Pegasus Mail & Mercury

OK. I've recently changed my tried-and-true old Mercury server (current version) running on my home computer to be an IMAP server. It has been used for years to round up several email accounts (using Mercury's Distributing POP3 client) and make the mail available on that local server/machine using a local Pegasus client, and on a couple of remote machines (traveling laptop and office computer) using remote Pegasus clients using POP3 (retrieving from Mercury's POP3 server). It all worked just fine, and even accomodated a third-party program called MailWasher that read the headers on the server and marked SPAM, and allowed for deletion of messages from any of those machines without any trouble at all.

But life goes on, and since I'm a thoroughly modern kind of guy, and wanted to bring my habits into the 21st century, and I'm thinking about an iPhone, and since IMAP seems to have some advantages, I figured I'd port the whole thing over to IMAP. Naturally, it wasn't as easy as I'd anticipated (as usual).

So far, I've moved my mail directories to the Mercury directory on the server, and adjusted Pegasus on the server to find them there. (I adjusted everything wholesale in PMAIL.INI.). I stopped the POP3 server and set up the IMAP server, and adjusted the user accounts in Mercury to find mail in the new location. I have adjusted my own behavior to not leave Pegasus (or Mailwasher) open on any computer when I walk away from it, and have my wife doing the same thing. I understand that there is no apparent way to set my "Home Mailbox" in Pegasus to the IMAP INBOX, (probably because of network-path naming issues, I guess), so I'm resigned to having that empy entry sitting there. (Although I do wish I could just make Pegasus an IMAP-only client . . . but oh, well.) I've changed Pegasus' behavior on all clients to immediately delete, rather than save until exit. So far, so good.

But this morning, I created some new "trays" to organize my folders, and reduce the size of the list displayed, working on the server machine in the local Pegasus client which stores the mail in the MERCURY directory, where I can see right now that there are NO NEW .PMT files. When I open my remote client using the IMAP connection, no new trays. When I remotely connect to open the local Pegasus client, no new trays (at least all my old folders are still there . . .). When I create new trays on my remote client, move folders into them, close Pegasus and reopen it, the new trays appear in name only --BOTH IN the IMAP mailbox and in My Mailbox -- but the folders I moved are not within the trays, but are right back where they started. Clearly I am missing something, but I'll be darned if I can figure out what.

While I keep making incremental progress with this IMAP thing, and while I'm willing to change my behavior if necessary to achieve an advance, and even williing to abandon my Mailwasher program if I have to (since it doesn't behave at all well with this implementation if IMAP, failing to delete files from the server even when it alone is running, and is configured to run in IMAP mode), I'm beginning to wonder if the vagaries of IMAP are just too great to set up a smoothly operating system at even the rudimentary level of complexity that I need. (God forbid I should try to make this work with all my traveling users at the office.)

So can anyone help me out here? Is there a source of good information on setting all this stuff up? (I've read the Pegasus and Mercury Help, but it doesn't seem to address my issues, or just assumes that everything will work.) I've been a David Harris acolyte since about 1990, and will give up Pegasus and Mercury only when it is peeled from my cold, dead fingers. (I even recently planned a trip to New Zealand, hoping to stop in Dunedin and offer my thanks in person . . . ) Should I fresh-install my Pegasus clients and clear out the deadwood? Can I set the Home Mailbox using UNC and an IP address?

I look forward to your kind responses, and wish you well.

Best regards,

Mike

 

---

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. --Derek Bok

> So far, I've moved my mail directories to the Mercury directory on
> the server, and adjusted Pegasus on the server to find them there.
> (I adjusted everything wholesale in PMAIL.INI.). I stopped the POP3
> server and set up the IMAP server, and adjusted the user accounts in
> Mercury to find mail in the new location. I have adjusted my own
> behavior to not leave Pegasus (or Mailwasher) open on any computer
> when I walk away from it, and have my wife doing the same thing. I
> understand that there is no apparent way to set my "Home Mailbox" in
> Pegasus to the IMAP INBOX, (probably because of network-path naming
> issues, I guess), so I'm resigned to having that empy entry sitting
> there. (Although I do wish I could just make Pegasus an IMAP-only
> client . . . but oh, well.) I've changed Pegasus' behavior on all
> clients to immediately delete, rather than save until exit. So far,
> so good.

