Re: How to get information about your system and network for setting up gnus email

Re: How to get information about your system and network for setting up gnus email

[John Paul Wallington]

Don Saklad <dsaklad@nestle.ai.mit.edu> wrote:

> What are some of the files and commands you can check for information
> about your system and network?

This question would be better suited to a newsgroup about the systems
and/or networks that you are interested in.

> More people could get started easier with gnus email if people are
> pointed to system or network files and commands they can check for the
> parameters asked for by the gnus dotfile generator
> http://my.gnus.org/GDF/basic
>
> a. Fully Qualified Domain Name	 
>
> b. Your ISP's newsserver	 
>
> c. The User's Mailserver Type
>    d. POP3
>    e. IMAP
>
> f. The address of your mailserver internet provider or hostname

In the case of my ISP, and most of the consumer ISPs operating in the
country I live in, the server names for SMTP, POP, and NNTP servers are
human and machine readable from a settings file on the free
installation CDs they foist upon customers (in this case an
INSTALL.INS file).

-- 
John Paul Wallington

Re: How to get information about your system and network for setting up gnus email

[Kai Großjohann]

Don Saklad <dsaklad@nestle.ai.mit.edu> writes:

> If you're a systems or network type there are files you look at on
> your system and network or commands you run that give you information
> about your systems and networks.

The information you need is not among them.  Even systems and network
types have to know, they cannot look it up in some file.

kai
-- 
~/.signature is: umop 3p!sdn    (Frank Nobis)

Re: How to get information about your system and network for setting up gnus email

[Don Saklad]

thank you jonas steverud !

On the other hand a new systems or network type would probably figure
out the information observing a system or network. The question is
whether there're files or commands that could theoretically give the
information. I've seen people with expertise do this to their delight !
It just doesn't make any sense that the information isn't available
except by oral accounts.

The question is what are some of those files or commands?....




cheers! and kind regards,
 oo__  don Warner saklad

http://my.gnus.org/Members/dsaklad

Re: How to get information about your system and network for setting up gnus email

[Adam Sjøgren]

On 16 Sep 2002 08:08:43 -0400, Don Saklad wrote:

> I've seen people with expertise do this to their delight !  It just
> doesn't make any sense that the information isn't available except
> by oral accounts.

The people that have impressed you so much by doing this have
undoubtly been guessing.

The reason that they have been successful is probably that there are
de-facto standards for what mailservers are called. Usually people
call them "mail.[domain]", "smtp.[domain", "pop.[domain]" or similar.

Guessing, for instance, that pop.ai.mit.edu is a mailserver serving
mail via POP for ai.mit.edu is not a far out guess, because
pop.ai.mit.edu exists. Same thing goes for news.ai.mit.edu and
mail.ai.mit.edu.

Incidently those three guesses might be appropriate for your specific
setup at ai.mit.edu.

But I must stress: These are *guesses*. The only authoritative way to
get the *correct* answer is to get the information for the people
responsible for the news and mailservers you need to use.

> The question is what are some of those files or commands?....

If you want to know whether your guess on a hostname is a name
associated with a machine, you can look it up in the Domain Name
System, DNS.

On most unix machines you can use the command "host" to do this.

For instance:

 $ host mail.ai.mit.edu
 mail.ai.mit.edu         CNAME   life.ai.mit.edu
 life.ai.mit.edu         A       128.52.32.80
 $ 

tells you that there is actually a machine that is supposed to respond
to the name "mail.ai.mit.edu".

If, on the other hand, you try to look up a non-existing machine with
the "host" command, you get something similar to this:

 $ host donsbox.ai.mit.edu
 donsbox.ai.mit.edu A record currently not present
 $

That way one can educate ones guesses. But they're still nothing more
than guesses.


  Best regards,

-- 
 "Så har den første snøen falt                                 Adam Sjøgren
  men det er ikkje derfor det er kaldt"                   asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: How to get information about your system and network for setting up gnus email

[RL]

Don Saklad <dsaklad@nestle.ai.mit.edu> writes:

> Thank you Adam Sjo/gren !
> 
> Then the question becomes
> 1. how might you guess at the system and network information needed
>    b. Your ISP's newsserver	 
>    c. The User's Mailserver Type
>    f. The address of your mailserver internet provider or hostname

This isnt really a gnus problem.  If you use *any* mail or news client
you ahve to know these settings: even _Outlook Express_ requires you
to set these yourself.  People keep telling you that there is no
commands to do what you want.  you just have to know.

What email prog do you use at the moment? why not look at the values
you use in that program?

> 2. And how might you confirm the guesses?...
> 

Configure a mail client (eg gnus) with your guesses.
run the mail client
see if you can read news/mail

if not, try a different guess