POP3 connector

Ilse Van Criekinge — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:13:00 GMT

After moving to our new looks, Peter Van Eeckhoutte was wondering if the old content was going to me migrated to the new server. In short, the answer to that question is "no", but, the good news is that you can still gain access to the "old" content, by browsing to http://www.pro-exchange.eu, but remember, that is the old content, all new content will only be available here :-)

But, sometimes, old content will be recycled, and blogged again, like this one. Peter Van Eeckhoutte has written a very fancy tool, called PVE POP3 Collector.

And here's the description:

"Over the last 12 years, I have created multiple email addresses hosted with various Internet Providers, or other companies. I’m still using some of those addresses, and my wife has a couple of email addresses as well, so the result is that I have (had) to configure multiple email accounts in Outlook (Express) to download emails from all of the email mailboxes. Those were the good old days.
Despite the fact that mailbox storage space has become less restrictive, some of the old email addresses still require me to download emails at least once a day, otherwise the ISP mailbox tends to fill up.
So I set up a mailserver and started looking for ways to periodically connect to my (POP3) ISP mailboxes, download the emails and deliver them to my local mailserver. After all, this technique speeds up the process of downloading emails (because the emails will be downloaded and forwarded to your local mailserver, so you only need to access your local mailserver) and also bypasses the need to manually download emails on a regular basis in order to avoid the mailbox to “overflow”.

There are a couple of tools available to collect emails from POP3 mailboxes and forward them to a user on a local smtp server, but they are either not free, lack features, limit the number of email accounts that can be created, are complex to set up, are product specific, have weak logging, do not support Secure POP3 (SSL) or Secure SMTP (SSL/TLS) with authentication, or corrupt attachments and so on. So I decided to write a more or less generic POP3 Collector tool myself, with focus on ease of use, stability and logging, and share the tool with everyone. The tool works with any mail platform that supports POP3 (to collect emails from) and SMTP (to send email to), including Lotus Domino, Exchange, and so on."

Here are some links for more information about this tool:

Documentation: http://www.corelan.be:8800/index.php/2007/10/23/free-tool-free-pop3-collector/

Download: http://www.corelan.be:8800/index.php/my-free-tools/pve-pop3-collector/

-Ilse

Windows Server 2008 SP2 has been released and is supported for Exchange 2007

Tonino — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:54:42 GMT

Windows Server 2008 (and VISTA) SP2 is released and here you can find more info about it:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/dd262148.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd351466(WS.10).aspx

And yes it's supported to run Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2008 SP2

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/05/26/451451.aspx

Hardware ecosystem support and enhancements

SP2 adds support for the 64-bit central processing unit (CPU) from VIA Technologies, which adds the ID and vendor strings for the new VIA 64-bit CPU.
SP2 integrates the Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless, which contains support for Bluetooth v2.1 and Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi Configuration. Bluetooth v2.1 is the most recent specification for Bluetooth wireless technology.
SP2 improves performance for Wi-Fi connections after resuming from sleep mode.
SP2 includes updates to the RSS feeds sidebar for improved performance and responsiveness.
SP2 includes ability to record data to Blu-Ray Disc media.

Operating system experience updates

SP2 includes Windows Search 4.0, which builds on Microsoft’s search technology with improved indexing and search relevance. It also helps find and preview documents, e-mail (including signed e-mail messages), music files, photos, and other items on the computer. The search engine in Windows Search 4.0 is a Microsoft Windows® service that is also used by programs such as Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 and Microsoft Office OneNote® 2007. Autotuning Diagnostics in SP2 now interprets current network conditions when implementing Windows scaling. This feature includes full netsh support.
SP2 improves Windows Media Center (WMC) in the area of content protection for TV.
SP2 removes the limit of 10 half open outbound TCP connections. By default, SP2 has no limit on the number of half open outbound TCP connections.

Enterprise improvements

SP2 provides the Hyper-V virtualization environment as a fully integrated feature of Windows Server 2008, including one free instance with Windows Server 2008 Standard, four free instances with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and an unlimited number of free instances with Windows Server 2008 Datacenter.
SP2 increases the authentication options for WebDAV redirector, enabling Microsoft Office users greater flexibility when authenticating custom applications using the WebDAV redirector.
SP2 provides an improved power management (both on the server and the desktop), which includes the ability to manage these settings via Group Policy.
SP2 improves backwards compatibility for Terminal Server license keys. Windows Server 2008 changed the licensing key from 512 bytes to 2,048 bytes which caused clients using older Terminal Server versions to fail. SP2 allows legacy license keys on Citrix applications to work with Windows Server 2008 Terminal Server.

Setup and deployment improvements

The SP2 standalone installer:

Provides a single installer for both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.
Includes the ability to detect an incompatible driver and either block service pack installation or warn users of any potential loss of functionality.
Provides better error handling and descriptive error messages where possible.
Improves manageability through logging in the system event log.
Provides a secure install experience.
Includes the ability to service the installer post release.

SP2 also includes a Service Pack Clean-up tool (Compcln.exe) which helps recover the hard disk space by permanently deleting previous versions of files (RTM and SP1) that are being serviced by SP2. The Service Pack Clean up tool can also be run offline while creating slipstream images to reduce the size of the image.

Sincerely,

Tonino Bruno | ICT Consultant | www.pro-exchange.be