ANN: yahMAIL is dead - long live son of yahMAIL!
Mark Daniel
(again, by some), twelve months in the making, successor to yahMAIL -
son of yahMAIL - is now available for (BETA) download
It supports Apache, OSU and WASD on all VMS platforms and versions from
V6.0.
Note that this is a *BETA* release - so be careful with it!
Obviously don't bet the company on it. I have been using this for my
personal email ever since it became somewhat usable (~four months ago)
and it seems pretty stable. Of course that's one of the purposes of
BETA testing, to get it off your test-bench and away from your own
patterns of usage. A small band of hardy BETA-testers have already got
their hands on this and reported issues that have been fixed and made
function suggestions. Be gentle with your comments and wish-list items
- you don't want to discourage me too vigorously so early in this phase!
If you're going to create a specific language or help file(s) then note
that although the contents are fairly stable, as it's a BETA release it
may need revision in the not too distant future.
Here's some more information:
Overview:
http://wasd.vsm.com.au/soymail/-/doc/soymail_overview.pdf
http://wasd.vsm.com.au/soymail/-/doc/soymail_overview.html
Install and Admin:
http://wasd.vsm.com.au/soymail/-/doc/soymail_admin.pdf
http://wasd.vsm.com.au/soymail/-/doc/soymail_admin.html
On-line user Help:
http://wasd.vsm.com.au/cgi-bin/soymail?help
If you're going to email me privately then include "soyMAIL" in the
subject line so that if you end up quarantined by anti-SPAM you can be
relatively easily identified.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Mark Daniel http://wasd.vsm.com.au/adelaide
mailto:Mark....@wasd.vsm.com.au (Mark....@dsto.defence.gov.au)
A pox on the houses of all SPAMers. Make that two poxes.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
b...@instantwhip.com
Mark Daniel
> what about Purveyor??????????????????????
My initial impulse to a terse demand is to make be a correspondingly
abbreviated response. I have some suggestions instead.
1) soyMAIL is built on top of the WASD CGILIB. So is yahMAIL. Now
yahMAIL works on Purveyor at InstantWhip. I know. I had a hand in
making it work. If yahMAIL works under Purveyor there's a good chance
the soyMAIL executable will too.
2) Of course the provided INSTALL.COM procedure does not cater for the
Purveyor directory structure so you would need to have a look at what
it's doing with the files (under Apache, OSU and WASD) and provide the
same environment for Purveyor. The functions of the various soyMAIL
files and directories are also discussed in the Install and Admin document.
3) The example server configuration directives would also need to be
Purveyor-specific. Of course your existing yahMAIL ones could be used
as templates and be adapted to suit soyMAIL.
4) If the soyMAIL executable doesn't seem to work under Purveyor, or not
correctly in all respects, there are some debug and watch tools built
into it that will help get a handle on where it's falling down. Just
read the code modules to know what these provide. I will happily accept
code changes that I can incorporate directly into the soyMAIL baseline.
I cannot maintain such modifications of course because Purveyor is not
freely available.
5) item 4 is not a show-stopper though. Bob, you can become the
maintainer of 'soyMAIL for the Purveyor Community'. Once any basic code
changes are in-place, the INSTALL.COM procedure is modified to support
Purveyor requirements and the documentation is amended to include the
Purveyor specifics, it should be just a matter of vetting any new
versions of soyMAIL during the BETA phase and before public release. It
is most unlikely that once the basics are working correctly that
upper-level functionality changes would break the CGI interface with the
underlying Purveyor server.
6) You would need to be the public contact for 'soyMAIL for the Purveyor
Community'. See 4 above. Do not be discouraged by the thought of
people emailing you frequently with issues and wish-list items. Your
input would only be required when it was specific to the Purveyor
platform. I imagine the traffic might be fairly low and possiblly
diminishing with time. A self-addressing issue.
7) If there is a problem or problems in you either getting or keeping
soyMAIL functional on the Purveyor platform then all is *still* not
lost. Although these days I am increasingly in the position where I
need to carefully consider where to invest my meagre spare time -- the
greatest benefit to the largest portion of the VMS community is a
grandiose but probably not completely inaccurate way to describe it -- I
am willing and able to trade one requirement off against another. My
hourly rate is US$70.00, with a minimum of three hours per issue
(identified at my discretion). Through experience the policy is; this
sum needs to be provided against my estimate and in advance through
PayPal money transfer (details on request).
