'Shared' Mail and Browser on Multiple Macs

At 5:31 PM -0800 2004/12/23, Dan O'Donnell wrote:
>On 12/23/04 8:58 AM, "Nik" <GerberiNik.net> wrote:
>
>> Easiest, by far, is to subscribe to .Mac and leave all your email on
>> the IMAP server and sync your bookmarks via the same. When you log in,
>> kick off iSync to bring your bookmarks up to date and when you open
>> Mail, it will sync up with the latest changes on the IMAP server. The
>> bookmarks sync will only work with Safari, although OmniWeb will let
>> you sync your bookmarks up to non .Mac network locations. (.Mac/iSync
>> can also keep your address book in sync.)
>
>I agree with the use of .Mac and using that mail server to sync, though this
>won't work behind corporate firewalls that block port 25 due to Windows
>virii commandeering Outlook and its address book. I can get my .Mac email,
>but cannot reply to it. :-( Will have to figure out some alternative.

        Try using port 587, the mail submission port. This often gets
you to the same SMTP server as port 25, but is blocked less often
than 25.

                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

On 12/27/2004 10:33, "Chris Pepper" <pepperreppep.com> wrote:

> At 5:31 PM -0800 2004/12/23, Dan O'Donnell wrote:
>> On 12/23/04 8:58 AM, "Nik" <GerberiNik.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Easiest, by far, is to subscribe to .Mac and leave all your email on
>>> the IMAP server and sync your bookmarks via the same. When you log in,
>>> kick off iSync to bring your bookmarks up to date and when you open
>>> Mail, it will sync up with the latest changes on the IMAP server. The
>>> bookmarks sync will only work with Safari, although OmniWeb will let
>>> you sync your bookmarks up to non .Mac network locations. (.Mac/iSync
>>> can also keep your address book in sync.)
>>
>> I agree with the use of .Mac and using that mail server to sync, though this
>> won't work behind corporate firewalls that block port 25 due to Windows
>> virii commandeering Outlook and its address book. I can get my .Mac email,
>> but cannot reply to it. :-( Will have to figure out some alternative.
>
> Try using port 587, the mail submission port. This often gets
> you to the same SMTP server as port 25, but is blocked less often
> than 25.

The mac.com mail server does not seem to accept connections on port 587.
Seems to me to be a major omission in the service.
  --John

[johnZeus john]$dig mac.com mx

; <<>> DiG 9.2.2 <<>> mac.com mx
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 48605
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;mac.com. IN MX

;; ANSWER SECTION:
mac.com. 7200 IN MX 10 smtp-mx.mac.com.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
mac.com. 432000 IN NS nserver3.apple.com.
mac.com. 432000 IN NS nserver4.apple.com.
mac.com. 432000 IN NS nserver.apple.com.
mac.com. 432000 IN NS nserver2.apple.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
smtp-mx.mac.com. 5563 IN A 17.250.248.49

;; Query time: 77 msec
;; SERVER: 65.117.224.77#53(65.117.224.77)
;; WHEN: Mon Dec 27 13:02:55 2004
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 162

[johnZeus john]$telnet 17.250.248.49 587
Trying 17.250.248.49...
telnet: connect to address 17.250.248.49: Operation timed out
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host

Whereas port 25 works as expected:
[johnZeus john]$telnet 17.250.248.49 25
Trying 17.250.248.49...
Connected to smtp-mx.mac.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 smtp-mx.mac.com ESMTP Service
quit
221 2.0.0 mac.com closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.
[johnZeus john]$

At 1:27 PM -0800 2004/12/27, John W. Baxter wrote:
>On 12/27/2004 10:33, "Chris Pepper" <pepperreppep.com> wrote:

> >> I agree with the use of .Mac and using that mail server to sync,
>though this
>>> won't work behind corporate firewalls that block port 25 due to Windows
>>> virii commandeering Outlook and its address book. I can get my .Mac email,
>>> but cannot reply to it. :-( Will have to figure out some alternative.
>>
>> Try using port 587, the mail submission port. This often gets
>> you to the same SMTP server as port 25, but is blocked less often
>> than 25.
>
>The mac.com mail server does not seem to accept connections on port 587.
>Seems to me to be a major omission in the service.

