Re: Eudora eMail Problems

[rickman]

Jim Thompson wrote on 8/3/2017 3:59 PM:
> On Thu, 03 Aug 2017 12:56:38 -0700, Jim Thompson
> <To-Email-Use-Th...@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 03 Aug 2017 12:51:08 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <je...@cruzio.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 3 Aug 2017 13:51:47 -0400, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Any suggestions on how to debug this? How do email clients authenticate if
>>>> TLS isn't used?
>>>
>>> Who's the ISP? I want to check what protocols they support and
>>> expect. If you don't want to disclose this information, try the
>>> following as a starting template for an SMTP session using telnet:
>>> <https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa995718(v=exchg.65).aspx>
>>> Use this to encrypt your password:
>>> <https://www.base64encode.org>
>>> If you still have access to your old ISP account that worked, try the
>>> same session and compare results between the old and new ISP.
>>>
>>> Good luck.
>>
>> OLM.net supports Eudora ;-)
>>
>> ...Jim Thompson
>
> Just realized, after my response, that this was an S.E.D post.
>
> There is a Eudora-specific group: comp.mail.eudora.ms-windows

Thanks for that. I've cross posted to that group.

--

Rick C

[rickman]

Peabody wrote on 8/3/2017 10:58 PM:
> rickman says...
>
> > Sure. Do you know what form of authentication they use?
>
> "Last SSL Info" for POP says Port 995, TLSv1,
> DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA(256bits)
>
> For SMTP it's the same, except Port 587.
>
> Cox requires my Cox username and password.
>
> Under Getting Started, I have Allow Authentication checked.
>
> Under Checking Mail, I have Secure Sockets when receiving
> set to "Required, Alternate Port"
>
> Under Incoming Mail, I have POP and Passwords selected.
>
> Under Sending Mail I have Allow Autherntication and Use
> Submission Port (587) selected. And under Secure Sockets
> when sending, I have Required, STARTTLS selected.
>
> All the Kerberos stuff is turned off.
>
> Then you need to Google "patch QCSSL.dll". This addresses
> the situation where the first contact to the server takes a
> long time, or even times out. I think there's a version for
> 7.1.0.9 on dropbox which Google will take you to. or if
> you're using 6.2.5.6, I can send you the patch. I think in
> both cases, just one byte is changed in the dll.
>
> The big problem most people have is with certificates used
> by the server not being considered valid by Eudora. After
> attempting to POP email, you can go into the Last SSL Info
> under Checking Mail, and open up the Certificates section at
> the bottom, and make sure there are no bad certs. If there
> are, you may need to import them. And you can only fix one
> at a time. There may be a whole string of them, so you nay
> have to repeat the process until everything is good.
>
> I think TLSv1 may not be supported by your server. It is
> considered to be compromised. If so, you may be out of luck
> on encryption. Eudora used its own SSL dll, and I don't
> know how you would get a more modern version.

Seems I was mistaken. I am able to turn off authentication and send an
email to one of my other email accounts on the same server, but I am still
not able to send email to other servers. The reported error is "550 without
authentication". My hosting provider is not being much help. They just see
it as a problem of using a crappy email program.

I wish I understood the use of Stunnel better. I'm not sure if it will help
with this problem or if I can even run it under Windows.

Would it make any sense to run an email server on my laptop? That seems
like it would need to be the email endpoint, no? That would mean I'd have
to host the domain name on my laptop, right?

--

Rick C

[VanguardLH]

rickman wrote:

> I am able to turn off authentication and send an email to one of my
> other email accounts on the same server, but I am still not able to
> send email to other servers. The reported error is "550 without
> authentication". My hosting provider is not being much help. They
> just see it as a problem of using a crappy email program.

When sending e-mails between accounts at the same e-mail provider, it is
unlikely that SMTP is employed in the message transfer. Instead
internal routing is used to link the message to other internal accounts.
When you look at the Received headers for an internally routed message,
you'll see it never left their domain and didn't pass out through an
SMTP server. It's all internal routing. Depends on how they set up
their boundary SMTP server (the one that sends outside their domain).

> I wish I understood the use of Stunnel better. I'm not sure if it will help
> with this problem or if I can even run it under Windows.

Been a long time but I used sTunnel on Windows XP and it worked as long
as you get both the client and sTunnel proxy configured correctly.
Client has to connect to sTunnel, not to the e-mail server, and the
client must not use encryption when connecting to the sTunnel proxy. In
the sTunnel config, you define which inbound connections go to which
outbound connections, sort of like a mapping of in to out. Its config
file has "name=value" pairs that map which input connect goes to what
output connect.

Make sure your client doesn't encrypt its traffic for its connection to
sTunnel (configured in the account you define within your client).
sTunnel does the encryption to the server. Some examples are at:

https://www.stunnel.org/examples.html

My recollection was when having multiple e-mail clients use sTunnel that
you had them connect to different listening ports for sTunnel. Or maybe
that was just me to keep them separate. From what I see at the
examples, you really only need to define to where sTunnel will connect
(the e-mail servers). No login credentials are including in the config
because those get stripped (parsed out) from the non-encrypted connect
by your client to sTunnel.

