seriously, though, horde is a far superior open source email program, works with spam assassin and is overall 10 times better than squirrelmail...does anyone know why they've chosen to work with one of the most awful email programs?

9/8/2006 12:39:01 PM

What was that program they used before squirrel mail. My memory is failing me. I remember using elm a lot. I'm thinking of a web browser program though.

[Edited on September 8, 2006 at 1:03 PM. Reason : -]

9/8/2006 1:01:22 PM

pegasus??? j/k

9/8/2006 1:55:09 PM

Roxen Webmail. The servers crashed literally every day.

and the reason they went with squirrelmail (i was there at the time) is because it was one of the most popular web-based mail tools at the time. once itd rolls out something like this, they tend to want to stick with it for a while. it's integrated into a lot of other Unity tools now.

[Edited on September 8, 2006 at 3:32 PM. Reason : .]

9/8/2006 3:30:59 PM

They probably chose it for many reasons. If I had to support it, I would choose squirrell instead of horde.

At work there are plenty of programs people want included into the standard package, but you have to play for the masses. Programs that aren't supported from the developers themselves, don't have a long term plan of development, aren't the defacto standard, and are able to be used by the majority probably won't be considered. Also usually these decisions have to be planned so far in advance by the time it is implemented, the decided solution might not be the slickest thing out there.

9/9/2006 11:06:37 PM

1) FORWARD ALL NCSU MAIL TO GMAIL

2) QUIT BITCHING BECAUSE GMAIL CATCHES IT ALL

9/10/2006 4:14:04 PM

having just gone over and looked at the horde website, I can see why ITD would choose not to implement it. the package looks powerful, but it seems to have a lot of requirements, not the least of which is the base framework package. that seems to be unnecessarily complex for something like webmail. if they wanted to host more than just that, it might be a good alternative. but at the same time, when you're serving a population in the tens of thousands, your first consideration has to be scale and reliability.

and, speaking as an IT staff member of the university, i'd like to point out that we try very hard to make ourselves available to provide assistance. if folks have questions or problems with squirrelmail, or unity mail in general, we'd like the opportunity to help you when you get frustrated.

9/10/2006 4:25:13 PM

well, i didn't realize the requirements were all that intense (no sarcasm...on my reseller hosting accounts, i can choose to use squirrelmail or horde as part of cpanel's installed apps...horde has so many more options in addition to spam filtering that as of yet, has been JUST AS GOOD as gmail's)

on a regular basis, regardless of connection speed (sometimes on my parents' dial-up, sometimes on panera's wifi, and sometimes at wolf village), squirrelmail takes 15-20 seconds to load...doesn't matter what computer i'm on (my laptop, my desktop, or on a campus computer)

when it DOES load, i'll have upwards of 50 (i'm not embellishing) spam emails PER DAY...thunderbird does catch them when i open it up through the client, but sometimes i'm not on a computer that has my ncsu account on it, and i sincerely get annoyed having to sort through 50 messages to get the two or three that are actually relevant

is there nothing that can be installed on the ncsu mail server to handle this? spamassassin (my current favorite), for example?

i realize that i can't even comprehend the differences between managing a framework the size of ncsu's (as the three companies i manage have no more than about 20 employees each), but are there any plans to improve the system any time soon?

9/10/2006 5:22:35 PM

I'm not familiar with either package ... but my guess is it's a decision that was made by a committee via several meetings many years ago. They've already committed the time/resources to it and unless there is a compelling reason to switch (i.e. the product is no longer offering updates), they won't.

9/10/2006 5:26:54 PM

Yeah, Squirrelmail runs slowly sometimes, so I'd agree that there is probably room for improvement there. Not sure if that's going to be a simple matter of throwing more Web servers at the problem, though. some of that sluggishness is probably Squirrelmail actually connecting to the mail server and polling for everything in your account (all mail boxes, not just your inbox). If you have something like Thunderbird set up to poll for all new messages in all of your boxes, the 15-20 second load timeframe for Squirrelmail is similar. I've got hundreds of messages stored in various folders, and I've patiently waited for Thunderbird to check everything sometimes for up to 30-45 seconds.

plans to change things? a fair question, and one that i'm unfortunately not in a position to answer now.

and yeah, there is mail filtering going on behind the scenes. ITD's approach is that it's better for the user to decide for themselves what is and is not spam, rather than have the mail system swoop down and throw away something you wanted. perfect solution it's not, but the alternative might be worse.

if you've not seen this yet, it's worth checking out (and if you've already seen it, I apologize for the duplication). NCSU mail servers use PureMessage to scan for viruses and spam. they automatically remove virus attachments, and tag most spam. you can use filters directly on the mail server, called Sieve filters, to clean out a lot of the trash that gets in your Inbox:

http://help.ncsu.edu/solutions/all/3099.php

9/10/2006 5:33:14 PM

Quote :

"and yeah, there is mail filtering going on behind the scenes. ITD's approach is that it's better for the user to decide for themselves what is and is not spam, rather than have the mail system swoop down and throw away something you wanted. perfect solution it's not, but the alternative might be worse."

i agree 100% with you on this...it's much much MUCH better to allow everything (or mostly everything) through instead of accidentally holding back something important...if it weren't for the fact that spamassassin has NEVER messed up, and has multiple filter settings (mine is set on moderate right now and i've never had spam get through), i'd think it wasn't possible

i guess when i made this thread, i was just in the mood to bitch because i was in a hurry

9/10/2006 5:40:16 PM

I dunno I find the spam a funny part of my student experiance

9/10/2006 5:59:14 PM

Honestly the real solution is to find a personal account that will last you more then a couple of years.

