23 Feb
2016
23 Feb
'16
10:46 a.m.
Assuming I want to send an email message to an older VAX server (Process
Software MultiNet V4.1 Rev A, MicroVAX 3100, VAX/VMS V5.5-2 ) that requires
one to format their OUTBOUND emails like this:
To: SMTP%"bill at myemail.net"
How does one send mail INBOUND to this kind of VAX mail from a modern email
like gmail? Is it possible to format the header somehow to get the message
through? You can't simply send a message to
system at microvax3100.vintagecomputer.net
how would I format the email address? I could write a PHP program to
format the header "wrong" for normal purposes but "right" for the VAX
inbound I suppose. Any tips that don't involve creating a gateway nor
changing the target VAX itself?
Thanks
b
--
@ BillDeg:
Web: vintagecomputer.net
Twitter: @billdeg <https://twitter.com/billdeg>
Youtube: @billdeg <https://www.youtube.com/user/billdeg>
Unauthorized Bio <http://www.vintagecomputer.net/readme.cfm>
23 Feb
23 Feb
11:06 a.m.
Assuming I want to send an email message to an older VAX server (Process
Software MultiNet V4.1 Rev A, MicroVAX 3100, VAX/VMS V5.5-2 ) that requires
one to format their OUTBOUND emails like this:
To: SMTP%"bill at myemail.net"
How does one send mail INBOUND to this kind of VAX mail from a modern email
like gmail? Is it possible to format the header somehow to get the message
through? You can't simply send a message to
system at microvax3100.vintagecomputer.net
how would I format the email address? I could write a PHP program to
format the header "wrong" for normal purposes but "right" for the
VAX
inbound I suppose. Any tips that don't involve creating a gateway nor
changing the target VAX itself?
Assuming they are configured correctly, VMS and Multinet are enough to make
your MicroVAX 3100 behave like any other SMTP mail server. What you are
missing is a way of telling gmail (or wherever else you want to send the
mails from) how to route the mails to your MicroVAX 3100.
To do this, you need an "MX" record or "A" record in the DNS that
specifies
the domain name and ip address of your MicroVAX 3100. When this is put in the
DNS, any SMTP based mail server can look it up and find out where to send mail
for your domain to. For example, something like this in the DNS zone file for
vintagecomputer.net:
microvax3100 in mx 10 microvax3100
microvax3100 in a a.b.c.d
where a.b.c.d is the ip address the MicroVAX 3100 is configured with. (If the
machine lives behind a firewall, the ip address should be an external ip
address of the firewall and a suitable rule on the firewall should direct tcp
port 25 traffic to the internal ip address of the MicroVAX 3100.)
As I mentioned it before, I wouldn't do it this way because spammers will find
it and abuse it. A better way would be to configure a more capable mail server
(such as the mail server that already handles mail for vintagecomputer.net) to
accept mail for microvax3100.vintagecomputer.net and forward it to the ip
address of the MicroVAX 3100. The DNS entries would then point to this extra
mail server instead of directly to the MicroVAX itself.
To test that everying is configured correctly on the MicroVAX, you can telnet
to port 25 on the MicroVAX from itself or some other machine on the same
network and manually type in an SMTP mail, something like this:
telnet a.b.c.d /port=25 (from VMS)
telnet a.b.c.d 25 (from unix or Windows)
When you get the SMTP banner, enter this:
HELO domain
MAIL FROM:<postmaster at somewhere.com>
RCPT TO:<system at microvax3100.vintagecomputer.net>
DATA
From: postmaster at somewhere.com
To: system at microvax3100.vintagecomputer.net
Test message
.
QUIT
(The second last line is a period on it's own with no spaces.)
The Multinet telnet client will allow you to correct mistakes using DELETE but
many other telnet clients will mess up if you don't get everything exactly
right first time, so type carefully.
Then log in to SYSTEM and check for mail.
Regards,
Peter Coghlan.
11:48 a.m.
On Feb 23, 2016, at 1:46 PM, william degnan
<billdegnan at gmail.com> wrote:
Assuming I want to send an email message to an older VAX server (Process
Software MultiNet V4.1 Rev A, MicroVAX 3100, VAX/VMS V5.5-2 ) that requires
one to format their OUTBOUND emails like this:
To: SMTP%"bill at myemail.net"
How does one send mail INBOUND to this kind of VAX mail from a modern email
like gmail? Is it possible to format the header somehow to get the message
through? You can't simply send a message to
system at microvax3100.vintagecomputer.net
how would I format the email address? I could write a PHP program to
format the header "wrong" for normal purposes but "right" for the
VAX
inbound I suppose. Any tips that don't involve creating a gateway nor
changing the target VAX itself?
