post.office

PREFACE

post.office is a new message transport agent which meets the needs of today's Internet community. Based on the open standards employed on the Internet (SMTP, POP3, Finger, etc.) to ensure maximum compatibility with other systems, it avoids costly dependence on proprietary solutions. As an Internet message transport agent, post.office forwards your system's outgoing E-mail and delivers incoming messages to system users who have E-mail accounts. The post.office system is designed with security and ease of use as paramount: you can literally relax and enjoy running your mail system -- post.office is actually easy to use, a distinction which makes post.office entirely unlike existing tools such as sendmail or smail.

The salient feature of post.office is the simple fill-in-the-blank forms used to administer your mail system. To make changes to the system or to an account, you simply request the appropriate form, fill it in, and submit it in to the system, using either your web browser or your E-mail user agent. There is no unfamiliar syntax to learn, no configuration file to edit: you make your choices using the English language on a form that includes plenty of articulate instructions if you need them. Once these simple forms are filled out, post.office takes care of rest.

In addition to unprecedented ease-of-use, post.office includes a surprising number of popular features, such as:

• Integrated SMTP, POP3, and finger servers refer to a common account database containing user and addressing information.
• Secure design and operation. The system does not run with root permissions. User access can be limited to specified domain(s), or host(s).
• Multiple versions support diverse, cross-platform network environments(including versions for Solaris 2, Windows NT, SunOS 4).
• Allows you to handle mail for multiple domains on a single machine.
• Supports both domain-based and host-based mail addressing so that address can be in the format "person@domain" or "person@host.domain".
• Allows arbitrary E-mail addresses, such as First.Lastname, for each user, completely independent of any user login ID.
• Mail accounts easily supported for users without login accounts.
• Several auto-reply options allow automated responses to incoming mail for any address at your site. (Options include auto-reply, auto-reply with original message text included, and a vacation mode that lets correspondents know when users are unable to read their mail.)
• Command-line sendmail interface provided for compatibility with UNIX systems. The -bd, -bm, and -bp operating modes are fully supported.
• Runs as an NT service.
• Multi-threaded: post.office can accept multiple incoming connections
• Takes full-advantage of the Internet Domain Name System (DNS) by employing MX records (i.e., you don't need a separate "smart host" to deliver the mail)