School email goes to ncsu, anything real find an alternative.

9/10/2006 11:42:25 PM

whats so wrong with outlook web access? was that ever considered?


the spam is horrible, i wish they would use a community based filtering solution like Cloudmark. I just set up the spam flag rule, we'll see how that works out.

9/11/2006 12:45:25 AM

i don't think outlook web access is free

9/11/2006 12:52:03 AM

the PureMessage filtering is community-based, in a way. the mail servers receive "definition" files basically every day, which include up-to-date information about both viruses and spam trends. using the Sieve filter to toss out things marked X-Spam: YES will significantly reduce the spam.

OWA was probably not considered primarily because NCSU doesn't use Exchange, and cost factors. Squirrelmail does the job well enough, and doesn't cost a penny. Most everything from Microsoft has a cost, and in this case it would require setting up all-new Windows servers to host and process all of this.

9/11/2006 5:48:23 AM

and there are enough problems without running a windows server

9/11/2006 10:30:07 AM

I get spam less than once a week since I started using the university spam filters. Most of you just need to learn how to use the e-mail they give you and stop bitching because there isn't anyone there to hold your hand.

9/11/2006 11:49:07 AM

would you like a cookie? i use the university spam filters and i STILL get 50 spam emails per day...i don't suppose you use yours nearly as often as i do, which is probably why you don't get as much spam

9/11/2006 3:31:01 PM

if you don't have a junk email address you use to sign up for things then you deserve what you get nowadays

9/11/2006 3:35:41 PM

http://help.ncsu.edu/solutions/all/3099.php

I followed the instruction in that email (setting up the X-SPAM-FLAG rule) and haven't had a single piece of spam in 12 hours! Before the rule I would have had 10-20 by this point. It seems to work perfectly so far...I'm curious why this isn't set up by defaut considering how much spam NCSU users are experiencing. The only think i can think of is this FLAG rule has the potential to weed out valid emails. Has anyone seen this happen?

9/11/2006 3:44:35 PM

^ I've been using it for a long time now and I've yet to have a false positive.

9/11/2006 4:01:43 PM

yeah thats kinfa my point. it seems to work well...and if there are very few false positives then why isn't it turned on by default in our accounts?

9/11/2006 4:16:16 PM

^ probably because ITD doesn't want to take the heat if something does go missing

9/11/2006 4:23:34 PM

Quote :

"1) FORWARD ALL NCSU MAIL TO GMAIL 2) QUIT BITCHING BECAUSE GMAIL CATCHES IT ALL"

is there a way to make the reply email address show that it's from my ncsu email address and not the gmail account?

found the answer:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=34528

[Edited on September 11, 2006 at 4:31 PM. Reason : .]

9/11/2006 4:25:33 PM

^^^
My guess (going back to the "somewhere sometime" committee) was they are looking towards a hands off approach. It will be the users fault/responsibility if emails don't get through because they setup the spam filter "incorrectly". Turning it on by default, and then having people complain about it is a greater evil than having it off by default and pointing to a website showing a nice solution ... makes them look good.

[Edited on September 11, 2006 at 4:38 PM. Reason : .]

9/11/2006 4:38:38 PM

hi folks... just wanted to mention that spam filtering is now turned on by default for all new unity accounts being created. that won't help folks here that already had accounts on the system, of course.

http://sysnews.ncsu.edu/news/445664f0

as far as ITD "not taking the heat," I'd like to make an observation. If you lost an important piece of e-mail, my guess is that you'd be angrier if it were caused by ITD rather than your own action.

if you're a group like ITD, supporting tens of thousands of people, WHAT exactly is the best possible service you can provide, offering the best level of protection, while NOT distrupting users' ability to USE the systems? No one person has a perfect answer to that, because everyone expects different things.

[Edited on September 11, 2006 at 5:22 PM. Reason : added URL]

9/11/2006 5:21:44 PM

i'm glad they're turning it on by default...i, personally, do NOT use my ncsu email for anything but school (i used to use a yahoo account for signing up for things, registrations, etc...now i use gmail), but over the past 6 years, it's gotten progressively worse...the spam filtering is a lot better than i thought (i didn't have it turned on the way the article described), and i think the newer users will benefit from it

Quote :

"as far as ITD "not taking the heat," I'd like to make an observation. If you lost an important piece of e-mail, my guess is that you'd be angrier if it were caused by ITD rather than your own action."

i don't blame y'all at all...i'd much rather have 50 spam emails than lose one really important one

i'm glad plusdelta (or anyone else from ITD) is reading this...and i'm glad it's getting responses...all in all, keep up the good work

9/11/2006 11:01:45 PM

spamassassin's spambox concept ftw

Quote :

"This feature allows emails identified as spam by SpamAssassin to be delivered to a seperate mail folder named "spam". If this folder is not regularly checked and emptied, it may cause your email or filesystem quotas to be exceeded, resulting in a failure to receive legitimate messages. You can easily use IMAP or Horde/IMP to check messages that are routed to this box. If you wish to use pop3 to check the spam box, just add "/spam" (without the quotes) to the end of your pop3 login. (Example: user@domain.tld/spam) This feature's use is generally discouraged in favor of sorting and deleting spam messages using your mail client. Without Spam Box you can configure SpamAssassin to mark your email with an identifying subject (e.g. ***SPAM***), which can then be filtered out into an appropriate location."

9/12/2006 12:17:30 AM