Did you run PCONFIG.exe and change the HOME and NEW mail directory location to \\server\volume\pmail\mail\~8 so that Pegasus Mail is looking at the mail directories on the server.  This way you would not need to use IMAP4 at all; all systems using Pegasus Mail would be looking at the mail directories on the server and so IMAP4 would not be needed for the permanently connected systems.
 
>
> But this morning, I created some new "trays" to organize my folders,
> and reduce the size of the list displayed, working on the server
> machine in the local Pegasus client which stores the mail in the
> MERCURY directory, where I can see right now that there are NO NEW
> .PMT files. When I open my remote client using the IMAP connection,
> no new trays. When I remotely connect to open the local Pegasus
> client, no new trays (at least all my old folders are still there .
> . .). When I create new trays on my remote client, move folders into
> them, close Pegasus and reopen it, the new trays appear in name only
> --BOTH IN the IMAP mailbox and in My Mailbox -- but the folders I
> moved are not within the trays, but are right back where they
> started. Clearly I am missing something, but I'll be darned if I can
> figure out what.

Sounds like the hierarch.pm is not being upgraded and maybe the pmail.ini, state.pmj and/or hierarch.pm is still looking at the C: drive.

>
> While I keep making incremental progress with this IMAP thing, and
> while I'm willing to change my behavior if necessary to achieve an
> advance, and even williing to abandon my Mailwasher program if I
> have to (since it doesn't behave at all well with this
> implementation if IMAP, failing to delete files from the server even
> when it alone is running, and is configured to run in IMAP mode),
> I'm beginning to wonder if the vagaries of IMAP are just too great
> to set up a smoothly operating system at even the rudimentary level
> of complexity that I need. (God forbid I should try to make this
> work with all my traveling users at the office.)

Road warriors can use IMAP4 but I really prefer them to have Web mail access so that they can use the web browser on any system they are working with to get access to the mail.  I use SquirrelMail but you can just as easily use something like http://mail2.web.com to connect.

>
> So can anyone help me out here? Is there a source of good
> information on setting all this stuff up? (I've read the Pegasus and
> Mercury Help, but it doesn't seem to address my issues, or just
> assumes that everything will work.) I've been a David Harris acolyte
> since about 1990, and will give up Pegasus and Mercury only when it
> is peeled from my cold, dead fingers. (I even recently planned a
> trip to New Zealand, hoping to stop in Dunedin and offer my thanks
> in person . . . ) Should I fresh-install my Pegasus clients and
> clear out the deadwood? Can I set the Home Mailbox using UNC and an
> IP address?

You should just install one copy of PMail on the server for all systems on the LAN to use.  Here's the basic process.

1.  Install WinPmail in the multiuser mode on the "server".  Use c:\pmail
    for the program; c:\pmail\mail for the mail directories.

2.  Run PCONFIG.exe from the WinPMail program directory and change the HOME and
    NEW mail directory specification to the \\server\vol\pmail\mail\~8
    format.

3.  Go to the remote workstations and install a shortcut to the common
    program.

Ok, now you have the basic mail system setup.  You can send mail to each other using Pegasus Mail.  

4.  Install Mercury/32 on this same server pointing to the Pegasus Mail
    directory structure.  Use MercuryD, MercuryS, MercuryC at least. Use
    \\server\vol\mercury\queue for the mail spool directory.

5.  Point MercuryD at all of your POP3 mailboxes to download the mail to
    your Pegasus Mail user directories.

You now can send and receive Internet mail via Pegasus Mail.  The mail is delivered to the Pegasus Mail directories automatically.  You send mail simply but putting the output files into the Mercury/32 mail spool directory.  This is accomplished automatically with a Pegasus Mail User Defined Gateway.  

6.  If you want to maintain other POP3/IMAP4 clients, point the client at
    the at your Mercury/32 host as a POP3 and SMTP host using the Pegasus
    Mail username and password to pickup the mail.

You can do a complete inbound and outbound mail archive with this setup using a simple Mercury/32 "Always" filter that put a copy in a users mail directory.

