Subject: Access remote inbox

From: [email-masked] (Steve Miller)
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1994 22:01:26 GMT

I have a slip/ppp account on tyrell.net and wish to use pine to read
my mail from my Linux system at home. I can send mail out to other
systems fine, but can not open my inbox on my account at tyrell.

Their support people don't know anything about pine or Unix for that
matter. They only seem to know Dos and Windows software. 

When pine starts up I get the following message:
[Opening "INBOX"...]
   then:
[Can't connect to tyrell,143: Connection refused]
[No folder opened]

My ppp connection is fine in all other aspects (ping, telnet,
mosaic, etc...).

My "inbox-path" in .pinerc is set to {tyrell.net}/usr/spool/mail/stevem
which IS where my spooled mail is. 

Any ideas? I think it is a problem at Tyrell. Is it possible that
my pine software is trying to open the wrong port to access the
inbox on tyrell (143?). Or is 143 an error code meaning something
else completely?

--
Steve Miller
Kansas City, MO
[email-masked]

---

From: "Steven D. Majewski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 1994 19:34:51 -0500 (EST)

> inbox on tyrell (143?). Or is 143 an error code meaning something

One way to verify if the imap server is working is to telnet to the
host on that port number:

telnet tyrell 143 

( or "telnet tyrel imap" is imap is in /etc/services, but yes:
  143 is the default port number. ) 

If you get an answering banner message, you should be able to type
something like:

1 login name password
2 select INBOX 

[ you should see some status info displayed here ] 

3 logout

If you don't get the answering banner from telnet - something like:
* OK elvis.med.Virginia.EDU IMAP2bis Service 7.8(92) at Fri, 9 Dec 1994 19:31:20 -0500 (EST)

Then there's no IMAP server listening on that port. 

[ And if you want to know how to "speak" IMAP to the server, read the 
  RFC's - there's an example session in there somewhere. ] 

---|  Steven D. Majewski   (804-982-0831)  <[email-masked]>  |---
---|  Computer Systems Engineer          University of Virginia  |---
---|  Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics  |---
---|  Box 449 Health Science Center    Charlottesville,VA 22908  |---

---

From: [email-masked] (Steve Miller)
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 1994 15:33:12 GMT

Steve Miller ([email-masked]) wrote:
:>I have a slip/ppp account on tyrell.net and wish to use pine to read
:>my mail from my Linux system at home. I can send mail out to other
:>systems fine, but can not open my inbox on my account at tyrell.
SNIP!
:>Any ideas? I think it is a problem at Tyrell. Is it possible that
:>my pine software is trying to open the wrong port to access the
:>inbox on tyrell (143?). Or is 143 an error code meaning something
:>else completely?

Update:
I have found out that my internet service provider, Tyrell, is not
running the inetd daemon. They should have noticed this right away
when I first reported the problem. Lesson learned: only deal with
service providers that know what they are doing! I had no other
choice until this month, a new service provider! They HAVE to 
know more than the support staff at Tyrell. Hell, I know more
than the support staff at Tyrell, and thats not saying much.
Its pretty bad when an end user/subscriber has to tell them how
to fix their system!

--
Steve Miller
Kansas City, MO
[email-masked]

---

From: Steve Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 1994 08:26:46 -0600 (CST)

Thanks for your assistance with the imap problem. I have found out
that my service provider is not running imapd at all. In fact the
person I talked to had not even heard of it! Can pine be made to
use POP instead of IMAP? (I know, IMAP is WAY better, but I don't
think I can get them to run it).

--
Steve Miller
Kansas City, MO
[email-masked]

---

From: Steve Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 1994 17:22:02 GMT

On Sat, 10 Dec 1994, Top Dog wrote:

> In comp.mail.pine you write:
> 
> Hi Steve
> 	I am using a linux system also. And I had the same trouble. The
> solution that I found was to get a file called popclient-2.21.tar.gz from
> sunsite. You have to get a pop password from Tyrell to use it, this will 
> also be your ftp password so that you can ftp back to your home dir. 

SNIP!
Tyrell now has imapd running and I am using it now. Looks like it is
working ok. Much better and easier than POP. You still have to have
a POP/IMAP/FTP password to use it. When you start up pine it asks
for your password and then opens your inbox on tyrell.net. I have
been using pine to read news also. 

> 3.89. I have nn-nntp running on my system so I can read the news via nn on my linux box.
Are you spooling the news on your machine with a full time ppp connection
or doing it on demand?

--
Steve Miller
[email-masked]

---

From: Steve Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 1994 16:04:09 GMT

Thanks for your ideas. I just received a message from someone on Tyrell's
support staff that imapd is installed now. I will try that first.

--
Steve Miller
Kansas City, MO
[email-masked]

---

From: Steve Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 1994 14:05:43 GMT

On Tue, 13 Dec 1994, Top Dog wrote:

>    I am doing it on demand. Nn-nntp only downloads an index file to track the articles in Tyrells
> spool dir. It does take many hours to set this up. 
>    I currently have access to over 100 groups. After the database is setup you can update daily with 
> a cron script when you are online. This is a good solution if you are online at least about an hour 
> a day. If you are tracking a few groups or low traffic groups you could update in about 10-20 
> minutes, all of this is done in the background.
>    It does take some work and time to set up nn-nntp. But after it is setup I think it is a good 
> solution. 
> Andre

I am looking for a faster solution to access news remotely. I prefer tin
as a news reader (or rtin) but it is very slow when I use rtin from my
machine over PPP. Pine is pretty fast starting up, but takes about 15-20
seconds for each page of article titles, not to mention that it does
not thread the articles. I might try nn-nntp but I never did like
the interface much. Maybe if I took the time to learn the commands I
might feel differently about nn. But I prefer a threaded news reader.
Especially for high-traffic news groups. 

Thanks for your suggestions!

--
Steve Miller
Kansas City, MO
[email-masked]