- The post.office FAQ
- A couple of pointers
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This appendix discusses solutions when you need
a solution to any problems you run accross:
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Troubleshooting |
TROUBLESHOOTING
Currently the primary source of information regarding solutions to problems you run into with post.office is the FAQ which Software.com publishes on the issue.
Beyond that, this appendix includes a brief discussion on the following categories which may help you with some of the problem you're experiencing:
I. Error Messages
II. Accounts That Don't Work
III. Incomplete addresses
If you don't have a problem, you're in the wrong place. You need to have a problem to troubleshoot.
If your problem isn't discussed in the FAQ or in the appendix, , E-mail us at Support@Software.com, and we'll write you back with a solution.
The FAQ is an open document which presents answers to frequently asked question about post.office and Software.com. We continuously update and revise the FAQ to reflect new questions from our customers and discuss new features available with post.office.
We encourage you to pick up a copy of the FAQ every once in a while and take a look at it. That way you'll often be able to find answers to your questions before they come up, as well as gain insight as to how other folks put post.office to good use.
You can obtain the FAQ via FTP or the web.
To obtain the latest copy of the FAQ via FTP, you can log in to the FTP server, ftp.software.com, as user ftp or anonymous. Provide your E-mail address as the password.
To view or retrieve the FAQ using the World Wide Web, simply point your browser at "http://www.software.com". From the main menu, follow the appropriate links to the FAQ. You can either read it on your browser or download the file.
Error messages are discussed in chapter 6: Forms and other operations instructions.
However, before you turn there, you may want to review the error message you received carefully. It should be self-explanatory. Certain messages are only notices, and require no further action on your part, though it is generally good practice to keep track of errors since they are occasionally symptoms of a deeper malaise of your mail system.
Error action messages are forms. You should reply to them, including a solution to the error (per instructions on the form) and your postmaster password. The most common errors occur when incorrectly addressed messages end up in your system. You should be able to quickly determine if these messages should be returned to their sender or forwarded to a user on your system, in which case you need only correct the addressing error and submit the message with the postmaster password.
It is possible to accidentally configure post.office so that there are no valid postmasters. If this happens, the system will not allow further configuration changes, e.g. to fix the problem with the postmaster account. Because of this dead-end proposition, we give you a way out. If you have simply misconfigured your E-mail delivery, your first option is to use the Web: log in as postmaster@your.host with the postmaster password, and correct accounts as necessary to get things back on track. If you have inadvertently set the access domains so you can't log in to the Web from your site, contact Support@Software.com at (805) 882-2470.
post.office is configured to complete addresses which it views as being incomplete. These may be addresses that are made up of a single word "------" (or "----.-----"), or perhaps an incomplete address "-----@-----" which does not include a proper domain address.
If post.office receives a message with the "to:" header consisting of a single word, i.e. "Jane", it will add the local host address (or whatever you specified on the SMTP channel form) to create the following address:
Jane@host.domain (i.e. Jane@chicago.software.com)
Similarly, if post.office receives a message with the address "Jane@chicago", it will complete the address with the domain of the host:
Jane@chicago.domain
(i.e. Jane@chicago.software.com)
However, some user agents won't allow you to submit incomplete addresses. In such cases post.office never even gets the message, so can't complete the address. If you have such a user agent, you must use full addresses on all mail.