I don't remember the details of what email addresses looked like in the days when DEC
was first connected to the Internet (or ARPAnet). There was a bunch of magic at the WRL
gateway (gatekeeper.dec.com -- also one of the first firewalls). A lot of this can be
done by suitable magic in sendmail.cf. At some later time I believe that the mapping from
SMTP addresses to DECmail addresses was pretty much transparent, so you could indeed send
that simple address you mentioned. Earlier on it was something like
"ark::[1,211]"@decwrl.dec.com or perhaps kremvax!decwrl!ark!1,211 ...
paul
24 Feb
24 Feb
2:16 a.m.
How does one
send mail INBOUND to this kind of VAX mail from a modern email
like gmail? Is it possible to format the header somehow to get the message
through? You can't simply send a message to
system at microvax3100.vintagecomputer.net
how would I format the email address? I could write a PHP program to
format the header "wrong" for normal purposes but "right" for the
VAX
inbound I suppose. Any tips that don't involve creating a gateway nor
changing the target VAX itself?
I don't remember the details of what email addresses looked like in the days
when DEC was first connected to the Internet (or ARPAnet). There was a
bunch of magic at the WRL gateway (gatekeeper.dec.com -- also one of the
first firewalls). A lot of this can be done by suitable magic in
sendmail.cf. At some later time I believe that the mapping from SMTP
addresses to DECmail addresses was pretty much transparent, so you could
indeed send that simple address you mentioned. Earlier on it was something
like "ark::[1,211]"@decwrl.dec.com or perhaps kremvax!decwrl!ark!1,211 ...
23 Feb
23 Feb
12:15 p.m.
A quick surf and I see that MultiNet is a TCP/IP and associated utilities
stack for VAX/VMS.
So, I assume your VAX has TCP/IP connectivity to a bigger network (
vintagecomputer.net) and you can ping to and from the VAX.
Is an SMTP server running on the VAX? If so, from the bigger network can
you telnet to port 25 of the VAX? You should be talking to the SMTP server
and then basically, yes, you can email
system at microvax3100.vintagecomputer.net.
The SMTP server might need some configuration to map SMTP email addresses
to VAX user accounts.
On 23 February 2016 at 18:46, william degnan <billdegnan at gmail.com> wrote:
Assuming I want to send an email message to an older
VAX server (Process
Software MultiNet V4.1 Rev A, MicroVAX 3100, VAX/VMS V5.5-2 ) that requires
one to format their OUTBOUND emails like this:
To: SMTP%"bill at myemail.net"
How does one send mail INBOUND to this kind of VAX mail from a modern email
like gmail? Is it possible to format the header somehow to get the message
through? You can't simply send a message to
system at microvax3100.vintagecomputer.net
how would I format the email address? I could write a PHP program to
format the header "wrong" for normal purposes but "right" for the
VAX
inbound I suppose. Any tips that don't involve creating a gateway nor
changing the target VAX itself?
Thanks
b
--
@ BillDeg:
Web: vintagecomputer.net
Twitter: @billdeg <https://twitter.com/billdeg>
Youtube: @billdeg <https://www.youtube.com/user/billdeg>
Unauthorized Bio <http://www.vintagecomputer.net/readme.cfm>
--
4.4 > 5.4
24 Feb
24 Feb
3:30 a.m.
I am confident DNS is set up correctly.
I have another vax server sitting next to the microvax3100 that is using a
diff. subdomain on vintagecomputer.net and this vax sends and receives mail
without issue. The only diff between the 3100 and the other vax server is
the other is running a newer version of multinet and vms. All configurable
multinet settings are set the same, other than the FQDN for the mail server
itself.
I can telnet into both servers using the subdomains.
No special email address formatting is needed to send and receive email
between the outside world and the other vax server (a 4000).
If I want to send FROM the 3100 VAX I need to format the address as:
MAIL> MAIL
To: SMTP%"bill at myemail.net"
Works fine.
