Re: Too much trouble with PO

Charles,

I certainly agree that the UI is clumsy in a few areas (especially Relay Restrictions), and I think we can agree that no matter how good the documentation is, the UI needs to be clear too. Anyway, thanks for your suggestions. As you alluded to, programmers seem to see the world a bit differently than normal users.

--Eric

on 1/31/03 9:35 PM, Charles Ying at cying@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

OK, since you ask. To me, the most "confusing" parts for a new user who is not a unix guru with the PO install process are:

1. What is the "hostname"? And why is it important to PO? Where does PO use the OS X' hostname entry. A footnote on how to set the hostname would be helpful (log in as root and use TextEdit, for example).

2. How does PO use the domain name in the Post.Office App that you run after installation? You know, the app that allows you to set the first Postmaster account. This was particularly confusing since the 712 version (my first version of PO) kept messing up this account every time I launch the app.

3. Speaking of Postmaster account. Here again. You have to know PO to know how to become Postmaster (which is different from being postmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx). Only a programmer can think that it is OK to save a "postmaster" setting switch checkbox by using the inclusion of an email address in the forwarding field of the postmaster account to infer the postmaster status. Sure it is explained in the manual. But this is so against the grain of "user-friendliness" which is OK in the unix world (actually respected for sheer elegance) but opposite of what Mac stands for. (Tenon, your job to turn these Unix-OK GUIs to more Mac-like.) If you program for Mac community, you would have a checkbox for each account labelled "make this a Postmaster admin account" and by checking this box, the user gets moved "up" to the Admin section and gets postmaster notices forwarded to him/her. (I actually think you should be able to become Admin Postmaster but if your email address is NOT in the forwarding field of the postmaster account, then you don't get those pesky emails PO sends to Postmasters. But Noooo! Because some programmer wants to show off how cool he is to save a checkbox, you can only have Postmaster admin status if you put up with all those error emails notices.)

4. I happen to have years of fiddling with Webstar mail server so I am familiar with smtp and relay restriction issues. But it can be confusing for new mail admins. The recent posting pointing to an FAQ is great and I wish it was around when I was trying to decipher the English syntax in the cryptic webforms like:

"If relay mail is restricted as specified above, use the following delivery options:

Allow delivery to:

No domain except those listed below:"
I feel sorry for those users in Europe who are trying to decipher the English or worse, the localized versions of PO (if any exists). A better solution would be a setup wizard instead of the Post.Office App that asks you a bunch of questions and sets the settings for you initially. Question like:

"Do you want to allow anyone outside your local area network to use your mail server to send email?" Now, that is a question that can be understood by even people whose second language is English.

"What domains do you want to be Primary Mail server for?"

"What domains do you want this server to be Secondary mail server for?" (Why do we need an FAQ in order to figure out the answer to this question?)

"Do you want to enable POP before SMTP? If so, how many minutes...."

5. What is going on? To a unix guy, sudo tail -f comes second nature. You don't even have to document where the log file is and he/she can find it in the "obvious" subdirectory. And viewing a log file is like a radiologist reading an MRI picture. It took me a while to find out how to find and open a log file using terminal. But to this day, I haven't read a log file once since it is all Greek to me. A Mac app would have windows you can open that will display status of the connections, who is logged in, how many pieces of outgoing mail is in the queue etc. (Webstar had it back in the last Century.) Fortunately, my PO server mostly just worked. When it wasn't working (like sending to multiple recipients back in 712), I had no clue how the logs may or may not help me troubleshoot.

6. Where is everything? How do you backup? Again, every Unix guru knows how to find /var/spool/. And how to tar -r. I had to ask Tenon. Then I got conflicting advice as to whether I need to shutdown PO before backing up with tar or not. Then there is that "how DO you shutdown a running PO? Sure, every unix guru knows how to "bounce" PO. But are we selling PO to unix sysadmins or Mac sysadmins? What's wrong with a Pause and backup then restart function for PO that can be set by admin to run periodically or manually?

Anyway, you asked.

Charles

All in all, PO as it stands today (717) ranks as one of the easiest Unix-based Email server to set up and run, thanks to Tenon. But I can understand how it can be daunting for a Mac guy new to Unix who thinks he is buying a piece of Mac software.

At 8:59 PM -0500 1/31/03, AlexeiZ@xxxxxxx wrote:

All of the Post.Office manuals are very thorough. If you have suggestions,
we would like to hear them.