From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.user/1178 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Josh Huber Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.user Subject: Re: How to get informational details about your system and network for setting up gnus email Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 08:20:29 -0400 Message-ID: <87elbs959u.fsf@mail.paradoxical.net> References: <87bs6yw1qw.fsf@virgil.koldfront.dk> <8765x5zmrn.fsf@virgil.koldfront.dk> Reply-To: Josh Huber NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1138667973 10086 80.91.229.2 (31 Jan 2006 00:39:33 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 00:39:33 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: nobody Tue Jan 17 17:28:45 2006 Original-Path: quimby.gnus.org!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.gnus Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: paradoxical.net Original-X-Trace: quimby.gnus.org 1032267677 1504 66.92.73.76 (17 Sep 2002 13:01:17 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@quimby.gnus.org Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: 17 Sep 2002 13:01:17 GMT Mail-Copies-To: nobody User-Agent: Gnus/5.090008 (Oort Gnus v0.08) XEmacs/21.4 (Honest Recruiter, i686-pc-linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:wb+AXiBEaepH1y4sOVMXuAzNVEU= Original-Xref: bridgekeeper.physik.uni-ulm.de gnus-emacs-gnus:1318 Original-Lines: 123 X-Gnus-Article-Number: 1318 Tue Jan 17 17:28:45 2006 Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.user:1178 Archived-At: Don Saklad writes: > c. commands You can you your standard unix tools such as: a. ping b. host or nslookup c. telnet to guess and observe what hosts/services exist. > b. files Not very appropriate, unless you are looking at the configuration files from an already configured machine, and duplicating that configuration to another machine. (which is probably likely, since most people will not be using Gnus as their first email/news reader) > a. observation > d. ruling out A good guess with smtp servers (as has already been stated) is either "mail" or "smtp". Let's take ai.mit.edu as the example domain. $ host mail.ai.mit.edu mail.ai.mit.edu is an alias for life.ai.mit.edu. life.ai.mit.edu has address 128.52.32.80 Okay, the host exists, let's see if it is running an SMTP service: $ telnet mail.ai.mit.edu smtp Trying 128.52.32.80... Connected to ai.mit.edu. Escape character is '^]'. 220-life.ai.mit.edu ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.2/8.12.2/BASENAME(ai.master.life-8.12.2.mc,.mc):RCS_REVISION(evision:1.23 220-Tue, 17 Sep 2002 08:06:13 -0400 (EDT) 220 This is MIT. Collect or third party calls not accepted. Looks good. Based on that information, I would use mail.ai.mit.edu as the outgoing (SMTP) server. Next, we should try for either a pop or imap server for the actual reading/retrieving of our mail. IMAP tends to be better, and lets the users store their mail on the server. (which has the nice side-effect of allowing people to use different email clients with the same mailboxes) So, we'll first look for IMAP. Sometimes these services run on the "mail" host as well, so we'll check for all three: mail, imap and pop: $ host imap.ai.mit.edu Host imap.ai.mit.edu not found: 3(NXDOMAIN) ...no host named imap.at.mit.edu... $ host pop.ai.mit.edu pop.ai.mit.edu is an alias for life.ai.mit.edu. life.ai.mit.edu has address 128.52.32.80 Ah, but there is a pop.ai.mit.edu. Also note that both mail and imap are actually aliases for the same machine (life.ai.mit.edu). Now, lets check for running services on life: $ telnet life.ai.mit.edu imap Trying 128.52.32.80... ...no response on the imap port, so lets try pop3: $ telnet life.ai.mit.edu pop3 Trying 128.52.32.80... Connected to ai.mit.edu. Escape character is '^]'. +OK Qpopper (version 4.0.3) at life starting. <12924.1032264741@life> Ah, so that works. For this setup, I would use pop.ai.mit.edu as the incoming mail server. The type would be POP or POP3. Finally, you probably also would like to read news, so looking for a news host would be a good idea. A similar route can be taken to find a news server. Usually the news hostname is "news" or "nntp": $ host news.ai.mit.edu news.ai.mit.edu is an alias for entertainment-tonight.ai.mit.edu. entertainment-tonight.ai.mit.edu has address 128.52.32.26 Okay, lets try testing the NNTP port on news.ai.mit.edu: $ telnet news.ai.mit.edu nntp Trying 128.52.32.26... ...so, it doesn't seem to be responding to nntp, so we should keep looking for a news server. A next good guess would be news.mit.edu: $ host news.mit.edu news.mit.edu is an alias for SENATOR-BEDFELLOW.mit.edu. SENATOR-BEDFELLOW.mit.edu has address 18.181.0.25 ...okay, so this host exists as well, lets try it: $ telnet news.mit.edu nntp Trying 18.181.0.25... Connected to SENATOR-BEDFELLOW.MIT.EDU. Escape character is '^]'. 502 senator-bedfellow.mit.edu: Access denied to your node - usenet@mit.edu Ah, so it is running a news server, which I assume is accessible from inside MIT. (but not to me!) So, for the NNTP server, I would use news.mit.edu. Hopefully this will be helpful in determining your settings, although it looks like you have no problems with figuring out how to post :) -- Josh Huber