If I reply to the received message however, the postmaster of the VAX does
receive the message but rejects the address FORMAT, bad address. The
postmaster sends the external sender a rejection email:
Bad address --
Error --
%MAIL-E-USERSPEC, invalid user specification ':'
So, my question is ... If when sending from a modern Internet smtp mail
client do I have to use a special address format so my to a VAX running the
older vms/multinet can deliver it. For example, something like
System <%"system at microvax3100.vintagecomputer.net">
It seems like the trick is how to format the header of the message. As I
said before I can use php to make a custom header if I knew the trick to
formatting.
Hope that clarifies
Bill
5:11 p.m.
On Tue, 23 Feb 2016, william degnan wrote:
Assuming I want to send an email message to an older
VAX server (Process
Software MultiNet V4.1 Rev A, MicroVAX 3100, VAX/VMS V5.5-2 ) that requires
one to format their OUTBOUND emails like this:
To: SMTP%"bill at myemail.net"
How does one send mail INBOUND to this kind of VAX mail from a modern email
like gmail? Is it possible to format the header somehow to get the message
through? You can't simply send a message to
system at microvax3100.vintagecomputer.net
Why not?
For ten years I managed a VAX cluster running VMS 5.X and Wollongong
tcp/ip with PMDF plus a VAXstation 3100 running VMS 5.5 and UCX with
Hunter Goatley's MX open source freeware MTA. I sent outbound
mail to
in%"foo at baz.com"
That syntax is required to cope with the VMS mail utility, it is not
an SMTP or Multinet problem.
Incoming mail was addressed the same as for any other tcp/ip host:
richardlo at admin.athabascau.ca
Later I ran an Apha VMS workstation with Multinet V4 and the syntax was
the same.
Multinet has an SMTP listener and it expects standard SMTP addresses.
If you cannot deliver such an address locally then you must look at how
you have configured the Multinet email server, if you want to forward
to a decnet only machine or to All-in-One (rather than a VAXmail user)
then you will need to create some rewrite rules but Multinet should
deliver to a local VMS mailbox without clever manipulation.
--
Richard Loken VE6BSV, Systems Programmer - VMS : "...underneath those
Athabasca University : tuques we wear, our
Athabasca, Alberta Canada : heads are naked!"
** rlloken at telus.net ** : - Arthur Black
8:06 p.m.
On Feb 24, 2016, at 5:11 PM, Richard Loken <rlloken
at telus.net> wrote:
Multinet has an SMTP listener and it expects standard SMTP addresses.
If you cannot deliver such an address locally then you must look at how
you have configured the Multinet email server, if you want to forward
to a decnet only machine or to All-in-One (rather than a VAXmail user)
then you will need to create some rewrite rules but Multinet should
deliver to a local VMS mailbox without clever manipulation.
Good grief, Charlie Brown! AllIn1 had it's own Bitnet-style routing syntax on VMS? I
am so glad I never knew that.
Did PMDF run until the end of VMS at AU? I don't recall you ever mentioning the UCX
stuff. Of course you know I stayed as far away from VMS as was humanly possible :-) (And
just when did the 8650 get retired? Did it spend any time keeping auvax company behind
the woodshed?)
--lyndon
8:48 p.m.
On Wed, 24 Feb 2016, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
Good grief, Charlie Brown! AllIn1 had it's own
Bitnet-style routing
syntax on VMS? I am so glad I never knew that.
I don't remember the details of all-in-one at all. It is possible that
all-in-one just used the standard VMS mailbox but I do not remember.
All-in-One was retired long before VMS was retired.
Did PMDF run until the end of VMS at AU? I don't
recall you ever
mentioning the UCX stuff. Of course you know I stayed as far away from
VMS as was humanly possible :-) (And just when did the 8650 get
retired? Did it spend any time keeping auvax company behind the
woodshed?)
First, we are still running PMDF and we are still running it on our brace
of DS20E Tru64 boxes, the gods have decreed that we will be on Office365
by the end of March but the removal of PMDF will be a separate project
which will be put in motion some time this year. It is possible that
we will just move it over to a Linux box along with the mailman server
but I would rather retire both PMDF and mailman.
As for the 8650... Lessee...
AU purchased an 8600 some time around 1985?
The 8600 was upgraded in place to an 8650
The 8650 was traded in on an 8820 for $1.2 million
Some time in the very late 80s a VAX 4000-300 was purchased
Circa 1990 the 8820 and the 4000 were traded in for two VAX 4000-500s
The VAX 4000-500 were upgrade twice in place finally to a 505A
The VAX 4000 was finally shut off around 2010
So, no, only the 785 suffered the indignity of a slow death in the rain.
