SSL email solution

[SE30_Neal]

Hi guys,

im just coming to end of phase 1 of my SE/30 (called zippy) revival and upgrade project, my next challenge is to get little zippy up and running thoughts a TCP/IP network with my performa 6200 and early intel mac mini which may all be a challenge in itself although i do have an installed network card. anyway my question is about Email, my primary goal is to use zippy as an email client which i know from reading is tricky due to lack of SSL and authentification in old Email software although read Baton has the authentification bit. So specs wise zippy is now 32 bit clean (rom-inator II),128mb, 1gb hhd and a fresh Mac os 7.5.5 install by installing 7.5.3 first then upgrading to 7.5.5. 

Now what i wanted to know is there a way around the SSL issue? I.e. running SSL and authentification through my mac mini but how does that work? As I’m not lacking space on my hhd which email software would you recommend? Now zippy is 32 bit clean is it worth pushing it to 7.6.1 or even 8 ?

thanks alot for your help and advise its much appreciated.

Neal 

 

[mraroid]

I have been trying to get email to work on my Color Classic for over a year.  I am running 7.5.6 and I can also boot to 8.1.  No joy.  Someone here was working on a complicated solution using a raspberry pi and some software he was working on, but I never did find out if that was finished let alone ready for prime time.

If anyone knows of anything, please post, or point me to a link to someplace so I can also work on this.

Thanks

mraroid

 

[SE30_Neal]

Yes i saw a pi ssl pass through some time ago too but can’t think where. I did think of setting up an email server on my mac mini (not that i know how too) but thought that way i could do it without ssl but i have no idea lol so i’ll look into it. I could of course just pull out my iPhone from my pocket but thats not the point i cant think of anything better than using zippy for Emailling 

 

[mraroid]

Hopefully, someone here is working on it and might let us know of the progress.  I am willing to buy another Mac to act as a mail server to my color classic if that is what I need.    I don't have the background to build hardware and and write code to solve this problem my self, so I need to wait until someone can figure it all out.
 
Maybe someone will post....
 
mraroid
 

 

[SE30_Neal]

Same, I'm only a data scientist, ok an ex IT support bod but that was over 15 years ago on windows so setting up Email servers or writing code in C on a mac are beyond me too.  I have a performa and mac mini so hoping to network all 3 together so will let you know how i get on with that as im hoping  from there I’ll be able to get mail setup

 

[mpe]

You can install stunnel on your Mac Mini. That would do the SSL handshake to your email server and expose clear IMAP/SMTP ports to your vintage client.

 

[SE30_Neal]

Thanks mpe, I’m reverting my mac mini to 10.4 so they can all see each other on the network, I believe i need that os for the mini to see the performa then the performa And se/30. will it work with that Os do you know?

 

[techknight]

I guess I am sorta kinda lucky here, my ISP mail server is still non-ssl. still works over standard old school protocols. 

 

[mraroid]

I found the main Stunnel web site.  It is here:

https://www.stunnel.org/index.html
 
I only found support for Windows, android and Linux flavors, no Apple versions.
 
However, I did find Mac information here:

https://my.hostvpn.com/knowledgebase/30/Stunnel-with-OpenVPN-or-Viscosity-on-Mac-OS-X.html
 
And here is information on how to get the Linux port to run under mountain lion:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/79312/how-to-install-stunnel-on-mountain-lion
 
Assuming I can get all of that done, I then read what MPE says:

"expose clear IMAP/SMTP ports to your vintage client."
 
Un, OK, clear IMAP/SMTP mail appears on the mac mini?  But then what?
 
Thanks everyone for all the good information.  Has anyone done this?
 
mraroid
 
 

 

[mraroid]

I guess I am sorta kinda lucky here, my ISP mail server is still non-ssl. still works over standard old school protocols. 

I use gmail techknight. Which ISP do you use?

mraroid

 

[techknight]

Roadrunner. now Spectrum. My email address was attached to an account that died in roughly 2005-ish, and the email is still active. Go figure. 

 

[mpe]

You can instal stunnel on any modern Mac, just like most opensource software via Macbrew - https://brew.sh

As for how it works.

stunnel is a daemon that can be configured to operate in client mode where it listens on a port. Any incoming connection to the port is then proxied to the remote SSL host. The stunnel will sort out SSL handshaking and relays any data to/from the exposed unencrypted port.

The vintage email client on your SE/30 will be configured to talk by plaintext POP3/IMAP to a machine running stunnel (a local Mac Mini) which will talk to the remote SSL-only POP3/IMAP service.

 

[Cory5412]

I believe stunnel may be able to do this. (oops, wrote this then got distracted, some others have now mentioned it.)

The other thing you may be able to do with mail rules in mail.app on your Mac mini is move mail from one account to another server on your network, one running ASIP or something like that.

I don't know if anyone here is working on this, specifically. Web proxies that simplify pages or new sites based on simpler presentation layers seems to be the hot thing at the moment.

Every now and again, I think about enabling IMAP on my network internally for my stenoweb.net exchange server, but a large proportion of the email I get uses HTML that, say, IE4/OE4 would struggle to display.

I would think about the kind of email you get, and if it's primarily stuff that even a fast '040 or a midrange Classic-based PPC would struggle to display, then I wouldn't bother.

 

[SE30_Neal]

Great thank you everyone lots of ideas and things to try, this is obviously a hot topic on these old machines. I will try stunnel it sounds a good pass through method, good point Cory yes if my performa can’t cope my se/30 will have no chance although i really like your reduced content approach using ASIP (never heard of it) but i know my works network reduces images to downloadable links..blocks content and social media etc....so that sounds an excellent way by actually reducing the moden content to text and links in both web and email effectively making a WAP type interface for the old machines, I would be really interested to know if anyone has tried this method and how easy it is to configure? 

 

[Cory5412]

ASIP is AppleShare IP. Versions 5 and 6 have an email server component, so it's just a vintage email server you could run on a systme 7/8/9 Mac with a PPC CPU, I found it easy enough to get going a few years ago for internal-only delivery.

It's not a stripper or a web proxy of any kind, you'll need to do that in another way, or just make sure the email you receive starts that way (plain text messages from lists, friends, etc).

 

[SE30_Neal]

Thanks Cory, oh ok. Yes this is all the stuff i need to learn