Troubleshooting

Testing an e-mail account using TELNET.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: You cannot use backspace in telnet, if you type something wrong you will have to retype it. Also, once a message has been marked for deletion, there is NO way of getting it back, so it will have to be resent if done by accident.

To open telnet, go to start, run, type in "telnet" and click ok. The first time you use it click on terminal, preferences. Check mark "local echo" and make the buffer size about 100

To connect to the mail server, click on Connect, Remote system…
At host name type in pop3.lantic.net, port 110.

Press <enter>.

You will see a message similar to this:

+OK QPOP (version 3.0.2) at wind.lantic.net starting.

To log in, type:
user jdoe
press <enter>

+OK Password required for jdoe.

Now type in:
pass joepassw
press <enter>

+OK jdoe has 3 visible messages (0 hidden) in 103596 octets.

This indicates that Mr Doe has 3 messages in his mailbox, with the size in bytes.

If you get the message:

-ERR [IN-USE] /var/spool/mail/.jdoe.pop lock busy! Is another session active? (11)

This means that the mailbox is locked, which means that the server still sees someone logged in with that username and password. If this happens while no one is connected you will need to wait about 15 minutes for the server to reset the account.

To see how large specific messages are, type in "list"

list
+OK 3 visible messages (103596 octets)
1 37102
2 38375
3 28119

To view a specific message, type in

top [message number] [number of lines to show]

E.g. to see the first 10 lines of message number 2, type in top 2 10

This will display the entire header of the message,
as well as the first 10 lines of the message.

It may look like this

top 2 10

The most important information is "from" and "subject"

Do delete unwanted messages (or maybe a too large one) type in
dele [message number] <enter>

e.g. to delete message number 3, type in

dele 3

You will get this message:

+OK Message 3 has been deleted.

To end the session (or disconnect), enter "quit"

There are alternatives to telnet, mostly referred to as anti-spam utilities. Some good ones include E-mail Remover, and Crt (same as telnet, but you can use backspace)

Domains

The main differences in setting up of domains are with the e-mail account's usernames.

In most cases, a username of an e-mail address on a domain will be the first 3 letters of the domain name followed by a dash (-) and then 4 other letters (usually the first four letters of that e-mail address)

For example:

If the e-mail address is johndoe@somedomain.co.za, then the account name (or username in some programs) will be som-john

Also in this case, the incoming mail server would be pop3.somedomain.co.za, and the outgoing mail (SMTP) will be somedomain.co.za

This information can usually be found on the contract, and may vary in cases

Another difference is with the ftp details. Unlike a normal Atlantic user that uses the first part of his e-mail address as a username, a domain will have a specific ftp username and password, usually in the format ftp-some

The host will also be ftp.somedomain.co.za and of course the URL for the page will be www.somedomain.co.za.

Domains also have the advantage of being able to use Front Page extensions. These are special properties of Microsoft FrontPage, that make it easier to update web pages, and put in extra features like Hit Counters, Confirmation Field, Categories and other components.