        It's open at Apple's end, but may not be in corporate
firewalls which block 25.

                                                Chris

pepperpepperbook:~$ sudo nmap -FTInsane smtp.mac.com

Starting nmap 3.75 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2004-12-27 20:32 EST
Interesting ports on smtp.mac.com (17.250.248.48):
(The 1219 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: filtered)
PORT STATE SERVICE
25/tcp open smtp
587/tcp open submission

Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 56.602 seconds
pepperpepperbook:~$ telnet smtp.mac.com 587
Trying 17.250.248.48...
Connected to smtp.mac.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 smtp.mac.com ESMTP Service
HELO
501 5.0.0 HELO requires domain address
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

On Dec 27, 2004, at 11:33 AM, kyle_skrinak wrote:

> What about a "roaming profile?" The advantage would be user
> transparency. You log in and go. No sync'ing of bookmarks, no
> registering of services across multiple machines and no increased IMAP
> folder storage. The disadvantage *might* be the difficulty in setting
> this up. Something about automounting NFS shared volumes. I’d be
> curious to hear more on this, since Mac OS X does make it available.

Doesn't this feature require a MacOS X Server?

--Nik

Nik wrote:

> On Dec 27, 2004, at 11:33 AM, kyle_skrinak wrote:
>
>> What about a "roaming profile?" ...
>
>
> Doesn't this feature require a MacOS X Server?

Based on the limited and hurried research (back when Jaguar was current)
I did is that Mac OS Server facilitates implementation, but doing so is
not limited to Server. I'd surely exploit this on my home network if I
could get it to work.

Regards;
Kyle

On 12/28/2004 21:56, "Chris Pepper" <pepperreppep.com> wrote:

> At 1:27 PM -0800 2004/12/27, John W. Baxter wrote:
>> On 12/27/2004 10:33, "Chris Pepper" <pepperreppep.com> wrote:
>
>>>> I agree with the use of .Mac and using that mail server to sync,
>> though this
>>>> won't work behind corporate firewalls that block port 25 due to Windows
>>>> virii commandeering Outlook and its address book. I can get my .Mac email,
>>>> but cannot reply to it. :-( Will have to figure out some alternative.
>>>
>>> Try using port 587, the mail submission port. This often gets
>>> you to the same SMTP server as port 25, but is blocked less often
>>> than 25.
>>
>> The mac.com mail server does not seem to accept connections on port 587.
>> Seems to me to be a major omission in the service.
>
> It's open at Apple's end, but may not be in corporate
> firewalls which block 25.

OK, I see what I did wrong the other day. Our firewall is as I thought not
blocking 587 outbound. (As seen clearly in its log browser when I looked
this morning.)

However, I tried to connect to port 587 on the wrong Apple server (one which
has no reason to support port 587). I connect just fine to the right Apple
server, as Chris did (below).

Bottom line: Apple does make port 587 available. And I was able to send a
message to myself at mac.com by hand telnet using it.

Sorry about my prior error.

  --John

>
... nmap stuff deleted

> pepperpepperbook:~$ telnet smtp.mac.com 587
> Trying 17.250.248.48...
> Connected to smtp.mac.com.
> Escape character is '^]'.
> 220 smtp.mac.com ESMTP Service
> HELO
> 501 5.0.0 HELO requires domain address
> --
> Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
> Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>
>

>>> Try using port 587, the mail submission port. This often gets
>>> you to the same SMTP server as port 25, but is blocked less often
>>> than 25.
>>
>> The mac.com mail server does not seem to accept connections on port
>> 587.
>> Seems to me to be a major omission in the service.
>
> It's open at Apple's end, but may not be in corporate
> firewalls which block 25.

When you check off the "Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)" in the "SMTP
Server Options" window (Server Settings... button), you are actually
telling mail.app to use the newer version of SSL which is called TLS.
The advantage of doing TLS/SMTP versus the older SSMTP (Secure Simple
Mail Transport Protocol) using SSL is that TLS/SMTP uses the same port
as regular SMTP, port 25. I have set this up using Mac's and
Microsoft's Exchange server combined with sniffer analysis to verify
the results. Not that I've seen everything that there is to see, but
all of the mail servers that I have ever worked on only listen on port
25, which is why the SSMTP standard never really caught on as it
required additional firewall and proxy maintenance to have to be done.
TLS over SMTP requires only a few quick configuration additions to the
mail servers' SMTP configuration.