In your case you can move everything in you current home and new mail directory to the user directory on the server except pmail.ini, state.pmj and hierarch.pm. and the first time you run PMail it will take you through a new install while retaining all of your folders, addressbooks, and filters.  Probably have to modify at least some of the filters.

For the laptops that go on the road you change little or nothing.  I generally maintain Pegasus Mail on the system with a copy of at least some of the folders and then use either IMAP4 or SquirrelMail to get access to the folders I left behind.  You can also do this with a portable drive of some sort so it's available and can be moved back and forth between systems.

>
> I look forward to your kind responses, and wish you well.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Mike

---

Thomas R. Stephenson
San Jose, California
Member of Pegasus Mail Support Team

I do not answer private messages from the forum. If you want to contact me use email to techsupp@tstephenson.com.

Thanks for the extensive reply.

Whereas I had already used PCONFIG to move the mail directories, I had not specified the new location in the form of a UNC (\\server\volume\mercury\mail\~8), and rather than use PCONFIG again, I just opened up PMAIL.INI in a text editor and made the changes there, while also changing any other local-drive references to UNC-form. That seems to have made a lot of difference.

I examined the contents of state.pmj and hierarch.pm, and while I'm pretty sure I could have eventually figured out what I needed to do there, I figured there had to be an easier way, so I left them alone. Besides, there were no references to locations.

With everything else working, I tried reorganizing my folder structure remotely, and it did not "stick" on restarting. So I went to the local client and did it there, and not only did it stick, it also appeared in remote clients as reorganized. Problem solved. Still a little mysterious why one should work and the other not, but I'll chalk that up to the "my mailbox"/"my INBOX" duality of local client as opposed to IMAP client, and try to let it go.

So I guess I have everything working about as well as it can.

I will live with this for awhile before I decide whether I like this method, as opposed to the old POP3 method. IMAP is pretty slick, but I can oly have one client machine per user attached to my server at a time. With the old POP3 method, I could be running Pegasus on the server, on my laptop, and my machine at work all at the same time, with copies of MailWasher running on all of them at the same time, too, and everything worked fine. Of course, I ended up with a different local set of messages, depending on what I retrieved to each location, but the master set on the server was always there, and there was a certain logic to the special subsets. IMAP is more elegant, to be sure, but so far, I miss the devil-may-care approach to leaving Pegasus clients open on all my computers, and having MailWasher running on all of them, too. If I forget now and leave a computer running a client somewhere, I can always VNC to it and turn it off, but . . . there's a hassle factor in it.

So I'm just venting in public here, in case anyone else faces these same issues in the future, but I would also welcome a discussion on the relative merits of IMAP vis a vis POP3. In the meantime, thanks for the help, and long live David Harris!

Best regards,

Mike

---

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. --Derek Bok

> Thanks for the extensive reply.
>
> Whereas I had already used PCONFIG to move the mail directories, I had
> not specified the new location in the form of a UNC
> (\\server\volume\mercury\mail\~8), and rather than use PCONFIG again, I
> just opened up PMAIL.INI in a text editor and made the changes there,
> while also changing any other local-drive references to UNC-form. That
> seems to have made a lot of difference.

The problem is if Pegasus Mail is run from a remote system it will read the pmail.cfg file and look for the mail directories in c:\pmail\mail and of course they will not be found.  When the pmail.cfg uses the UNC format then it will look to the server to find the mail directories.

>
> I examined the contents of state.pmj and hierarch.pm, and while I'm
> pretty sure I could have eventually figured out what I needed to do
> there, I figured there had to be an easier way, so I left them alone.
> Besides, there were no references to locations.
>
> With everything else working, I tried reorganizing my folder structure
> remotely, and it did not "stick" on restarting. So I went to the local
> client and did it there, and not only did it stick, it also appeared in
> remote clients as reorganized. Problem solved. Still a little
> mysterious why one should work and the other not, but I'll chalk that
> up to the "my mailbox"/"my INBOX" duality of local client as opposed to
> IMAP client, and try to let it go.