If you have anti-virus software configured to intercept your e-mail
traffic, some use transparent proxies but some use opaque proxies. With
opaque proxies (like with sTunnel), the client's config for an account
defined within it points at the AV's proxy, not to the e-mail server.
If you have one of those AV programs, either you disable its opaque
proxy or simply reconfigure the client to point at sTunnel's opaque
proxy; else, you have to figure out how to chain multiple opaque proxies
together (client configured to connect to sTunnel proxy configured to
connect to AV proxy, or maybe client to AV to sTunnel).

> Would it make any sense to run an email server on my laptop? That seems
> like it would need to be the email endpoint, no? That would mean I'd have
> to host the domain name on my laptop, right?

If you have a personal account with your ISP, check their terms of
service. They may not allow Internet-facing servers by their customers.
I know some users that ran afoul of such restrictions when running file
or gaming servers on their PCs at home on a personal-use service tier.

You can run afoul of anti-spam blacklists. You won't be running your
own nameserver so your SMTP server won't have an MX record showing it is
authorized to send from your domain. If you don't register a domain
then your SMTP server will only have an IP address which means no
reverse DNS lookup. Some anti-spam filters don't like non-unique MX
servers, especially when no MX server is listed at a nameserver at the
domain. You will appear a rogue e-mail source. Nowadays many e-mail
providers use DKIM (domain keys), SPF (sender policy framework), or
DMARC to prove who sent a message an you won't have any of that (see
https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Best_Practices_on_Email_Protection:_SPF,_DKIM_and_DMARC).
You will be an unknown source and unacceptable to other SMTP servers.

Why would you add the complexity of a local SMTP server (you'll have to
find one first) when the easiest solution is to change to a different
e-mail client? There are plenty of free ones. Or perhaps you are a fan
of the Red Green Show? Granted using sTunnel smacks of a Rube Goldberg
setup but switching to another e-mail client is a lot easier.

[Jim Thompson]

There has been (and still continues to be) a lot of discussion on how
to use sTunnel on Usenet group comp.mail.eudora.ms-windows.

(I'm lucky, my website provider actually supports Eudora.)

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
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I'm looking for work... see my website.

Thinking outside the box...producing elegant & economic solutions.

[rickman]

I thought my hosting provider was stiff arming me, but with some persistence
on my part they have been responding more and have downloaded a copy of
Eudora to try to work things out with. It was a *very* old copy and I sent
them a link to the latest copy. At least I think it is a good link. Many
times these sites are just there to infect you. Anyone know if this site is
ok?

http://filehippo.com/download_eudora/tech/1663/

The size is not an exact match, about half a meg larger. I smell a rat! I
could send them my file I suppose.

--

Rick C

[rickman]

SeaMonkey often glitches and switches to the main window where it grabs my
previous keystrokes that had not yet been captured by the composition window
resulting in the message pane cursor moving all over the place. It usually
ends up near the top of the message pane with nothing disturbed other than
the current message it is resting on being marked as "read". But this time
it seems to have blotted an entire thread from the
comp.mail.eudora.ms-windows group, *this thread*!!! Is there a way to get
the thread back? This should be the same as in Thunderbird.

--

Rick C

[rickman]

I got it. Seems you can specifically view ignored threads then unmark it as
ignored. This is why I think T-bird and SeaMonkey suck. Neither one works
well on my machines.

--

Rick C

[rickman]

Dennis Lee Bieber wrote on 8/6/2017 3:48 PM:
> On Sun, 6 Aug 2017 13:46:45 -0400, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> declaimed the
> following:

>
>
>>
>> Seems I was mistaken. I am able to turn off authentication and send an
>> email to one of my other email accounts on the same server, but I am still
>> not able to send email to other servers. The reported error is "550 without
>> authentication". My hosting provider is not being much help. They just see
>> it as a problem of using a crappy email program.
>>
>

> 1) What port authentication are those "other servers" configured for?
> {I interpret "send email to other servers" to mean you are attempting to
> directly send to that mail handler server and not relay through your own
> ISP server -- this is different from sending an email to your local server
> that has destination addresses on other domains}

No, am not using my ISP server because I am mobile. I use my web hosting
provider's servers for email. The "other servers" are the destination email
address I am sending to. I have no way of knowing much about them.

My domain is arius.com and I am sending through the email servers for that
domain.


> Many (all?) modern ISPs will not pass non-authenticated (old port 25)
> SMTP traffic from a user to a non-ISP server -- the outgoing email has to
> be handed to the ISP server and IT handles the relay to other servers. Some
> may even block TLS/authentication ports to outside servers, forcing all
> outgoing mail to be relayed by their server.
>
> If you have personalities that are configured with non-ISP SMPT
> servers, those personalities will at the least require TLS and/or alternate
> port (with or without authentication)

Ok...