PMDF was left running on the VAX 4000 until the end but even I was not
logging into it any more.
I was running a DECstation 3000 Model 400 which was purchsed around 1990
on my desktop until about 2005 when the memory went South, I was looking
into replacing it with yet another Linux box when my boss (Greg) suggested
I go into the machine room and dig the Alphaserver 4100 (retired Unix
Oracle server) out from under the debree and use that so I did.
The 4100 is now running VMS 8.3, Multinet, and PMDF and it was my only
desktop workstation until 2010 when it lost a power supply so I built a
linux box while waiting for HP to provide a power supply (lax management
had left the 4100 on a service contract so I ordered a power supply first
and told the boss to cancel the service contract second). The 4100 is
still pouring out noise and heat beside my desk but the linux box has
become my main computer.
I will probably take the 4100 home when I retire on December 31 so it
can warm up my basement.
--
Richard Loken VE6BSV, Systems Programmer - VMS : "...underneath those
Athabasca University : tuques we wear, our
Athabasca, Alberta Canada : heads are naked!"
** rlloken at telus.net ** : - Arthur Black
9:13 p.m.
On Feb 24, 2016, at 8:48 PM, Richard Loken <rlloken
at telus.net> wrote:
AU purchased an 8600 some time around 1985?
The 8600 was upgraded in place to an 8650
The 8650 was traded in on an 8820 for $1.2 million
Some time in the very late 80s a VAX 4000-300 was purchased
Circa 1990 the 8820 and the 4000 were traded in for two VAX 4000-500s
The VAX 4000-500 were upgrade twice in place finally to a 505A
The VAX 4000 was finally shut off around 2010
So, no, only the 785 suffered the indignity of a slow death in the rain.
My brain is cooked. I left AU in the fall of 1991, no? At that time I was pretty sure
the 8650 was still in play. I'm sure I would have remembered the Digital Road Crew
showing up with a semi-trailer full of new hardware.
What I can't recall is whether we had ditched auvax by the time I left. I remember
the 3B4000 abomination occupying the same floor space the 785 hung out in. The same
neighbourhood, at least.
The train of 3B2's that replaced the 3B4000 abomination took up space closer to and
parallel to the PACX. Closer to the tape vault.
In hindsight, the 3B4000 could not have replaced auvax. My job was to move all the
app's across, so both would have had to be running concurrently for most of the time I
was there.
Are there any pictures remaining of us (me, Ross, Ronnie) nuking the 3B4K that night?
Campbell might be in there, too. I lost my (re-)collection ages ago :-(
--lyndon
9:26 p.m.
On Wed, 24 Feb 2016, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
My brain is cooked. I left AU in the fall of 1991,
no? At that time I
was pretty sure the 8650 was still in play. I'm sure I would have
remembered the Digital Road Crew showing up with a semi-trailer full of
new hardware.
You have forgotten at least two deliveries of Digital hardware. The 8820
was BIG! and it sat to the right of the 785. The 8820 came with an HSC50
and a big pile of RA81s. That is as far as my memory can go.
When and why was the 780 retired? I cannot remember at all.
Are there any pictures remaining of us (me, Ross,
Ronnie) nuking the
3B4K that night? Campbell might be in there, too. I lost my
(re-)collection ages ago :-(
I remember those pictures but they seem to be lost (maybe AT&T had them
seized and burned). I have never seen a machine more gleefully
dismembered then the 3B4000.
--
Richard Loken VE6BSV, Systems Programmer - VMS : "...underneath those
Athabasca University : tuques we wear, our
Athabasca, Alberta Canada : heads are naked!"
** rlloken at telus.net ** : - Arthur Black
25 Feb
25 Feb
4:31 a.m.
P. Coghlan logged into my server and found the problem was due to a logical
assigned to SYSTEM. If I had created a new user, inbound mail to the other
user would have worked fine, the issue was with sending mail to the SYSTEM
user specifically. That's why nothing wrong was found with multinet mail
settings, and why I was confused. P Coghlan writes:
"..To temporarily get rid of the logical name I did:
$ DEASSIGN /SYSTEM /EXEC SYSTEM ..."
He also commented out the line in ..startup_v5.com to prevent reloading of
the logical on boot. I need to go through startup more closely to see what
else is happening there.
