VMS 5.5 and multinet 4.1 SMTP Question

[william degnan]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 8:15 AM, Peter Coghlan <cctalk at beyondthepale.ie>
wrote:

> >
> > Thanks for your reply.  My error I meant send email to
> > system at microvax3100.vintagecomputer.net
> >
>
> Multinet is an excellent TCP/IP stack but the SMTP server included with it
> is a bit limited and V4.1 is old.  If you allow it to accept SMTP mail
> directly
> from the internet, it may be difficult or impossible to secure it against
> exploitation as a spam relay which would cause lots of problems for others
> as well as yourself.
>
> Having said that, it should be possible to feed mail to it from a more
> capable
> internet facing SMTP mail server or set it up to send/receive SMTP mail on
> your
> internal network only.
>
> To do this, you don't need the DECnet to SMTP mail gateway you mentioned.
> If
> this was configured on your machine, it may have been used to allow the
> machine
> running Multinet SMTP to accept mail from the internet and pass it on to
> other
> DECnet connected machines which did not run SMTP.
>
> I don't know what MULTINET:MR_CONFIGURE.COM is but "MR" suggests it might
> be
> something to do with ALL-IN-1 mail rather than VMS MAIL.  If you want to
> run
> ALL-IN-1 mail, this is very different to using VMS MAIL.
>
> Everything you need to route SMTP mail to/from VMS MAIL on your machine
> should
> be provided by:
>
> $ MULTINET CONFIGURE /MAIL
>
> Regards,
> Peter Coghlan.
>

Peter,
I won't be leaving this box up perpetually for sure.  I have a 4000-200
with a newer version of MULTINET and VMS that allows a person to send and
receive mail with "normal" email addresses but even that one is only left
running occasionally.  I watch attempts every few minutes to probe it from
the outside world, sheesh, bots.

> MULTINET CONFIG /MAIL

This is what I use to compare the mVax3100 and my 4000-200.  I could not
find anything other than the versions of the services to explain why one
could not use simpler email addressing (bill at emaildomain.com).

Basically, the 3100 with it's older multinet and VMS "works as designed"
which for now is fine with me.  I just wanted to be sure I did not need to
perform a trick everyone but me knows about to streamline email, other than
simply upgrade these services.

Thanks again for your reply.

Bill



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