Special IMAP settings for our server
(See different settings for Google Mail below.)
Table of contents
Up and running since Sat 2008-04-19
Server, instructions for use
Last update: 2009-11-21
Note: The web site at musikwert.de no longer esists. Please try http://musicschool-cml.de/.
On 2009-01-10 the server SSL/TLS encryption certificate has been renewed. Please read the chapter Certificate error below for instructions on how to avoid the certificate error message you get for the india155.server4you.de server.
Please check here for information on the new server.
The switch has been performed on Sat 2008-04-19. In theory a switchover should take half an hour, but there are some misconfigured DNS server around, so some mails may go to the old server for another day. If you check your email on the old server again once a few days later, you should be fine and should not lose any mail.
So far the change to the new server has been a full success. The new server is much faster, more modern, powerful, capable, and more reliable.
Technical background
Some technical data of the new server components:
You should change your password as soon as possible after you have received it.
Your email password has nothing to do with any web site password (Content Management System), which you may use to log on to a web site. Email and web server are independent of each other in this respect. The email password is only used to administer your email setup, in the account setup of your email program, and for logging on to the webmail page. You can, however, use the same password for email and for the web site to make it easier to remember and to prevent mistaking one for the other.
A safe bet is to combine two unrelated words and include at least one special character (not a letter or digit).
A safe password is important, because a hijacked email account would be very troublesome for all of us (server getting blacklisted, etc.).
Attention: If your email address ends in @elephanttrust.org, you have to use @winhlp.com instead. Example: If your email address is jack@elephanttrust.org, your username is: jack@winhlp.com
If you later forget your password, an administrator can reset it, and then you have to change it again on the server and in your email client program. We cannot read the password from the server, and we don't want to know your password.
Should I use IMAP or POP3?
POP3 is a protocol that typically downloads all mail from the server into your computer and deletes it on the server. This is simple, but you can read your mail only on one computer.
IMAP (or IMAP4), in comparison, keeps all emails on the server and on each computer that connects to it. Each computer synchronizes its mails with the server.
You can use IMAP on our server or, if you route your mail through Google Mail, you can use IMAP on Google's server. The latter means two email accounts to set up and maintain, but it has the advantages of more storage space for emails and safer retention.
Our server will keep your mail too, but its storage space is more limited, so you have to remove old mail from time to time, and we cannot guarantee that your mail will always be kept. The server's hard disk could crash one day.
If you need more email storage space than your standard allocation, talk to us. As long as not too many people ask for more, we can easily grant it.
You can use your webmail and administer your email server account here.
If you are a migrating user who has already had an account on an older mail server, don't change that account. Instead create an additional, new account for the new server. The reason is that you have to collect mail from the old server for a couple of days.
You have to decide between two different ways to use your mail. You have to make a decision between 1. and 2., but you can use both a. and b. interchangingly if you use the IMAP protocol in your local email client program.
You could use http:// in place of https:// to communicate without encryption, but this is not recommended, because it is dangerously insecure.
To log on, enter your complete email address as username and your email password.
Attention: If your email address ends in @elephanttrust.org, you have to use @winhlp.com instead. Example: If your email address is jack@elephanttrust.org, your username is: jack@winhlp.com
This is the preferred solution.
Create an account for the new server in your email program. The following settings are needed to collect email directly from our mail server into your local email client program like Outlook Express, Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Eudora, Pegasus, etc. (solution 1.a., the preferred standard solution).
| Name of the account: | (Arbitrary, you can call it like your email address. It just has to be unique.) | ||||||||||||
| Server type: | IMAP (preferred) or POP3 | ||||||||||||
| Server, both POP3/IMAP and SMTP: | india155.server4you.de | ||||||||||||
| Username: | (Your complete email address)
Attention: If your email address ends in @elephanttrust.org, you have to use @winhlp.com instead. Example: If your email address is jack@elephanttrust.org, your username is: jack@winhlp.com |
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| Password: | (Your email password)
If you have not received your password by email already, ask us. We can also set a new password for you, but we cannot find out yours after you have changed it. Important: When you have received a new password, change it immediately through the email administration. |
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| Special server settings to enable: | The SMTP (sending) server requires authentication, namely the same one
as the POP3/IMAP (receiving) server. The server does not use secure password authentication (SPA), but it does use TLS or SSL encryption (highly recommended), so enable TLS or SSL for both the receiving POP3 or IMAP and the sending SMTP server, if you can. It is an important security measure. If TLS doesn't work, try SSL. Use the following port numbers.
For SMTP port 25 no longer works if you try to connect from any dial-in port, such as a DSL or modem connection. Always use port 587. If you have enabled TLS or SSL (which you should), the first time you use the server you will get a certificate warning, which you can ignore. Select to use the server anyway. The certificate for mail is the same as that for the web server. Verify that it has one of the following: Fingerprint SHA1: 5FFE91F3 6898CCF7 0DAB08EE 876BD9B5 F8F06ED6 Fingerprint MD5: 46C922A8 07B1DBBB 699A351E 6203A558 Please scroll down and read the chapter "Certificate warning" to avoid this repeated warning. This encryption is essential, for example, when you use your laptop on a wireless LAN, because without it everybody else who is on that WLAN can record all your data traffic, even your mail password. The IMAP root folder path, sometimes called the IMAP Path Prefix, is: INBOX For example, in Outlook Express you can enable the setting to shift messages automatically into special folders. You should use the folder names sent-mail and Drafts. |
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| Administration: | https://india155.server4you.de:8443/
(You will at first get a certificate error. Click on the option to proceed
anyway. Please read the chapter "Certificate error" below to learn how you
can prevent it.) There is also an auto-forwarder at http://michna.com/admin/, which goes to that same address and shows you the same web page. Its purpose is only that you can type the easier-to-remember address: michna.com/admin |
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| Webmail: | Prepend "https://webmail." to your domain. Examples:
https://webmail.michna.com/,
https://webmail.elephanttrust.org/.