I don't have all my notes handy at this particular moment, but the
topic is expanded a bit in this thread:

open this page:
http://www.macintouch.com/mail.app01.html

do a find for this text: "Mail.app SMTP/SSL"

Regards,

James

PS - Apple's .mac email does accept TLS connections. I have had my
.mac email accounts using TLS for about two years now. My ISP,
Comcast, accepts it as well.

At 9:56 PM -0800 12/28/04, Chris Pepper wrote:
> It's open at Apple's end, but may not be in corporate
>firewalls which block 25.

John used the MX host for mac.com (smtp-mx.mac.com) while Chris used
smtp.mac.com. The latter is the host used by mail clients.

(smtp.mac.com only supports plaintext authentication, so it's
important to also turn on TLS support to protect your password.)

--
Larry Rosenstein
lsralum.mit.edu

Dan: I live behind a firewall at work also, but get around the sending email problem by setting my mac.com email account SMTP server to be the same server I use for work email. The outgoing email is from me&mac.com, but it goes through smtp.work.gov. I reverse this on my home computer and there, my work account, and my mac.com account, use the smtp.isp.net for the smtp server. Hope this helps. Claude

Steve's keynote talked about being able to synchronise various kinds of
apps, especially mail, in the Tiger version via dot mac accounts.

George

Very non geek here -

OK, so the answer for the Safari browser is sync bookmarks with .Mac.

But I don't want to use the IMAP option in Eudora (which I have
concluded I still want to keep using as it is still the best as far
as I can see). I like to keep my mail on my own machine so I can
search with powerful Eudora search features and also I had a bad
experience once with IMAP in switching to it from POP. (I also have
multiple email addresses. One with my university {which limits amount
of email too}, one with ISP, one with .Mac, and some old free
addresses that I still check or use as junk dumps. So how would IMAP
work with multiples? I think it would be just too confusing.)

I think what is needed is a common syncing feature (open source?) for
email programs that allows small home or small office networks where
there is no mail server on site to sync to various computers used by
one person.

Does it exist and is not limited to one email program?

Like the original enquiry, I have a number of Macs on a home office
network, and can appreciate the advantage of having the same e-mail,
web bookmarks etc available whatever computer one happens to be sat
at.

However, we only have a slow modem dialup to the outside world, and
so the solutions so far suggested, such as synching via .mac, are
impractical.

I'm far more interested in solutions that only involve the equipment
already at my disposal, rather than leaving me dependent on a remote
third party server.

For the e-mail it's simple -- just have the Eudora settings file and
mail folders publicly available across the network.

For the issue of web bookmarks, I'm going down the route of enabling
Apache on one of the machines, and using a freeware PHP bookmark
keeper so that all bookmarks are not only accessible on the intranet
home page, but browser independent.

The best script I've found so far is SiteBar <http://www.sitebar.org>
(initially found at
<http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Bookmark_Management/index.html>).
This even has a Javascript that you can add to your browser's
bookmarks menu, which when summoned will automatically add the
current page to the global bookmarks database. Unfortunately, unlike
Explorer or Opera, Safari doesn't seem to accept Javascripts as
bookmarks, so functionality in my preferred browser is somewhat
compromised.

Hope that gives some leads for any other readers similarly
compromised by not having broadband!

Chris Reed, BBR Solutions Ltd * http://www.bbr-online.com

Quoting Joseph Coates <joseph-coatesuiowa.edu>:

> I think what is needed is a common syncing feature (open source?) for
> email programs that allows small home or small office networks where
> there is no mail server on site to sync to various computers used by
> one person.
>
> Does it exist and is not limited to one email program?

I use fetchmail to gather my ISP mail (via POP SSL), .Mac mail (via IMAP SSL)
and my personal external mail server mail (via POP SSL) onto my internal IMAP
server.

