Topic: SME 6 final & Hotmail HTTP server

[Jason Colton]

Greetings,
Has anyone had a similar issue while using OE6 configured to retrieve hotmail messages from their http mail server?

I recently installed v.6 final and have the sme server configured as gateway & server.  When attempting to retrieve hotmail messages, OE6 generates the following error:

Unable to poll for new messages on your HTTP server.  Account: 'jasoncolton', Server: 'http://services.msn.com/svcs/hotmail/httpmail.asp', Protocol: HTTPMail, Server Response: 'Service Unavailable', Port: 0, Secure(SSL): No, Error Number: 0x800CCCF0

The proper ports seem to be forwarded on my ADSL Modem.  I couldn't use the sme server for direct ISP access due to my ISP requiring Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM WAN protocol as that doesn't seem to be supported by sme.  At least I don't think it does.

I am far from a linux expert, so if you have a suggestion that might work, please be gentle.

Thank you,
Jason Colton

[David Hardy]

I don't know if its relevant or not - your error message says port 0 - should that not be port 80?

You might want to check if OE6 has an option to set the port for http mail collection.

HTH


David.

[Jason Colton]

Thank's for the reply David.

I wondered about that port # too.  I thought it would be 443 (ssl).  I guess that maybe it means the assigned port on the hotmail server.  I have seen a lot of references to similar errors, all refering to port 0.  I don't know, it is still driving me crazy because it works sometimes.

Thanks again,
Jason

[Ray Mitchell]

Try this

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=18867.msg74572#msg74572

Regs
Ray

[Arne]

1. What is OE6 ? (Outlook Express 6.0 ?)

2. What does this mean: "When attempting to retrieve hotmail messages"

3. Why do you forward ports in your adsl modem ?


Please try to explain in an easy and practical way which program you are using, and how you will like things to work.



"Has anyone had a similar issue while using OE6 configured to retrieve hotmail messages from their http mail server?"

I believed that Hotmail.com had never supported Outlook Express as an client (??)


Possibly something I don't understand in the question, or something I missed out (about hotmail or other things

[Ray Mitchell]

Arne wrote:

> 1. What is OE6 ? (Outlook Express 6.0 ?)

Yes

> I believed that Hotmail.com had never supported Outlook
> Express as an client (??)

Outlook Express (OE) can be setup to retrieve POP mail from Hotmail accounts and also from Yahoo accounts.

Regs
Ray

[Arne]

Ray Mitchell wrote:

"Outlook Express (OE) can be setup to retrieve POP mail from Hotmail accounts and also from Yahoo accounts."

I realise that this problem is a little bit off-topic for a e-smith discussion forum how does hotmail and how does OE6 work, but I'm rather courious about this question ..

It should be in the nature of an pop client that it can connect to any pop server.

The question is: Is Hotmail really running a pop server ??

I tried to check for an open pop3 port on www.hotmail.com, hotmail.com pop.hotmail.com and mail.hotmail.com

The only ports I founf open were 25, the mail server, port 80 the web server, and 443 the ssl web server. I did not find any open port 110 or other ports that I think could be used for e-mail retrieval via OE6

I can not find any information about pop retrieval at the hotmail page and I can not find any information about hotmail retrieval in the OE6.

How do you configure the OE6 to retrieve to retrive mail from hotmail ? Do you specify a pop server or is it other ways of doing this ?

(I have two hotmail accounts that is 95 % full and if I could just empty them using pop and without loosing the datas it would be just great.)


Arne.

[Arne]

Excuse me for my misstake !!

It is actually possible and I found the instruction how to configure at the bottom of this page:

http://www.computerstuff.net/security/ieconfig.htm

It worked perfectly well and I got downloaded one of my hotmail accounts.


By the way I will try to monitor the trafic doing this download using a packet sniffer, to see if there is any special comunication issues ..


Arne.

[Arne]

After I know have learned some basic things about Outlook 6.0 and Hotmail, so I were able to understand the question , I have tried to run "the thing" with a trafic monitor on, to see how it works.

It apeared that the Outlook Express 6.0 only used port 80, the web port to make the connections to the hotmail web mail. It seems to be no pop trafic at all. The data transport also seems to be just normal web/port 80 trafic.

