Create a mailing list of Outlook Connector users
I once had a request to populate a mailing list with Outlook Connector users. Below is the script that was born.
The script assumes a hardcoded listname of “OCusers@example.com”, use Notepad to search and replace OCusers@example.com with the correct list name.
Also, you need to manually create the list in MDaemon first, otherwise the script will fail. Lastly, be aware that you cannot manually add users to the list, the entire membership list is wiped and replaced each time the script runs. The intention is to run the script automatically on a schedule to keep the list up to date.
@ECHO OFF
CD C:\MDaemon\App
IF NOT EXIST GroupWareUsers.dat goto ERROR
IF NOT EXIST OCusers@example.com.grp goto ERROR
COPY OCusers@example.com.grp OCusers@example.com.bak
FIND “;” < OCusers@example.com.bak > OCusers@example.com.grp
FIND “@” < GroupWareUsers.Dat >> OCusers@example.com.grp
GOTO END
:ERROR
ECHO Could not find needed file, check and make sure GroupWareUsers.dat and OCusers@example.com.grp exist
:END
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Script to sort aliases
Some years ago I developed a script to sort aliases, placing wildcarded aliases at the bottom. It was updated to support the new $LOCALDOMAIN$ format of wildcards.
Why would you want this? Well, two reasons. First, a sorted list makes it a lot easier to find what you’re looking for. Second, if you add a non-wildcard alias below a wildcarded alias, the wildcarded alias may take effect first — If you’re manually adding aliases, you can hopefully remember to fix the order, but if you add aliases via a script, it’s important to get the sort order right.
I ran this on an hourly basis for several years, but please test this before deploying as I pulled it from some notes and not a live batch file.
@ECHO OFF
:MDSortAliases
C:
CD C:\MDaemon\App
FIND “$LOCALDOMAIN$” < ALIAS.DAT > ALIAS-WILD1.BAK
FIND “*” < ALIAS.DAT > ALIAS-WILD2.BAK
FIND “*” /v < ALIAS.DAT | FIND “$LOCALDOMAIN$” /v /i> ALIAS-NONW.BAK
SORT < ALIAS-NONW.BAK > ALIAS.DAT
SORT < ALIAS-WILD1.BAK >> ALIAS.DAT
SORT < ALIAS-WILD2.BAK >> ALIAS.DAT
DEL alias-wild1.bak
DEL alias-wild2.bak
DEL alias-nonw.bak
echo. > alias.sem
The above will sort aliases into three groups, non-wildcarded aliases, $LOCALDOMAIN$ aliases, then other wildcard aliases. You can change the order by changing the names of the files in the SORT lines above. Again, please backup and test first, I take no responsibility if your system bursts into flame after trying the above.
I make the potentially dangerous assumption that MDaemon is installed at C:\MDaemon\ — If not, please change the path.
Tags: alias, alias.dat, MDaemon, scriptsRelated posts
Understanding DomainPOP duplicates
DomainPOP relies on retrieving mail from your ISP and delivering it to local users based on parsing the available headers and essentially guessing at the best recipient or recipients. This is very different then SMTP which has a well defined RCPT TO command which defines exactly who the message is addressed to.
To create an analogy, imagine I write a letter addressed to Bob, and courtesy copied to Frank and Henry.
Inside the envelopes, the letters are identical, they’re all addressed to Bob, and courtesy copied to both Frank and Henry. However, on the envelope I only write the one recipient who is to receive that copy of the message. When the messages are delivered to your ISP via SMTP, there is both an envelope and the a body (the “letter” in this analogy)
In the case of DomainPOP, it’s like someone opens all the envelopes and throws them out, all you receive is the letter. Without the envelope, you don’t know exactly who the message should be delivered to. You can guess based on the available data, the TO and CC headers, but this won’t help you with BCC’d recipients (blind carbon copy, by definition, doesn’t have the recipient’s address in the TO or CC Fields)
By default MDaemon takes the safest route and delivers one copy to everyone mentioned in the various headers MDaemon reviews, taking the approach that it is better to deliver multiple copies then none at all.
Depending on your upstream ISP’s capabilities it may be possible to avoid these duplicates entirely. There are two options, start with #1 and if that fails, go to #2.
1) A unique header.
Some ISPs are kind enough to insert the RCPT TO command of the SMTP session into the message. MDaemon, for example, does this in both the X-MDRcpt-To and X-Rcpt-To headers, as well as a Received header (in most cases).
To test if this is the case, you’ll need an off-site email address, one that has nothing to do with your domain. Gmail/Hotmail are perfect. If you don’t have access to one, let me know and I’ll send the test message from here. For the purposes of this article, I’ll use dave.warren@altn.com as the address which is receiving duplicates and dave.warren@gmail.com as the off-site address.
In MDaemon, go to Setup –> DomainPOP –> [Security] tab, enable the “Place an extra copy” option, and set the directory to a known path. C:\MDaemon\DomainPOP would be great as this directory doesn’t exist and is easy to find.
Go to your off-site (Gmail) mailbox, and send a message addressed to itself (it should be FROM dave.warren@gmail.com and TO dave.warren@gmail.com), and then BCC yourself (dave.warren@altn.com in this example)
Once it is received by your server, go to the C:\MDaemon\DomainPOP directory and find the message, open it in Notepad. Look for the dave.warren@altn.com address, and if you find it, check out the header that contains the address.
If it’s a X-Delivered-To or X-Rcpt-To or something like that, then it means your ISP likely creates a header showing the actual recipients of the message.
Once you find a header you want to test with, go to the MDaemon –> DomainPOP dialog again, this time to the [Parsing] tab, remove all the headers in the list and add the header you found (unless it happens to be a Received header, if so, there is a checkbox for the Received header above as this header needs some special handling)
Now, you’ll want to test this before proceeding, you need to make sure that your ISP added the headers and not the sender. If possible, test from Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo, or have a couple friends or coworkers try emailing you and make sure it works.
2) DomainPOP’s de-dupe feature
You should only use this if #1 doesn’t reveal an appropriate header to use.
To use this feature, in the DomainPOP dialog’s parsing tab, enable the Dedupe feature. I’d suggest using the Message-ID header, this is the safest, but some mail clients don’t generate a Message-ID so you’ll still see some duplicates.
Another possible header is the Date header, virtually all mail has a Date header, but if two senders happened to send mail at exactly the same second, from the same timezone, it’s possible that one of the messages could get lost, so there is a bit of risk involved with this choice.
Tags: DomainPOP, MDaemon, SMTP