I pick up mail from my own server ever minute, and every 4 hours from ISP and
.Mac.

<http://catb.org/~esr/fetchmail/>

The configuration file for fetchmail was very easy to write, something
along the
lines of:

# default poll cycle ever 60 seconds
set daemon 60
# don't long attempts (fills log)
set no syslog

poll external.server.com with protocol pop3 ssl
    user "person" with password "blah" is "person" here;

# only perform this connection every 240 cycles (240 minutes)
poll mac.com interval 240 with protocol imap ssl
    user "mac_name" with password "blah2" is "person" here;

etc....

Fetchmail runs in the background and grabs mail with the specified username
there and delivers it to the specified person here. Fetchmail can deliver
local mail to a mail server using SMTP/LMTP or to a maildir or mbox format
(probably other formats too.)

Kevin

On Jan 14, 2005, at 1:24 AM, Joseph Coates wrote:

> I think what is needed is a common syncing feature (open source?) for
> email programs that allows small home or small office networks where
> there is no mail server on site to sync to various computers used by
> one person.
>
> Does it exist and is not limited to one email program?

Well, the Unix-heads use "rsync" to handle this. Provided that you're
just swapping files around, it works beautifully. However, if your mail
is stored in a single file, you obviously run into problems when that
file's updated on both machines prior to sync'ing.

That's when you need a custom tool that can handle the message format
of your specific mail client. Rather than mess with some sort of
peer-to-peer sync, IMAP was invented. And, see, it does everything you
want it to.

Most IMAP clients let you cache all your messages to your local drive,
where they remain accessible and searchable with all the usual tools. I
believe I read that Eudora handles this in a recent update. As for your
non-IMAP accounts, you can always forward them or even have a rule copy
them to the folder store on one of your IMAP servers.

IMAP does message-by-message syncing, so that regardless of your
individual client's method of message storage, it works through a nice
common interface.

And you may be surprised to discover that some of your current POP3
providers also provide IMAP but don't publicize it because they don't
want to support it. This was the case with my university's email
accounts.

--Nik

Okay, enough talk! I decided to give this a try to see if I could get
it to work.

Here's what I did:

1). I created an account "foobar" on, Qubert, my "main" Macintosh
computer.
2). I configured the mail, address books, etc for user foobar on Qubert.
3). I created accounts for "foobar" on all the other Macs I have in the
house.
4). On the other Macs, I logged into user "foobar", opened System
Preferences, went into Accounts, selected user "foobar", clicked
"Startup Items", and added the mounting of foobar's directory from
Qubert. This automatically mount's foobar's HOME directory whenever I
logged in.
5). Now, here's the tricky part: On all of the other Macs (not Qubert),
I opened Netinfo Manager, opened the key /->users->foobar->home, and
changed that value from /Users/foobar to /Volumes/foobar.
6). Then, just to be sure, I logged on as another user and deleted the
directory /Users/foobar from all of my Macs EXCEPT on Qubert (which is
the HOME directory I want to use). I had to do this step via the
Terminal application and use the sudo command.

Finally, I logged in as user "Foobar" on my remote Mac, and after a
slow agonizing wait, it work! All of foobar's emails, address entries,
documents, Safari bookmarks, etc were being shared. Qubert is an old G4
cube with the original 11Mbit Airport in it, so that maybe why it was
slow, but there's no doubt that it is possible to share your directory
across several Macs.

I did have some bumps. If Foobar's directory on Qubert ever dismounted,
things would crash and the Finder would freeze for a couple of minutes.
However, once the Finder returned, remounting Foobar's directory from
Qubert got everything working again.

I don't have Mac OS X Server, but I am using Panther with all updates.