I believe that such trafic should normally be able to pass a nat router without any port forwardings on the client side.

[Jason Colton]

Greetings,
First, let me say thanks to all of you that responded.

I am sorry that this is probably a bit off-topic.  The reason I posted this to this group was because I had no problem with Outlook Express 6 and retrieving hotmail messages prior to installing SME 6 final and configuring it to be both gateway & server.  

Previously, I had used my ADSL Modem / Router as the gateway and the SME 6b3 as an e-mail / web server on my local network.  I had forwarded the appropriate ports from the modem / router to the local IP of the SME 6b3 server.  Everything worked fine…until I moved my primary website to a different I-Bay.  I then lost access to all my other domains (an apparent known issue with SME 6b3).

It took me a while to figure that out, so, in my attempts to correct that problem, I replaced my ADSL Modem, and reconfigured my network with the SME 6b3 box acting as gateway & server (how it should have been to begin with).

Once I did some reading and figured out that the loss of access to my virtual domains was a known issue with b3, I installed SME 6 Final.  All I-bays  & virtual domains were again accessible.  

Everything was great until I tried to access my Hotmail accounts using Outlook Express 6 as a client.   All other traffic apparently passes through just fine.  And I believe that OE6 uses just HTTP, Port 80 to synchronize with the Hotmail server.  

The oddest thing is how sometimes it appears to function normally.  Sometimes it will retrieve messages from one account, but give an error on the other.  Other times, it will synchronize neither account and give the error on both.

I tried forwarding all ports on the Modem (now configured as simply a pass-through device), knowing that shouldn’t matter at all.  That was just a desperate effort.  I have since removed all forwarding from the Modem.

Now, on my Modem, I have IP routing enabled & NAT disabled.  I have tried enabling NAT on the Modem as well, but the results are the same.  The Outbound NAT Setting & NAT pass-through is also enabled on the Modem.  

Again, thanks to everyone for their insight.

Jason

[Sjef van Gool]

Jason,

I don't know if it is related to your problem, but I also got sometimes a different HTTP failure with Hotmail.
Doing some browsing I saw that the squid proxy may be the cause of that.
You could try this by configuring squid to let directly pass through Hotmail HTTP traffic.

Sjef.

[Jason Colton]

Sjef,
Thanks for your response.  Since Hotmail retreival is HTTP based, this makes a lot of sense.  I did some reading on Squid, but I don't really know what to modify or how to make modifications to the squid.conf  file.  I searched this forum and didn't find quite what I was looking for.  It would make sense that if I disabled the squid proxy caching for  "http://services.msn.com/svcs/hotmail/httpmail.asp" that might correct this issue.

Please forgive my ignorance, but I am very new at Linux and everything is a learning experience.  

The articles that I read said that the squid.conf was at /etc/squid.conf but I can't find it.
I logged in as root using Puddy and I tried a "find -name squid.conf"  but no luck with that either.  Clearly, I am missing something.

I think that I need very basic, step-by-step instructions for this.  Does anyone know of an article or post that might help me?  

Thanks again,
Jason

[Sjef van Gool]

Hi Jason,

To find this on your box, by putty, do:
cd /
locate squid.conf

You can then find squid.conf here: /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/squid/squid.conf

But to change it you should use the procedure pointed out here: http://www.e-smith.org/custom/

From http://www1.hu.squid-cache.org/Doc/FAQ/FAQ-4.html:

4.19 Can I make Squid go direct for some sites?
Sure, just use the always_direct access list.

For example, if you want Squid to connect directly to hotmail.com servers, you can use these lines in your config file:

acl hotmail dstdomain .hotmail.com
always_direct allow hotmail

Sjef.

[Ray Mitchell]

Jason
It appears you have the answer now, but for future reference re the find command

> I tried a
> "find -name squid.conf"  
> but no luck with that either.

You probably logged on as root, and your search only looked in the root folder.
You need to use
find / -name squid.conf

or

cd /
then
find -name squid.conf

Regs
Ray

[Graeme Fleming]

Look through the forums for the TechGeeks Suid contrib that allows you to nominate direct access site via a web panel.

If ya can't find it email me off list and I can send it to you.

HTH