The RCF maintains an authenticating SMTP server allowing users with a valid RCF email account to send mail through our server from outside of the BNL network.
Please select the appropriate link below for instructions on how to configure your email client.
Evolution
For Ximian Evolution, select "Settings" from the "Tools" menu. Highlight your RCF account and click on the "Edit" button, an "Evolution Account Editor" window should appear. Select the "Sending Mail" tab and set the options as shown in the next figure.
In particular, you need to:
- Add ":465" to the end of the Host name.
- Select "Always" for the "Use secure connection (SSL)" option.
- Check "Server requires authentication"
- Enter your username in place of "<RCF Account Name>"
- Check "Remember this password"
- Click the "OK" button.
Macintosh Mail (Mac OSX 10.3.1)
In the Mail menu, choose "Preferences". In "Preferences", choose "Accounts". Create a new "rcf" account or select your existing account.
For Secure (SSL) email checking of the rcf account, setup an IMAP account as usual, and click on the "Advanced" tab. Click the "Use SSL" checkbox, which should change the port to 993.
For SMTP server, click on the "Account Information" tab. Click on "Server Settings". Enter "rcf.rhic.bnl.gov" as the Outgoing Mail Server. Click on "Use Secure Sockets Layer" clickbox. Put "587" in the "Server Port" box. Choose "Password" from the "Authentication" pull-down menu. Put your username and password in the appropriate boxes (you may leave the password blank if you want to enter it every time).
Certificate problems:
- "Unable to Connect"
When receiving email from rcf.rhic.bnl.gov, in OSX 10.3 and later (problem not seen in 10.2), you will get a "Unable to Connect...." error message the first time you check mail after starting OSX Mail. This message text essentially says that Mac OSX Mail doesn't recognize the certificate from rcf, which you can examine. If you click on "Continue", then you trust the certificate, and will get email. If you quit OSX Mail and then restart it, you will have to click on "Continue" again. - "Unable to Verify SSL Server rcf.rhic.bnl.gov"
This is a similar certificate trusting problem, click "Continue" to send mail. You get this error message the first time you send outgoing mail using rcf.rhic.bnl.gov after starting OSX Mail. If you quit OSX Mail and then restart it, you will have to click on "Continue" again. - A possible workaround for these problems is given at http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031028154419136 . You should use port 993 to get the IMAP certificate and port 465 to get the Authenticated SMTP certificate (even is you use port 587 to connect to the Authenticated SMTP server in the end).
Microsoft Outlook
For Microsoft Outlook select "E-mail Accounts..." from the "Tools" menu. Select "View or change existing e-mail accounts" on the next page and click on the "Next" button. Make sure that the RCF account is highlighted and click on the "Change" button. Clicking on the "More Settings..." button on this page should bring up an "Internet E-mail Settings" window with four tabs. The "Outgoing Server" tab should look like the following:
Make sure that the "My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication" box is checked and a username and password is supplied if different from your incoming mail settings.
Now go to the "Advanced" tab and make sure that the "Outgoing Server (SMTP):" port is set to 587, and that the SSL checkbox is checked as in the following figure. Click "OK" when you are done.
When mail is sent for the first time using the above configuration, you will be prompted to accept the certificate for the rcf.rhic.bnl.gov machine. Then you will get a warning that it could not verify the certificate. In my case, after sending about three e-mail messages, Outlook stopped issuing the warning.
Netscape or Mozilla Mail
For the Netscape 7.x or Mozilla clients, select the "Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings..." entry in the "Edit" pulldown menu. Then select the "Outgoing Server (SMTP)" configuration page from the left hand menu (usually the second to last entry above "Free Webmail" entry). You should see something like the following:
You should:
- Set "Server Name:" to "rcf.rhic.bnl.gov"
- Set "Port:" to "587"
- Check "Use name and password"
- Set "User Name:" to your RCF email user name
- Select "Always" under "Use secure connection (SSL)"
- Click on the "OK" button
Mozilla Thunderbird
The Mozilla Thunderbird mail client supports both SMTPS (port 465) and STARTTLS (port 587), but a recipe and screen shots are not yet available.
Pine
To configure pine to use the authenticated SMTP server, add the following line to your .pinerc file:
smtp-server=rcf.rhic.bnl.gov:587/user=<RCF user name>/novalidate-cert
The <RCF user name> should be replaced by your RCF email user name and the last option (novalidate-cert) will stop pine from complaining about the self-signed certificate.
Technical Details
Authenticated SMTP can use three ports, namely 25 (SMTP), 465 (SMTPS) and 587 (mail message submission). We do not allow port 25, so you neet to configure your email client to use either port 465 or 587 depending on which of the two ports, SMTPS (465) or STARTTLS (587), your client supports.
Configure your client to use "rcf.rhic.bnl.gov" as the outgoing SMTP server. Select the appropriate port supported by your e-mail client. Enter your RCF email account user name for the connection to the server and make sure that the client will use SSL when connecting.
You will have to accept our self signed SSL certificate the first time that you send mail through the RCF server.
