Revision 9 as of 2013-01-17 14:25:44

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Contents

  1. Configuration of Mail Readers for the DESY Mail Servers in Zeuthen
    1. General Remarks
      1. Incoming Mail
      2. Outgoing Mail
      3. Address Books
      4. Your Mail Address
    2. Mail client specific information
      1. Alpine
        1. On Linux: Installing the certificates (requires root access)
        2. Configuring alpine by editing .pinerc
        3. Configuring alpine by using the configure screen of alpine
        4. Using alpine
      2. Thunderbird
      3. MacOSX Mail
      4. Certificates

Configuration of Mail Readers for the DESY Mail Servers in Zeuthen

General Remarks

The centrally installed mail clients on Linux/UNIX and Windows are usually preconfigured to use the correct settings. As users can override these settings and recommended settings may change it is a good advice to check whether your personal mail settings are in agreement with the values given below

Incoming Mail

Incoming mail is accessed using the

Authentication can be done using

Outgoing Mail

All outgoing mail is sent to a mail server using the SMTP protocol. The

SMTP Authentication

If you followed the instructions concerning certificates the infrastructure to use that should already be in place. You have to configure your mail client to use smtp.ifh.de as the outgoing mail server, use your (UNIX) username (and password) for authentication and use an encrypted connection (TLS, not SSL) on port 25. For thunderbird that is done on config screens, for pine/alpine the line 

 smtp-server=smtp.ifh.de/user=<accountname>

enables authenticated smtp.

If password authentication is chosen,

Several sites do block outgouig traffic on port 25 and sending mail using that port will fail. In this case sending mail using DESY Zeuthen mail servers would not be possible even when using authenticated SMTP. Therefore on smtp.ifh.de port 587 is open as well for mail submission (service "submission"). Older clients require the use of port 465 when using TLS with SMTP, this port can also be used on smtp.ifh.de.

Address Books

The centrally managed address books are using the LDAP protocol. To use it the name of a server and at least the search base have to be given. The following address books are useful (access is limited to DESY and to some High Energy Physics Institutes):

server name

search base

remarks

ldap.desy.de

o=DESY,c=de

the official address book

ldap.ifh.de

o=DESY,c=de

mirror of ldap.desy.de

ldap.cern.ch

o=CERN,c=ch

the CERN address book

For backward compatibility the search base o=DESY Zeuthen on ldap.ifh.de is also a mirror of the official address book on ldap.desy.de.

Your Mail Address

In all mails the preferred email address Firstname.Lastname@desy.de should be used.

<!> Please note that the default on some unmaintained systems is accountname@hostname.ifh.de which does not work. Mail clients allow you to override that default From: address to use the form given above.

Mail client specific information

Alpine

On Linux: Installing the certificates (requires root access)

This step is already done on DESY computers

<!> Notice!
The following procedure needs to be followed if you get warnings concerning certificates

Download chain.txt from the DFN Public Key Infrasrtucture server and copy the file to

Then change into the directory containing the certs directory, i.e. /etc/ssl, /usr/lib/ssl and /etc/pki/tls respectively. If there is already a file or a symlink with the name cert.pem then remove it or move it out of the way. You have to create a symlink cert.pem-> certs/chain.txt by executing 

ln -s certs/chain.txt cert.pem

If the file cert.pem is already existing and does not point to a file containing all the certificates required for verification of the mail server certificate the certs directory is searched for the individual required certificates which can be downloaded from

For each of the downloaded files the following commands have to be issued (make sure you are in the certs directory), otherwise the certificates will not be found: 

openssl x509 -inform der -in downloaded_file.crt -out downloaded_file.pem
ln -s downloaded_file.pem `openssl x509 -noout -hash -in downloaded_file.pem`.0

Configuring alpine by editing .pinerc

(this has been done already on DESY Zeuthen computers running SL5/6)

add or modify the following lines in .pinerc: 

inbox-path={
}inbox
# the folders on the server (mdbox format) and the local folders (mbox format)
folder-collections=Folders on imap.ifh.de {imap.ifh.de}[], mail/[]

# immediate startup (for non DESY computers required)
rsh-open-timeout=0

# the next lines are optional...
# pressing <TAB> at the last mail in the INBOX checks and opens the next INBOX
feature-list=...,tab-checks-recent

Configuring alpine by using the configure screen of alpine

The configure screen can be accessed from the main menu by selecting the setup menu and then select the "(C) Config" screen.

To set rsh-open-timeout=0 you may have to

Using alpine

To move or copy local folders or folders from another IMAP server to the imap.ifh.de server do the following

Thunderbird

(please do also have a look into the Vortrag im technischen Seminar if you have a german version of thunderbird)

<!> Notice!
The following procedure needs to be followed to avoid certificate warnings

Download the following certificates to your home directory:

Start thunderbird and create a new mail account:

When the server configuration has been automatically found, please change the email address to your officiall address firstname.lastname@desy.de . If you entered the desy.de address in the first place then proceed as follows:

Then in the newly created account change some settings:

To avoid security warnings about certificates that cannot be verified:

To have thunderbird look in all folders for new mail:

Please disable the offline storage of emails in the AFS home directory:

MacOSX Mail

The configuration is similar to what is described under Thunderbird above. Kerberos authentication may work depending on the software installed. Make sure that

Certificates

On Windows and MacOSX it seems to be sufficient to download once the two certificates (see above) using a web browser and accept the certificates (select the check boxes that will appear when downloading).

On Linux computers not maintained by DESY certificates have to be downloaded to the certs directory (see above) and made available to openssl. This requires root access. Then a symlink to the certs directory has to be installed. This can be achieved by the commands: 

su - root # become root
cd /etc/pki/tls/certs # for SuSE and Debian use /etc/ssl/certs
wget
wget
openssl x509 -inform der -in g_intermediatecacert.crt -out g_intermediatecacert.pem
ln -s g_intermediatecacert.pem `openssl x509 -noout -hash -in g_intermediatecacert.pem`.0
openssl x509 -inform der -in g_cacert.crt -out g_cacert.pem
ln -s g_cacert.pem `openssl x509 -noout -hash -in g_cacert.pem`.0
exit # become ordinary user