Ichabod Frequently Asked Questions

There a several different FAQs for Ichabod, based on who you are, and what you are trying to do. Back to the Ichabod home page.

FAQ

What is Ichabod?

What's so cool about Ichabod?

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.

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