--
David Weintraub
davidweintraubworld.net
davidweintraub.name

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Reed, BBR [mailto:c.s.reedbbr-online.com]
> Sent: Monday, January 17, 2005 1:41 PM
> To: tidbits-talktidbits.com
> Subject: Re: 'Shared' Mail and Browser on Multiple Macs

> For the issue of web bookmarks, I'm going down the route of enabling
> Apache on one of the machines, and using a freeware PHP bookmark
> keeper so that all bookmarks are not only accessible on the intranet
> home page, but browser independent.
>
> The best script I've found so far is SiteBar <http://www.sitebar.org>
> (initially found at
> <http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Bookmark_M
anagement/index.html>).
This even has a Javascript that you can add to your browser's
bookmarks menu, which when summoned will automatically add the
current page to the global bookmarks database. Unfortunately, unlike
Explorer or Opera, Safari doesn't seem to accept Javascripts as
bookmarks, so functionality in my preferred browser is somewhat
compromised.

Hope that gives some leads for any other readers similarly
compromised by not having broadband!

Chris Reed, BBR Solutions Ltd * http://www.bbr-online.com

I have found that Javascript does work in Safari bookmarks, I've been using
one to send URLs to del.icio.us recently. Note in the examples below that
"extra88" is the name of my del.icio.us account.

Examples from http://del.icio.us/post

"post to del.icio.us"
javascript:location.href='http://del.icio.us/extra88?v=2&url='+encodeURIComp
onent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title)

"pop-up post to del.icio.us"
javascript:q=location.href;p=document.title;void(open('http://del.icio.us/ex
tra88?v=2&noui=yes&jump=close&url='+encodeURIComponent(q)+'&title='+encodeUR
IComponent(p),'delicious', 'toolbar=no,width=700,height=250'));

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 10:40:58 -0800, Chris Reed, BBR
<c.s.reedbbr-online.com> wrote:
> Like the original enquiry, I have a number of Macs on a home office
> network, and can appreciate the advantage of having the same e-mail,
> web bookmarks etc available whatever computer one happens to be sat
> at.
>
> However, we only have a slow modem dialup to the outside world, and
> so the solutions so far suggested, such as synching via .mac, are
> impractical.

synching bookmarks via .Mac is practicale. It's a tiny amount of data.

>
> I'm far more interested in solutions that only involve the equipment
> already at my disposal, rather than leaving me dependent on a remote
> third party server.

fetchmail to check your mail on all your mailboxes. Local imap server
one on machine. All machines talk to your local IMAP to get their
mail. this means, however, your mail is NOT available remotely.

> For the e-mail it's simple -- just have the Eudora settings file and
> mail folders publicly available across the network.

Uh... no, that;s not the best way. You can still only have one active
at a time.

--
<http://2blog.kreme.com/blog/2944/Twas_the_Night_Before_Christmas>

A swift correction to the final point of my previous posting:

>Unfortunately, unlike Explorer or Opera, Safari doesn't seem to
>accept Javascripts as bookmarks, so functionality in my preferred
>browser is somewhat compromised.

As Curtis Wilcox kindly pointed out to me off-list, Safari does after
all allow Javascripts as bookmarks.

I came to my original conclusion based on the 'Add Link to Bookmarks'
option not being present in the contextual menu (following SiteBar's
generic installation instructions).

Following Curtis's suggestion, I tried directly editing an existing
bookmark by cutting and pasting the JS into the URL field and it duly
worked!

Chris Reed, BBR Solutions Ltd * http://www.bbr-online.com

Google Kreme wrote:
> Local imap server
> one on machine. All machines talk to your local IMAP to get their
> mail. this means, however, your mail is NOT available remotely.

There's no reason an IMAP server can't listen on the Internet, unless
your ISP for some reason blocks it. I occasionally use IMAP over SSL to
read my mail on my home machine from remote sites.

[Let's start shutting this thread down, folks. It's just getting too random. -Adam]

--
Paul Schinder
schinderpobox.com

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 07:04:31 -0800, Paul Schinder <schinderpobox.com> wrote:
> Google Kreme wrote:
> > Local imap server
> > one on machine. All machines talk to your local IMAP to get their
> > mail. this means, however, your mail is NOT available remotely.
>
> There's no reason an IMAP server can't listen on the Internet, unless
> your ISP for some reason blocks it. I occasionally use IMAP over SSL to
> read my mail on my home machine from remote sites.

The person asking was on dial-up, and you don't want to serve IMAP on dial-up.

--
<http://2blog.kreme.com/blog/2944/Twas_the_Night_Before_Christmas>