0919ELSE "Info" tab

The Official X-Itools ELSE 0.9.19 User's HOWTO

Edited by Nicolas HAHN < hahnn@x-itools.com > / < hahnn@erios.org >

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This page for version: 0.9.17 | 0.9.18
Top: Documentation for Users | Previous: Your first login | Next: "Statistics" tab

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• "Info" tab
  • A word about Server Roles
  • Manage Server Queues
    • Delete emails from a specific sender
    • Flush the Queue

"Info" tab

"Info" tab: user's information, password change and Postfix server queues management

This is divided in three parts.

"About you" is informationnal only. Your login name, date of creation of your ELSE account and last date/time you've used the tool are displayed, as well as the ELSE groups you're member of. You can be member of several groups and in such case, they are displayed in the "Groups" fields separated by commas.
In the ELSE, the group is a kind of central thing. All what you can see in the ELSE, all what you can search, all reports you can do... all of this is closely linked to the groups and what your administrator has configured inside them. Several kind of things can be attached to any group by an ELSE administrator like the users, the SMTP servers, the email domain names, and so on.
For instance, in the screenshot above, the dummy user is member of the group1 group.

"Password update" lets you modify your password if you wish to. For that, you must enter your current password, then your new password twice. If those three fields are valid, then the Update button will be enabled and you'll just have to click on it to do the update.

"List of servers you can search in" is a data grid showing each server you've access to for each group you're member of. Group name, Server name, Server IP address and Server Role are the information displayed in this data grid. As written above, you can only see the servers that have been assigned to your groups. Even more, you can only see or search the email domains the ELSE administrator have assigned to your groups.
The Refresh button can be clicked if you know that the information of the grid have been updated (in case a server has been discovered on your network by the ELSE).
Then, you can double-click on a line to manage the e-mail queue of the corresponding server. That's what we'll discuss in the section "Manage Server Queues" below.

A word about Server Roles

The servers are classified according different categories in relation with their role in a production environment. Those server roles are statically defined in the ELSE and its database. In big SMTP infrastructures, typically the ones you can find to your ISP datacenters, email flows are spread according their role or direction, for example. So you have SMTP servers that handle incoming email traffic only, others handling outgoing email traffic only and so on. Here below are the available server roles existing in the ELSE at this time:

• INCOMING: SMTP servers handling incoming email traffic only. Keeping our ISP example, that would materialize all the emails that comes from outside (the internet) to be delivered to the ISP's customers.
• OUTGOING: SMTP servers handling outgoing email traffic only. That would materialize all the emails that are sent by the ISP's customers to be delivered outside (the internet).
• MAILING LIST: SMTP servers that runs mailing list softwares and making huge delivery. Usually, mailing list servers have for SMTP gateway an outgoing server.
• SENDER ROUTER: so called because that regroups Postfix servers specially configured to make delivery according what is the sender email address (or the sender email domain name). This is a specific type of outgoing server in fact.
• EXCHANGE: this category is reserved for any SMTP server being a Microsoft Exchange one.
• GENERIC: this category is set on servers that cannot enter in a previous category. We can find inside this category, the servers that handle incoming and outgoing email flow at the same time for instance. Typically, if you are a big geek and if you run your own postfix server to manage your own messaging domain, then they are strong chance your server can enter in this category.

Please note that even if categories are statically defined in the code of the ELSE, they can be extended in the futur. For example, the author is thinking in the implementation of a NDR ROUTER specific category (that would be a Postfix server handling all delivery of NDRs).{@style=color: red;}

The ELSE really prefers all your SMTP servers being spread in the right category, and to not have even one server in the GENERIC category. That's very important to take care of that (and to design your infrastructure accordingly) because that will ease all ELSE reporting skills.

Manage Server Queues

Be aware that the ELSE can manage only Postfix Server Queues. What is discussed in this section is not for a Microsoft Exchange Server.{@style=color: red;}

To manage the e-mail queue of a Postfix server, just double-click on it in the data grid of the "Info" tab. Then a new window will appear, and the content of the queue is loaded.

Manage Postfix Queues: all the details of emails currently waiting in your Postfix Server Queue

This window show following information, grouped by Postfix QID:

• Arrival date on the server
• Size of the email in bytes
• RFC821 email sender address
• RFC822 email sender address
• Recipient email address
• Number of times the server tried to deliver the email
• Extended status, showing the reason why the email is in the queue

At first, you can see that any email address in this data grid is a link. If you click once exactly on an email address, this will open your favorite email client to let you write an email to be sent to the email address you've clicked on. This small feature is available in numerous data grids generated by the ELSE.

The information displayed in this window are generated by the ELSE without querying your Postfix server. In fact the ELSE database maintain in Real Time a status of all emails waiting to be delivered, so emails currently waiting are well-known and there is no need to query the server.
** The inherent limit of this feature is that your ELSE server must not be overloaded: if the Real Time capacity is lost, then all information displayed in this window might become too old and irelevant.{@style=color: red;}**

You can refresh the content of the data grid from time to time by clicking on the Refresh button. You can also let the ELSE do that automatically by clicking on the Auto-Refresh button. In such case, the grid content is reloaded every minute.

If you want to work on the data of the grid using another software, you can download them by using the Download button: a *.XLSX file will be generated by the server and sent to your browser for download once ready. You can then open this file with LibreOffice.

If you double-click on a specific line in the grid, that will have for effect to open a new window showing the full details of the clicked e-mail transaction. The ELSE will then search for the Message-ID of the email transaction represented by its QID, and all transactions related to the found Message-ID will become available in the new window. This feature is not explained in this section because a dedicated one do it in this HOWTO.

Some maintenance options are proposed to you, but they will work only if your ELSE permissions are set accordingly by an ELSE administrator. They are described below.

Delete emails from a specific sender

ACTIVE FEATURE!!!{@style=color: green;}

This feature will work only if your ELSE permissions are set for that by an ELSE administrator.{@style=color: red;}

There is a drop-down list in the E-mail Queue window, at the left-top. This is the "Delete all E-mails from:" option. This drop-down list contains the unique sender email addresses of all emails waiting in the server queue.

If you want to clean the queue from all emails of a specific sender, choose the right email address in the drop-down list then click on the Delete button.

Then the ELSE will immediately issue a SNMP call to the right Postfix Server to delete all waiting emails from this sender. At the next refresh and after a little bit of time, the data of the grid should have changed and you shouldn't see any waiting email from the sender email address you've deleted.

Flush the Queue

ACTIVE FEATURE!!!{@style=color: green;}

This feature will work only if your ELSE permissions are set for that by an ELSE administrator.{@style=color: red;}

From time to time it can be necessary to flush the queue, meaning to try to make all the waiting emails delivered again. For that, just click on the Flush Queue button.

Then the ELSE will immediately issue a SNMP call to the right Postfix Server to flush the queue. At the next refresh and after a little bit of time, the data of the grid may have changed if some waiting emails were finally delivered.

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Top: Documentation for Users | Previous: Your first login | Next: "Statistics" tab
This page for version: 0.9.17 | 0.9.18