>> Would it make any sense to run an email server on my laptop? That seems
>> like it would need to be the email endpoint, no? That would mean I'd have
>> to host the domain name on my laptop, right?
>

> There are two "servers"... Outgoing and incoming (they may be the same
> process, but the behavior requirements are different).
>
> Incoming servers would have to have registered MX entry (domain name)
> so that the sending SMTP server can connect to yours to deliver mail. You'd
> also need to run a POP3 server in order to have your local mail client
> "fetch" the messages that were delivered to your SMTP server.

I don't really need an incoming server, but it potentially can deal with
some issues I would have if I used multiple email programs on multiple PCs.


> Outgoing servers don't have to be seen by outsiders -- your email
> program would connect to an account on your server, it will accept the
> email, and IT then attempts to connect to the destination server (as
> determined by MX lookups) to deliver the mail.

That is essentially what Eudora would do, right? I guess I need a middle
man that will implement TLS with the hosting server properly and work
unauthenticated with Eudora running on the same computer.


> In the old days (mid-80s) this was normal practice. Anyone could
> connect to any SMTP server and provide the "from" and "to" information;
> most servers would accept from anyone, and would relay to anyone. (AKA: the
> infamous Open Relay -- which spammers rapidly took advantage of). These
> days, most SMTP servers will:
>
> A) Accept email for any destination as long as it comes from an ISP
> provided IP address (the DHCP address issued when you connect your network
> to the ISP)
>
> B) Accept email from any source as long as the destination is user
> account known to the ISP
>
> B1) They may use a whitelist of ISP mail domains and reject any direct
> connection from an IP that is not in the list

At the moment the hosting provider has an old version of Eudora working. If
they can get the current version working I may have a shot at this.

--

Rick C

[VanguardLH]

rickman wrote:

> I thought my hosting provider was stiff arming me, but with some persistence
> on my part they have been responding more and have downloaded a copy of
> Eudora to try to work things out with. It was a *very* old copy and I sent
> them a link to the latest copy. At least I think it is a good link. Many
> times these sites are just there to infect you. Anyone know if this site is
> ok?
>
> http://filehippo.com/download_eudora/tech/1663/
>
> The size is not an exact match, about half a meg larger. I smell a rat! I
> could send them my file I suppose.

Eudora OSE
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Eudora_Releases

Looks like Mozilla decided the project was dead so they no longer
provide downloads. Instead they redirect you to Thunderbird.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/E-mail/E-mail-Clients/Eudora.shtml

You can get a copy from there. They scan the submissions for malware.
Although the download page says it is for Eudora OSE, the download is
for Eudora 7.1.0.9.

I have downloaded from FileHippo before but only using the links to
there that some software author has on their own web site. Often the
author can afford to have the site but not afford the bandwidth load so
they put their files elsewhere, and sometimes that is at FileHippo.

You could submit the file to VirusTotal.com to have them scan it using
multiple AV engines. Some really don't belong in their list so seeing a
couple of false positives doesn't mean the file is infected, especially
if the alerts are from crap engines.

[rickman]

rickman wrote on 8/3/2017 1:51 PM:
> I'm still not ready to give up my Eudora email program. But it's proving to
> be a bit intractable at the moment. I recently switched to a new hosting
> service and had a great deal of problems setting it up for the new servers.
> Seems TLS is broken in Eudora, at least with modern servers. I was finally
> able to get the bloody thing to work after playing with it for some days.
>
> Now the provider has switched servers and Eudora will no longer send emails.
> Downloading emails is fine, but on sending either it times out or gives
> errors regarding authentication depending on the port number used. I ran
> wireshark but I can't say I understand the results. Only a half dozen
> messages are sent or received and there is 100 second wait between them. So
> it looks like something is timing out.

>
> Any suggestions on how to debug this? How do email clients authenticate if
> TLS isn't used?

When Eudora works, it is a very nice email program. But I have never had so
much trouble getting email to work.

Seems the problem wasn't as much the TLS malfunction as it was a password
issue. The new provider won't accept my setting the default password I've
used for a long time, it is one point shy of adequate. So when I switched
providers and had trouble getting the thing set up I ended up changing the
passwords and forgot. So now with the change in server name I had to
reenter the passwords and Eudora was happy to remember them wrong when they
failed without saying it was a password problem!!!

So it seems to be working now, but I still have one nagging issue. Some of
the test cases I created would work for sending email with the incoming
server as "stuff". I do this to make sure it doesn't read any email.
Hmmm... maybe that was something I did with my *very* old hosting account
that used a different control panel. Each email address was a mailbox even
if it was just being used for forwarding. Anyway, "stuff" works for some
Eudora personas, but not others. I don't get why and Eudora isn't telling!

But it's working again, mostly.

--

Rick C