On Sat, 22 Feb 2003, Michael Harrington wrote: > 1. It's really hard to determine the last time that a user has logged onto > a server, particularly if it's been a while and you've accumulated a few > hundred megs worth of log files. Since there is already a "LastKnownIP" > variable within the "UserStats" command, may I also suggest adding > "LastPOP3Connection" and "LastSMTPConnection" which would both show a > timestamp for a value. This feature would probably be more useful for > helping troubleshoot a user and for detecting stale/abandoned email > accounts.
Log analisys is what you're searching for. > 2. Another feature which could be useful is the addition of two new > commands "CurrentSessions" and "CloseSession". These would display inside > of the CTRL Admin a list of current connections within XMail, and the amount > of time they have been active. A list of the active connections would be > helpful when trying to determine the server load, troubleshooting a user's > problem, and killing hung-connections due to a poorly written client (this > part even more useful if you ever decide to implement IMAP). In my view, > the commands would be similar to the following: > > "currentsessions" [TAB] "protocol" > > where: > > protocol is an optional argument that represents protocol the session is > open underneath such as "POP3", "SMTP", "CTRL", etc. > > and the response would be something like: > > "session-id" [TAB] "ip-address" [TAB] "time-spent" [TAB] "protocol" > > The "CloseSession" would > > "closesession" [TAB] "session-id" > > with the result string being a RESSTRING. We might be able to survive w/out this. > 3. My next suggestion would be to move the startup command-line parameters > into a .TAB file which is read once on startup. By doing this, the startup > parameters could be changed through the CTRL Admin, and not locally or via. > a shell or other method. This might also slightly bridge together the > configuration underneath Linux & Windows versions ports more. > > 4. Instead of creating a file, adding a new command "Shutdown" to the > CTRL Admin, with two optional parameters associated with it: FlushPool and > Restart. The flushspool option would wait until XMail has finished > processing the current messages in the spool before shutting down, but would > not accept any new connections while this is taking place. The Restart > option would immediately restart XMail after it has shutdown. This option > would only be useful if you do in fact move the command-line parameters to > their own .TAB file. An administrator would them be able to modify the > parameters and reset the server all remotely. The command would be > something like this: > > "shutdown" [TAB] "arguments" > > where: > > arguments was either "F", "R", "FR", or empty. Same as above. Besides, this would require another process to be run that will monitor XMail status and that will restart it when it'll quit. > 5. Finally (getting tired of me blabbing yet?) I could see a use for a > final command that simply returned the current time and date of the server. > This would be helpful when trying to analyze log files, frozen messages, > etc. because the time difference from one workstation to another (especially > when time zones are an issue). While you could pull this from the > connection string, if the connection has been open for a while, the time > will be useless. Example: You have the timestamp in SMTP/POP3/CTRL welcome message. - Davide - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe xmail" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For general help: send the line "help" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