You will get a certificate warning every time, but you will be using encryption.
Choose to open the web page anyway. This certificate warning cannot be avoided. Log on with your mail username and password. If your address ends with @elephanttrust.org, you have to use @winhlp.com instead. Example: If your address is jack@elephanttrust.org, your username is: jack@winhlp.com |
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| Cheat sheet: | http://michna.com/mail/ (in short: michna.com/mail) |
If you use IMAP, some special IMAP settings have to be set like the following example from a German Outlook Express. The root folder name for our server is INBOX. (For Google Mail it is [Gmail], including the brackets.) The folder for sent mail has to be named sent-mail, because that's what webmail automatically generates, and you want to have this compatible with webmail. The name for the drafts folder is arbitrary, but again you should set the same name in webmail to keep the systems in synch.
Special IMAP settings for our server
(See different settings for Google Mail below.)
Create an additional folder named Trash for throw-away items, because this folder already exists in webmail.
After creating this account, you may have to select and synchronize it with the server once to make all folders appear in the correct positions.
Make the new account the default account, so you use it to send mail and no longer the old one.
You can delete the old account a few days after the new server is up and running and receiving mail.
If you receive a large amount of spam, i.e. more than approximately 50 spam mails per day, consider using an additional spam filter. The easiest is Google Mail, but along with the generally poor quality of anything made by Google, it seems to have a considerable number of false positives for some users, i.e. good emails that end up in Google Mail's spam folder.
In Google Mail enter the settings described below, but use your own email username. Click on Settings, Accounts, Get mail from other accounts:
Google Mail settings example to collect your mail—substitute your username and password
If you want to use a local email client program to collect your mail, like Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, or Eudora, you can configure it for Google Mail's server as follows.
It is recommended to use our own server for sending mail, but you can also use Google's mail server when, for any reason, you have no other choice. Sending through Google Mail has the disadvantage that you do not benefit from our Domainkeys implementation, which Google Mail also has, but which does not work well. Also, your mails would show your real email address in the From: field, but your Google Mail address in the Sender: field, which makes your mails look less authentic.
If you want to use our own mail server for sending (recommended), enter the SMTP settings (for sending) described at the top into the account setting of your email program, but leave the POP3 or IMAP settings (for receiving) set for Google Mail. Note that you have to enter separate authentication settings, i.e. username and password, for the SMTP server. These settings are somewhat hidden in some email programs and have to be opened by an extra mouse click.
Some special IMAP account settings in your email program are the name of the root folder and the names of the two folders for sent mail and drafts. For example, in a German Outlook Express these settings look as follows.
IMAP properties in a German Outlook Express for an English Google Mail
If you cannot collect or send mail, recheck the following:
The administrator pages of our new web server at https://india155.server4you.de:8443/ (also reachable through a forwarding page at http://michna.com/admin/, in short, michna.com/admin) use the SSL encryption protocol, recognizable by the https:// prefix in the address (URL), unlike the more common http:// prefix. This is useful and makes it much more difficult to eavesdrop electronically on the data exchange.
The same holds for all mail connections, if you chose to activate TLS or SSL, which you should.
The encryption key is customarily coupled to a certificate that is meant to certify the identity of the buyer of the certificate, which costs some money. Since we currently don't need this and need only the encryption key, we don't pay, but instead make our own certificate. Consequently your browser issues a certificate error, telling you that this certificate does not come from a commonly known certificate authority (CA) and is therefore not good enough to identify our server.
When this happens, you can choose to ignore the error and open the web page anyway, but the next time you start your browser and go to the administrator page, you will get the error message again. To avoid this, you essentially have to tell your browser that you trust this certificate, which means putting it into your certificate store.
This is the procedure for Internet Explorer 7:
The browser tells you: Certificate is invalid
Fingerprint SHA1: 5FFE91F3 6898CCF7 0DAB08EE 876BD9B5 F8F06ED6
Fingerprint MD5: 46C922A8 07B1DBBB 699A351E 6203A558
Other browsers probably do this similarly. Firefox, for example, asks you directly, so after inspecting the certificate and checking a fingerprint, elect to always accept it.
Web site certificates are coupled to the domain. You could call the administrator pages up through any domain hosted on the server. For example, instead of https://india155.server4you.de:8443/ you could call them up with https://aschenbrenner.com:8443/, https://michna.com:8443/, https://winhlp.com:8443/, or https://elephanttrust.org:8443/. However, only the india155.server4you.de domain has the certificate, so on all other domains, including the webmail addresses, you get a certificate address error, even though the certificate is valid.
On 2008-10-17 we had a server outage that lasted two hours.
Server outage 2008-10-17, Times CEST. Subtract 2 hours to get UTC.
The long and winded story that goes with it is about this:
But my doomed actions were basically successful—it actually worked. During the episode quite a few of the mails that I was curious about were forwarded to my personal mailbox, so I could later have a look at them. It turned out that DrWeb sends these mails when it cannot check a mail for viruses, which happens from time to time for peculiar reasons like licensing. Since the mail that couldn't be checked is delivered normally, the warning mails are uninteresting and can be discarded.
By the way, the peak in CPU usage just after midnight, that you can see in the picture above, represents the web statistics processing that produces the web statistics you can see for a domain when you append /plesk-stat/webstat/ to the domain's web address. Example: http://winhlp.com/plesk-stat/webstat/
Your friendly server administrators Klaus and Hans-Georg
hits since 2008-04-22
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