- What is Ichabod?
- Ichabod is a mail server (like Sendmail), and
also a mailing list server (like majordomo).
- Ichabod is an SMTP & POP3 Server. (also an
SMTP & POP3 Client).
- Ichabod is written entirely in JavaTM, and should run on any platform that
supports Java 1.1 or greater.
- Ichabod provides a web based interface for
retrieving email, joining lists and administering the server.
- What's so cool about
Ichabod?
- It's portable. You can run it on an Java 1.1 or
higher system.
- It's extensible. You can subclass the existing
mail classes to do anything you want with your email. (Examples would be
anonymous remailers, filtering, email surveys, or anything else you can think of. We
already have Mailing lists, Forwarding accounts, Ping accounts, Email accounts,
Remote Administration accounts and an Auto-reply account.)
- It's easy to use. Simplicity has been an
important consideration throughout the design of the program.
- Dynamic Addresses for preventing spam! Dynamic Addresses allow you to create
email aliases that autmotically expire, or that can only be used by one person,
or domain. See the Dynamic Address FAQ
- How do I get Ichabod?
- It's on source forge. Go to http://ichabod.sourceforge.net
- Is source available?
- Yes. Go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/ichabod, and click
on CVS in the menu on the top of the page.
- What's the license?
- GPL (Gnu Public License). See www.gnu.org if you
are not familiar with GPL.
- How do I extend the mail
server?
- You subclass one of the existing classes, such as
TargetList, or TargetUser.
We don't currently have any documentation available.
But if you are interested in extending Ichabod, please contact us. We want
to encourage this!
- Does it do everything
Sendmail does?
- No. Sendmail is one of the world's most powerful,
and most complex mail systems available. Ichabod is much simpler to use, yet
still extremely flexible.
In particular, Sendmail has lots of options for
dealing with legacy mail systems. Ichabod uses current internet standards for
communications, and can communicate with any standard mail program. Sendmail is a great program,
if you have the time to master the 800 page manual.
If you want something easier to set up & extend, try Ichabod.
Ichabod also can run on any platform that supports Java 1.1 or above.
- Any major limitations?
- In this beta version, Ichabod does not do direct
SMTP delivery. You will need to set Ichabod to send mail to your ISPs mailer
program to be forwarded to its eventual destination.
Direct SMTP delivery is in alpha. Let me know if you like to test it.
- Can I administer the server
via email?
- Yes. You have to create a Remote Administration
account to administer the host. Mailing lists are automatically
administerable via email.
See the Administation FAQ for details on how to create a Remore
Administration account.
- Can users access their
email via the web?
- Yes.
- Can users access their
email via POP3?
- Yes.
- Can users access their
email via IMAP?
- No. This is on our todo list, but not with a high
priority. If you want to leave your mail on the server, and access it from multiple locations, just use the web interface.
We welcome your opnion on this. Customer feedback helps us
prioritize our feature list.
- Can users access mailing
lists via the web?
- Yes. Users can sign up & unsubscribe via the
web. They can also view archives of previous messages. (archives can be
permanent, or expire after a set period of time.) Users can also send
feedback to the list's owner from the web page.
- Can users access mailing
lists via email?
- Of course. Users can subscribe and unsubscribe via
email.
We also look for subjects, or first lines of
'unsubscribe', and remove the subscriber from the list. This helps keep people form
sending 'unsubscribe' messages to the whole list.
- Can I just use Ichabod to make my app an SMTP server?
- If you want to have an application recieve mail, you can just use the Ichabod
SMTP classes to receive mail. Your program just has to implement a few interfaces.
There is a working example that prints all incoming messages in com.worldware.MailServer.
It's 72 lines long, counting comments, so it's pretty easy.
- Does it use JavaMail?
- No. It predates JavaMail. Also Javamail is
currently only designed for the client side of things, so it's not ideal for
use on a server. We are investigating whether we can use it in a future
release, as we really hate duplicating work.
- Is it 100% pure JavaTM?
- Nope. It doesn't use any native code, but it's not certified "100% pure Java".
- Does Ichabod support SSL/TLS etc?
- No. We'd love to, though. If you'd like to add this, please let us know.