any sub-folders in Pegasus, so I never had a
> chance to try that. Please report back if you do:).
Just to clarify:
Mercury/32 supports what are known as filing trays. Filing trays can hold
folders and more filing trays. Filing trays cannot hold messages.
Mercury/32 does not support "folders in folders", or what some people
call "tray folders". This is where a folder can hold both messages and
other folders.
Pegasus Mail will support "folders in folders" for an IMAP mailbox when
working with an IMAP server that also supports it.
The Pegasus Mail help files has a good description of this, and provides
a listing of some common mail servers that do or don't support "folders
in folders".
--
Rob Croson (rob...@arcm.com)
Member of the Pegasus Mail and Mercury/32 Beta Test Teams
Pegasus Mail and Mercury/32 Portal: http://email.arcm.com
Visit the MailWiki: http://email.arcm.com/wiki
Support Pegasus Mail: http://www.cafeshops.com/pegasusmail