email tutorial

8/2/2019 Email Tutorial

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New CS Email Server and Clients Tutorials

Revision 1.2

Yung-Chuan LeeComputer Information Specialist

Department of Computer ScienceJanuary 2010


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2.Background

Several improvements have been incorporated when constructing the new mailserver. First of all, the new email server provides secure SMTP/POP3/IMAPservices. A free and legit certificate was obtained from ipsCA (Certificate Authority) to

enable SSL/TLS connections. The new Webmail also uses SSL connections toenhance the security and privacy.

Secondly, spam filter and mail scanner are setup to reduce spams and possiblevirus/trojan/worms infections. This active filtering and scanning are designed atSTMP server level to prevent malicious emails before accepting them. With suchconfiguration, the new email server only consumes a fraction of CPU resource and isvery prompt. Furthermore, because of this improvement, CS emails is not reroutedto SIU server for spam filtering anymore. This eliminates the dependency to externalserver as well simplify troubleshooting process.

The email format has been switched to MailDir. This renders each email in a singlefile instead of all emails in one big spool file, and it further improves both mail serverand webmail performance. Instead of centralized email spool on the server, eachusers emails are now stored under MailDir folder in their Linux home directory toenhance user accounts and files management as well improve file security.

Webmail system is switched from OpenWebmail to Squirrelmail. Squirrelmailprovides plug-able modules to enable more functionalities while keeping its coresystem simple and fast. To prevent malicious attacks, our webmail has configured totemporary block an user and an IP when too many login attempts failed. In addition,an user will be automatically logoff after inactive for 20 minutes to enhance the

security.

Finally, fighting spams and malicious programs is a continuous effort. All possiblespams are forwarded to a designated CS account and manually reviewed by CISpersonnel to separate spams (junk emails) and hams (legit emails). Monthlymaintenance scripts have been developed to train spam filter from reviewed spamsand hams to improve its accuracy.

The following tutorial provide insights of common email client configurations and isorganized into three parts: email client setup, webmail how-to, and alpine (new pine)configuration. If you encounter any problems, please contact CIS personnel at

[email protected].

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3.Email Client Setup

Please use the following settings to setup your email clients. Outlook 2007 andthunderbird are demonstrated here. Other email clients will be similar.

SMTP server (outgoing server): mail.cs.siu.edu SMTP port: 25 or 587 required authentication and TLS connection.

POP3/IMAP server (incoming server): mail.cs.siu.edu please use POP3 if you dont know IMAP. POP3 port (secure POP3): 995 with SSL IMAP port (secure IMAP): 993 with SSL

a. Outlook 2007:i. Open Account Settings Window from Tools>Account Settings...

ii. Click on New to configure a new account. If you already have CS accountsetup, highlight the account, click Change and skip to step v..

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iii. Click Manually configure.... at the bottom and click Next.

iv. Make sure Internet E-mail is selected and click Next.

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v. Filling all the information and make sure both incoming email server andoutgoing email server are mail.cs.siu.edu. Remeber the User Name andPassword are CS account not SIU one. Then, click More Settings.

vi. Under Outgoing Server tab, make sure My outgoing server (SMTP)... is

checked and Use same settings as.... is selected.

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vii. Under Advanced tab, make sure This server requires an... is checked andUse the following types of... is set to TLS. Then, click OK.

viii.Finally, click on Test Account Setting to send a test email. If everything is setcorrectly, you will get the following window.

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b. Thunderbird:i. Open Account Settings Window from Tools>Account Settings....

ii. Click Add Account to add a new account. For existing account, skip to stepix.

iii. Make sure Email account is selected and click Next.

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iv. Put Your Name and Email Address. Then, click Next.

v. Make sure POP is selected and input mail.cs.siu.edu to both IncomingServer and Outgoing Server. Then, click Next.

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vi. Put your CS email account ID in Incoming User Name and click Next.

vii. Enter a name for this account in Account Name and click Next.

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viii.Click Finish.

ix. Click Server Settings under the account you just created and make sureSSL is selected.

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x. Click Outgoing Server (SMTP) and highlight the one you just created (if youhave more than one) and click Edit.

xi. Make sure TLS is selected and User name and password is checked. Thenclick OK.

xii. Finally, click OK to close Account Settings window and start send/receiveemail.

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4.Webmail How-To

The new Webmail is located at https://mail.cs.siu.edu and it is using secure http toensure the security and privacy. The system will auto-logout if there is no activitiesfor 20 minutes. To prevent brute-force password attack, the system will lock a user

for 10 minutes after 3 failed login attempts within 5 minutes. Furthermore, an IP willbe locked for 30 minutes after 10 failed login attempts within 15 minutes. Pleasenote that this lock-out only apply to Webmail login and have no effects when you useemail client to check emails.

The Webmail system is extremely intuitive and shares most common interface asother webmails. It also utilizes a flexible plugin method to enable modules to extendits functionalities. The Help function provides most documents on how to use it andset personal information and preferences. Here, we only show those plugin moduleswhich do not have documents in the Help functions.

a. By default, Squirrelmail blocks images for security reasons. To view images,you can click on the View Unsafe Images. You can set rules on how toautomatically display images under Options in section c.

b. To report spam while your reading, click on Spam. To report multiple emailsas Spams in folder view, select emails and click on Spam.

c.Inside the Options after you login, you will see SpellChecker Options andUnsafe Image Rules.

(a) SpellChecker Options: the system provide ispell but you can add newwords (Add to Dic) during spelling check. If you want, you can thenremove your personal words by Edit your personal dictionary

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https://mail.cs.siu.edu/https://mail.cs.siu.edu/


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(b) Unsafe Image Rules: you can configure image setting in here as welladd new Rule regarding when to automatically show images in youremails.

d. A Calendar module is enabled. You can click on the day to add/modify/deleteevents. The details of an event will be displayed in day view. However, in monthview, only the title of a event will show up in the calendar. The time and contentof a event will be displayed as a tooltip.

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5.Alpine Configuration (new Pine from University of Washington)

Although more and more people are used to having convenient graphic interface to

read and write emails. Alpine still provides an invincible performance and availability.If you want to use alpine with new email server, please modify your .pinercconfiguration file according to the following (contributed and tested by Feng Yu):

user-domain" =" cs.siu.edusmtp-server" =" mail.cs.siu.eduincoming-folders="cs-mail" {mail.cs.siu.edu/novalidate-cert/ssl/user=yourusername}INBOX

If you have just to use alpine with CS email account, instead of use incoming-folders, you can put your email account in inbox-path.

inbox-path={mail.cs.siu.edu/novalidate-cert/ssl/user=yourusername}INBOX

This will configure alpine to use Dovecot IMAP server. If you want to take fulladvantages of IMAP, you can add the followings to your feature-list. This will enablefolders to be used for other folders as well as messages and make sure that allfolders are listed correctly.

" separate-folder-and-directory-entries," enable-lame-list-mode

If you are using both SquirrelMail and alpine, it is strongly recommended to useIMAP with alpine. However, if you decide to use POP3 with alpine for any reason,you can add pop3 in the email account setting.

inbox-path={mail.cs.siu.edu/novalidate-cert/pop3/ssl/user=yourusername}INBOX

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