This was a good learning experience for me.
Now, emails to system at microvax3100.vintagecomputer.net are delivered.
Friends from vcfed.org sent test messages all evening, works great.
Thanks everyone.
P.S. The server is not powered on at the moment so if you were to attempt a
message it'd have issues. Contact me privately if you want to access the
server.
Bill Degnan
twitter: billdeg
vintagecomputer.net
9:43 a.m.
On 02/24/2016 10:48 PM, Richard Loken wrote:
the gods have decreed that we will be on Office365
by the end of March
They moved us to this at work last year, it is so awful I
can't believe it!
The web portal takes minutes to bring up a page, and the
interface is so ghastly, I could not learn how to use it.
I use the IMAP interface to it, and store everything that it
lets me locally with Thunderbird, but it is STILL really
slow and unreliable. First thing every day, I open
Thunderbird, and it takes about 5 MINUTES to download the 5
or so messages that I have. Sending a single mail message
never takes less than 30 seconds, and often stalls for
minutes. It IS working better than right after the
changeover, but I can't believe most users aren't up to the
torches and pitchforks stage. Thank GOD I don't have to
deal with this abomination from home.
Jon
10:09 a.m.
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 12:43 PM, Jon Elson <elson at pico-systems.com> wrote:
On 02/24/2016 10:48 PM, Richard Loken wrote:
OT:
Having done an Office 365 implementation, there must be something wrong.
It should never take that long to synch your emails each day. that's the
whole point of it. May be a DNS issue. I would only even make this guess
having gone through the DNS and install parts for a customer of mine about
four months ago. If it's not DNS, then they have a setting to send
everything every time which is wrong. It should only need to synch up
changes.
Maybe they have security reasons to synch everything but that seems dumb
--
@ BillDeg:
Web: vintagecomputer.net
Twitter: @billdeg <https://twitter.com/billdeg>
Youtube: @billdeg <https://www.youtube.com/user/billdeg>
Unauthorized Bio <http://www.vintagecomputer.net/readme.cfm>
the gods have decreed that we will be on
Office365
by the end of March
They moved us to this at work last year, it is so awful I can't believe it!
The web portal takes minutes to bring up a page, and the interface is so
ghastly, I could not learn how to use it.
I use the IMAP interface to it, and store everything that it lets me
locally with Thunderbird, but it is STILL really slow and unreliable.
First thing every day, I open Thunderbird, and it takes about 5 MINUTES to
download the 5 or so messages that I have. Sending a single mail message
never takes less than 30 seconds, and often stalls for minutes. It IS
working better than right after the changeover, but I can't believe most
users aren't up to the torches and pitchforks stage. Thank GOD I don't
have to deal with this abomination from home.
Jon
24 Feb
24 Feb
9:14 p.m.
On Tue, 23 Feb 2016, william degnan wrote:
How does one send mail INBOUND to this kind of VAX
mail from a modern email
like gmail? Is it possible to format the header somehow to get the message
through? You can't simply send a message to
Perhaps VMS cannot reach your mailbox?
In another message you mentioned a complain from your mail server
involving a ':'. A colon is very important to VMS for things like
terminating a logical name, separating the device name from the directory,
the node name from the device name, modifying the way that a symbol is
defined, and probably others. So a full file specification migh look
like this
oldvax::sys$sysdevice:[temp.george]george_and_alice.jpg
This leads to the following required syntax for a Multinet scp command:
richardlo $ scp brian_trains.txt klystron.cs:trains.txt
SCP2: FATAL: klystron.cs is not a valid logical name, use :: for a
remote host
richardlo $ scp brian_trains.txt klystron.cs::trains.txt
brian_trains.txt | 4.3kB | 4.3kB/s | TOC: 00:00:01 | 100%
Go read you multinet configuration and you system startup files very
carefully with a mind for typographical errors surrounding colons,
logical names, symbols, and so forth.
--
Richard Loken VE6BSV, Systems Programmer - VMS : "...underneath those
Athabasca University : tuques we wear, our
Athabasca, Alberta Canada : heads are naked!"
** rlloken at telus.net ** : - Arthur Black
3004
days inactive
3006
days old
14 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
billdegnan＠gmail.com -
cctalk＠beyondthepale.ie -
elson＠pico-systems.com -
guy＠cuillin.org.uk -
lyndon＠orthanc.ca -
paulkoning＠comcast.net -
rlloken＠telus.net