Secure Mail server

SECURE MAIL SERVER

In Computer Science, we run secure services on our mail server. These being Secure POP (POP3S), Secure IMAP (IMAPS) and Secure SMTP (SSMTP). The recommended way of reading mail is with secure POP and the recommended way of sending mail is with secure SMTP. Other forms of communication with the mail server are permitted (POP, SMTP) however, these are unencrypted hence your password will pass in plain text over the network and any communication you perform with the server is open to possible network sniffing.

These instructions refer to a machine called Postfix.cs.uwa.edu.au. Please change this to mailhost.csse.uwa.edu.au where ever it is mentioned.

Transferring your mail settings from unsecured to secured services can be performed by a standard user and involves the following steps.

Load Eudora. These instructions assume that you have an existing copy of Eudora installed on your machine. If you are using a different email client, sorry, you're on your own.
Go to Tools then scroll down to Options as indicated in the following figure.

That will display a box that looks like:

This is where you need to start making changes.

Real Name	Your name
Return address:	username@csse.uwa.edu.au
Mail Server (Incoming):	postfix.cs.uwa.edu.au (This will change when server is in production)
Login Name:	Your unix username
SMTP Server (Outgoing):	postfix.cs.uwa.edu.au (This will change when server is in production)

Click on the icon marked Checking Mail and down the bottom of that in the section marked "Secure Sockets when Receiving" change that to Required, Alternate Port
Now click on the icon marked Sending Mail and down the bottom of that in the section marked "Secure Sockets when Sending" change that to Required, Alternate Port as well
Now, scroll down the left side until you find the icon marked "Advanced Network" and change the Network buffer size of to 16384
Now check your mail. You'll get an error - don't worry, the certificate is self signed, so you need to manually add it to your trusted certificates.
Go back to Tools and scroll down to Options like you did before. Then click on Checking Mail and choose the Last SSL Info option near the bottom right.
This will display Connection Information Manager Window which says the negotion status has failed because the Cert Chain is not trusted.
Click on the Certificate Information Manager button at the bottom.
Highlight the Server Certificate from Computer Science. (It should have a skull and crossbones next to it). Then click on Add to Trusted
A new Subheading should appear User Trusted Certificates should appear with the Computer Science certificate under it. Now click Done until you are out of the options menu
Now try to check your mail again and it should work.

TROUBLESHOOTING

Likely reasons for it failing?

You haven't increased the size of the network buffer under Advanced Network. This needs to be large or else there isn't enough buffer space to hold the full size of the certificate. Also, don't make up a number - it needs to be a 2^x number for the byte boundaries.
You're reading this after we've moved the server into production. The certificates are tied to the name of the machine, so if you're referencing the server with a name other than "postfix.cs.uwa.edu.au" its not going to fail.