8) Of course if time and/or funding is an issue I still think items 1, 2
and 3, along with a modicum of aptitude and some effort, may still apply.
David B Sneddon
> b...@instantwhip.com wrote:
>
>> what about Purveyor??????????????????????
>
>
> My initial impulse to a terse demand is to make be a correspondingly
> abbreviated response. I have some suggestions instead.
[...lots of interesting stuff snipped...]
My initial response would have been:
Yes boob, what about Purveyor?
(Do not feed the troll!)
Regards,
Dave.
--
David B Sneddon (dbs) VMS Systems Programmer dbsn...@bigpond.com
Sneddo's quick guide ... http://www.users.bigpond.com/dbsneddon/
DBS freeware http://www.users.bigpond.com/dbsneddon/software.htm
b...@instantwhip.com
Rich Jordan
it sounds (and looks in the docs) great. I'm really looking
forward to trying it as soon as work allows.
Rich
Mark Daniel
in place of it's current yahMAIL (and they really can't be compared)
then the post is pertinent. If Bob was just throwing away a line then I
agree my three course meal was a waste of resources.
Mark Daniel
The initial access to private email should be
/cgi-bin/soymail/~
The path of /~ indicates to soyMAIL that private access is being
requested. The server should prompt with a username/password dialog.
Subsequent accesses through soyMAIL shows a path of
/cgi-bin/soymail/~username
where 'username' was the the username entered into that browser
username/password dialog.
I will clarify this in subsequent release documentation.
(Thanks for the encouraging remarks.)
Michael Austin
> A clarification that a couple of users have tripped up over.
>
> The initial access to private email should be
>
> /cgi-bin/soymail/~
>
> The path of /~ indicates to soyMAIL that private access is being
> requested. The server should prompt with a username/password dialog.
> Subsequent accesses through soyMAIL shows a path of
>
> /cgi-bin/soymail/~username
Thanks for posting this - thought I was going crazy.. btw any plans to include
the logged-in user as a default - similar to yahmail?
Like the new search options... ever tried finding something using yahmail in a
folder with > 600 messages? :)
Using this is great - while working at a company that blocks access to things
like Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail...etc... mail sites, they did not block my yahmail site.
<bunch of stuff snipped>
--
Michael Austin.
DBA Consultant
Donations welcomed. Http://www.firstdbasource.com/donations.html
:)
Mark Daniel
> Mark Daniel wrote:
>
>> A clarification that a couple of users have tripped up over.
>>
>> The initial access to private email should be
>>
>> /cgi-bin/soymail/~
>>
>> The path of /~ indicates to soyMAIL that private access is being
>> requested. The server should prompt with a username/password dialog.
>> Subsequent accesses through soyMAIL shows a path of
>>
>> /cgi-bin/soymail/~username
>
>
> Thanks for posting this - thought I was going crazy.. btw any plans to
The technical writing team should always be a little distant from the
development and the testing teams for just this reason. Since my
successful psychotherapy this has not been possible.
> include the logged-in user as a default - similar to yahmail?
I'm not sure I understand the comment.
The way soyMAIL (and yahMAIL) work is the initial access URL should be
/cgi-bin/soymail/~ with the path of /~ triggering authorization by the
underlying web server. The resulting REMOTE_USER (often a VMS username
if authenticated against the SYSUAF, but it can be mapped into one by
the [public] configuration directive provided by both) is used by
soyMAIL as the VMS username.
yahMAIL used the GET method and passed all it's request parameters in
the query string. There are a number of issues with this. soyMAIL
almost exclusively uses the POST method. This allows very much more
information to be passed, improving potential functionality, and for it
not to be obvious to the user (location URL is not always changing) or
the access log. soyMAIL uses this approach to pass a lot of 'state'
information from request to request. You can see this encoded data in
'hidden' field twards the bottom of a soyMAIL page. Note: there is no
'sensitive' information contained in this state.
soyMAIL places the authenticated username (which because of mapping may
not necesarily be the same as the underlying VMS username) into the
request URI for subsequent requests, so the user observes the 'location'
change to /cgi-bin/soymail/~DANIEL for instance.
> Like the new search options... ever tried finding something using
> yahmail in a folder with > 600 messages? :)
>
> Using this is great - while working at a company that blocks access to
> things like Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail...etc... mail sites, they did not block
> my yahmail site.
:-) common problem - common solution.
> <bunch of stuff snipped>