Do not do this with IMAP4 until you have done this via direct access via Pegasus Mail. The direct access should fix all of the folders and ini files to match the current location.  You then exit to save the changes.   You then run from a remote Pegasus Mail client that does NOT have any copies of any of the folders on the server and it should work.

If you want to have copies on the remote Pegasus Mail setup then you should use the following utility.

PMRestArch - Pegasus Mail Restore Mail Folder Archives:
http://www.lexacorp.com.pg

Usage:
PMRestArch SourceDir DestinationDir

Description:
Pegasus Mail cannot display two mail folders with the same internal ID even if they are in separate mailboxes. Mail folders also have to be Read-Write.
      
This causes problems when trying to view mail folders which have been archived by copying them to backup media.

This utility:

1.  Copies all .PMM and .PMI files in the source directory to
    the destination directory and renames them as BAKxxxxx.PMM
    and BAKxxxx.PMI.

2.  Ensures that the resulting file is Read/Write.

3.  Creates a different internal unique ID for each file.

Once you have run this program to restore archived folders to a directory you can attach that directory using the Pegasus Mail 'Add mailbox to list' option (or IMAP4) and access the archived folders in this new mailbox.

>
> So I guess I have everything working about as well as it can.
>
> I will live with this for awhile before I decide whether I like this
> method, as opposed to the old POP3 method. IMAP is pretty slick, but I
> can oly have one client machine per user attached to my server at a
> time. With the old POP3 method, I could be running Pegasus on the
> server, on my laptop, and my machine at work all at the same time, with
> copies of MailWasher running on all of them at the same time, too, and
> everything worked fine. Of course, I ended up with a different local
> set of messages, depending on what I retrieved to each location, but
> the master set on the server was always there, and there was a certain
> logic to the special subsets. IMAP is more elegant, to be sure, but so
> far, I miss the devil-may-care approach to leaving Pegasus clients open
> on all my computers, and having MailWasher running on all of them, too.
> If I forget now and leave a computer running a client somewhere, I can
> always VNC to it and turn it off, but . . . there's a hassle factor in
> it.

The network setup on the LAN is a whole lot more elegant than using IMAP4.  You can run one copy of Pegasus Mail on the server and each system always points to the same mailbox location.  If you are downloading the mail via MercuryD to the system I do not see why MailWasher would not work with MercuryD and well as Pegasus Mail running POP3.

>
> So I'm just venting in public here, in case anyone else faces these
> same issues in the future, but I would also welcome a discussion on the
> relative merits of IMAP vis a vis POP3. In the meantime, thanks for the
> help, and long live David Harris!

POP3 is simple and is very useful for those that only need single system access.  

Most people on the go use something like GMail nowadays since it can be accessed via the web, POP3 or IMAP4.   However, IMAP4 is a very busy protocol but is very handy when you need to access the mailbox from remote systems or web browser.  It is slower, especially on a wireless LAN though than using the direct access in the Pegasus Mail networked mode.

When using Pegasus Mail on a local LAN you should always use the networked mode even without Mercury.  If you need to access the mail from outside then you can either use Mercury/32 as an IMAP4 server or move your mail to GMail and then get it either via IMAP4 from Pegasus Mail or as web mail.

---

Thomas R. Stephenson
San Jose, California
Member of Pegasus Mail Support Team

I do not answer private messages from the forum. If you want to contact me use email to techsupp@tstephenson.com.

Hello, Mikerocosm-

How did you do with all of this? It looks as if you were doing what I'm currently planning to do. Did you manage to consolidate onto your single Mercury Mail Server, and how did you go about accessing your mail via IMAP? I'd be very interested to learn from your experiences!

Many thanks, and all the best from Stockport in the UK.

David.

David,

Wow! That was all three years ago, and my memory isn't what it once was, but the short answer is that everything works fine, with the caveats mentioned in the thread, i.e., that there can only be one IMAP client per user open at one time, so I have to close the client when I walk away from a computer. But Mercury continues to deliver to Pegasus flawlessly. From time to time, Mercury seems to hang up on processing deleted messages (they reappear in the client after changing folder views), and I have to stop and restart it, but it's a minor issue.

If you have some specific questions, I'll try to search the memory banks and come up with responses.

Best regards,

Mike

---

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. --Derek Bok