Setting up a Mercury Email System

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Mercury is a Mail Server - that is, a program that provides centralised mail services to a collection of related users' mailboxes on your network or computer. it is designed to work under Microsoft Windows.

Grab the latest versions of the software from the Pegasus Mail Website.

Part I: Installation and Initial Configuration

Step1: New installation, or update?

The first thing setup will ask you is whether you want to do a new installation of Mercury, or whether it should update an existing installation. If you choose the update option, all your existing settings and template files will be preserved - only the actual program files for Mercury will be upated.

If you perform an update instead of a new installation, the setup process essentially ends at this point - Setup will simply perform the necessary modifications and will then exit.

Step 2: Choosing an operating mode

If you chose a new installation at step 1, Mercury will ask you whether or not you want to install its special support for Novell NetWare local area networks. There are three choices at this point - installation in NetWare Bindery mode, installation in NetWare NDS mode, or no NetWare-specific module. Choose:

* No NetWare support: this option is suitable for any environment - you can even use it when you have a NetWare-based LAN if you want more specific control over mailbox location and setup. You will typically select this option if you are installing Mercury on a Windows peer-to-peer or NT-based network, or on a single computer.

Step 3: Where to install Mercury/32

The next step simply involves telling Setup where it should actually place the Mercury/32 program files. You can choose any directory for this, although normally it is best to install Mercury/32 onto the hard drive of the machine where it actually runs (as opposed to installing it on a file server): doing this can prevent problems if your file server crashes at any point while Mercury is running.

Step 4: Selecting Protocol Modules and SMTP client

The next two questions involve choosing the Protocol Modules that Mercury should activate by default when Mercury runs. Select the following Protocol Modules:

• MercuryS SMTP Server, to receive incoming mail
• MercuryP POP3 Server
• MercuryD POP3 client
• Click OK, continue installation

Select the following SMTP Client Modules:

• MercuryE end-to-end SMTP delivery client, to send outgoing mail

To perform this installation, you will need a properly-advertised domain name for the machine where Mercury runs (so the outside world can find you), and the address of a reliable DNS server the SMTP client can use to determine delivery addresses. You may also need to set up a special DNS entry called an MX Entry to allow mail servers in the outside world to find you correctly - consult your ISP or DNS administrator about this.

Step 5: Entering basic configuration information

Setup will now ask you for either two or three pieces of configuration information:

This machine's internet domain name. You should simply enter whatever internet domain name has been assigned for this machine. Mercury uses this name when it constructs addresses like the postmaster address for your system, and setup will automatically create an entry in the Mercury configuration file telling it to regard this as a "local domain" - that is, one where Mercury is the point of final delivery.

Username for postmaster: All mail-enabled Internet systems must have a special reserved user called postmaster: rather than forcing you to create a user called postmaster, Mercury simply treats the address as a specialized alias for a user on your system. Enter here the name of the user to whom postmaster mail should be directed. If you are running in NetWare NDS or Bindery mode, then this is the full username of the user (in NDS mode, you must express the username relative to the root of your NDS tree in the standard dotted notation). In non-NetWare mode, this is any valid mailbox name you subsequently create within Mercury or in Pegasus Mail. The user need not actually exist at setup time.

Step 6: Selecting a relaying mode

If you chose to load the MercuryS SMTP server at step 4, setup will now ask you what default relaying protections you want to enable. Relaying refers to the practice where a mail server accepts and forwards mail that is not addressed to any local users on its system. When you send a message using an SMTP-based mail client like Pegasus Mail or Eudora, you are relaying mail. Unfortunately, relaying has been abused in recent years by people sending unsolicited commercial e-mail, and most sites now find it necessary to place more or less strict controls on how their server may be used for relaying.

There are three possible answers to this question. Select:

Normal relaying controls In this mode, Mercury will only relay mail if the sender's address is a valid local address on the system other than "postmaster". This mode prevents the majority of relaying abuse, but requires no ongoing maintenance. We recommend this mode in most cases.

Step 7: Choosing a mail queue location

It is usually best to enter a directory on the local hard drive of the computer where Mercury is being installed: this provides the best performance and some extra security.

.... And finally, it's show time.

That's it. If you've successfully navigated the setup process to this point, all you need to do is click the Install Mercury/32 button and Setup will do the rest. After the program is installed, run Mercury by selecting its icon in the Windows Start menu, and explore the program's Configuration menu for fine-tuning options.

Part II: Post-install Configuration

From the top menu, select configuration and then Manage Local Users.

Select Add and then enter the following details:

Username: The user's address. (e.g if your domain is townsshearing.com.au and you want the user's email address to be brobinson@townsshearing.com.au, the username will be brobinson)

Personal name: The "familiar name" by which the user is known to the rest of the world.

POP3 password: The password the user needs to enter when retrieving mail via POP3. If a user does not have a POP3 password, or has a blank POP3 password, he or she cannot retrieve mail from Mercury/32 using the POP3 protocol. The password can be from 1 to 48 characters in length.

APOP secret: APOP is a specialised POP3 protocol command that provides a reasonably secure form of login without the user having to send his or her password in clear text over the network. APOP is based on the idea of a shared secret - some piece of text known both to the user and to Mercury. If the user has a mail program that supports the APOP command, enter the shared secret in this field. The shared secret should be at least 8 characters long and can be any length up to 48 characters. It can be the same as the user's POP3 password, but need not be (and in fact, we do not normally recommend that it be so).

Administrator privileges: A user with administrator privileges can create, edit, rename and delete users on the system

After entering fields, select OK. Normally found in Tools\Accounts\Add Mail

Select Add Mail

Enter Display Name. When you send email, your display name will appear in the From field of the outgoing message.

Enter the email address (e.g: brobinson@townsshearing.com.au)

Select Incoming Mail Server Type: POP3

Incoming mail (POP3) Server: Enter the IP address of the server running Mercury (e.g: 192.168.1.1)

Outgoing mail (SMTP) Server: Enter the IP address of the server running Mercury (e.g: 192.168.1.1)

Account Name: Enter the desired username that you entered into Mercury (e.g: brobinson)

Password: Enter the corresponding password

Finished

Wonderful what we can do nowadays. Almost as good as the machine that goes 'Ping'. This is my favourite. You see we lease this back to the company we sold it to. That way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account. We try to do our best. Well, do carry on.

Links

Mercury Mail Website
Mercury Mail meets SquirrelMail