Hi,
My friend just open an account with a local webhosting company.
His site's run ok and there is no problem at all.However, he can't use "info" as a user name for pop3 email account. He really needs to use this email address info@hisdomainname.com.

What he should do ?

Any good suggestion.

thanks

Originally posted by netmastan
What he should do ?


He should create 'info' as an e-mail user using his control panel(most likely Cpanel or Plesk). I forgot how to do this as it's almost six months since I shut my site down.

Well, I am setting up everything for him. From the control panel I tried to use info user name for pop3 account it says.
Error
User exists. Choose another username.

but in the user list i don't see this name and i never added this name .so how come i can't use this user name .

I have contacted support team they replied this
-----------
you will have to add a user say info1
and an email redirect called

info info1@yourdoamin as the user info is taken by another user on the
server
and you can have only one physical user called info on the server
But as above will work for email fine
------------

I don't understand he paid money and in the contract it says he is allowed have 25 pop3 email account. He should be able to choose any user name he wish at his domain name.

any expert can suggest what to do ?

thanks

Who is the hosting company and what control panel do they use?

If I logon to the site i see a logo call sitemadeeasy.
here is the link for sitemadeeasy
http://devcenter.devhelper.net/webcontrol/index.html#login

I followed the instruction how to add user . I can add any user but not info. And you already noticed webhosting compay said that is a physical email address and it is taken ? taken by who .....?

Please answer me is there any reason that i can't get this email address(info@mydomainname.com) at my domain name ?

I see my ftp programe conect to host4you.net when i connect to ftp.mydomainname.com

Originally posted by MilkMan
Who is the hosting company and what control panel do they use?
Sounds like a cobalt raq.

This is quite usual in linux hosting, when once a user takes up a user ID, no one else can use it. This is not a matter of paid for 25 accounts. Some other person hosted on the same server probably took the "info" username.

The solution, as suggested by your host, is to create a email forward named info and have it redirect to another account.

Peter

If the control panel looks like

http://demo.cobalt.com/raq4en/democobalt/siteManage/home

Then it is a cobalt RaQ. If so, then create the pop box with the username info1 or info2 or whatever will work and put info in the email aliases box. He will have to use info1 or info2 or whatever as the email username to log into the pop box using a mail client, but he will be able to receive mail at info@domain.com.

oops, double post

just create a username that suits him and is allowed and then just add info as an alias.

can your ISP make an alias name as info and redirect that mail to a pop3 user account?

Originally posted by richy
just create a username that suits him and is allowed and then just add info as an alias.

Sorry, this was already mentioned...

Bad design, period. It SHOULD be able to discern the difference between info@someothersite and info@yoursite. Lazy programmers.

What are you talking about? This is an inherent problem of using any standard user mapping + linux. Besides, there is already a solution mentioned.

Peter

Originally posted by ckpeter
What are you talking about? This is an inherent problem of using any standard user mapping + linux. Besides, there is already a solution mentioned.

Peter

Any half-decent programmer should be able to get around that. Linux can't be TOO awful.

You are forgetting something: Most Linux+Mail installation are not doing virtual hosting. If such a solution is required, there are ways available, ranging from simple alias to using LDAP.

Just who is the "programmer" you are referring to?

Peter

The programmer of the "Site Made Easy" control panel.

And what are you talking about? Virtual hosting is at least half the market, if not more.

Originally posted by rsaylor


Sorry, this was already mentioned...


Sorry, i will try to read every post in future before attempting to be helpful.

Originally posted by richy
Sorry, i will try to read every post in future before attempting to be helpful. Relax! It's clear by the order in which the posts were made that Robert (rsaylor) was apologizing for his post that followed yours, not criticizing yours.
Originally posted by Devorius
Any half-decent programmer should be able to get around that. Linux can't be TOO awful.If you don't know enough about Linux to know how "awful" it might or might not be, how can you know what a programmer should or shouldn't be able to do within a Linux system?

Because most control panels do not have this limitation. And obviously, I just stated that they SHOULD be able to. Again, they're obviously just too lazy.

lol i wasnt anything but relaxed, i hadnt bothered to read the entire thread, just noticed a common problem and popped in the standard answer. id assumed id repeated someone and was just apologising :)

Devorius,

I'm afraid you may not understand the entire scenario. While there are some bugs that are caused by "lazy programmers," the situation described above is definitely not a bug, and as you suggested, there ought to be a way around it. Fortunately, there is, and the Sun Cobalt programmers built it into their user interface starting several years back.

Linux, as well as every other operating system I know of, obviously cannot discern between unique individuals the way that humans can, and so it relies on unique usernames. Each user anywhere on the system must have a different name, primarily so that security privileges do not get confused between users, which as I am sure you could imagine could result in some awful situations. Case in point: if a system administrator and a malicious user both had the first name "John," and both wanted and had the username "john."

So, the solution, which has already been mentioned several times, is to choose a unique system username, and then use sendmail's e-mail aliasing features to choose an e-mail alias, such as "info" for that username. (E-mail aliases only apply to a particular domain name, as opposed to an entire server which may host several.) This can be done easily on many web hosting systems. That way, you do not introduce any security problems, and you get to keep your info@domain.com address.

Hope this clears things up.

The way I see most do it is to include the domain in the username. Shouldn't be hard to program.

Originally posted by Devorius
The way I see most do it is to include the domain in the username. Shouldn't be hard to program.

Of course it's not hard to program. But your comments don't help in using the Sun RaQ GUI as this is not a Sun/RaQ feedback forum. :rolleyes:

Originally posted by Devorius
The way I see most do it is to include the domain in the username. That's one commonly-used approach. But since you obviously wouldn't want your users to have to distribute email addresses like domainname1-fred@domainname1.com, the approach uses -- as has been repeatedly mentioned -- aliases, allowing fred to use the email address fred@domainname1.com, while another user can use fred@domainname2.com. But those would be aliases; not their actual usernames, which could not both be fred. Even if the two users use separate virtually hosted domain names.

In the control panel setup for domainname1.com, fred would be mapped to the user account domainname1-fred. Short of not using pop for email, that's the only option -- no matter how lazy or energetic your programmers might be.

Some control panels, though, mask the fact that they are doing that. You might think that means that the programmers who wrote them were less lazy, but someone else might think it means that they are taking away from users a level of control that some users might prefer to have. In short, it's not necessarily laziness; it's a design decision.

Originally posted by avara


Of course it's not hard to program. But your comments don't help in using the Sun RaQ GUI as this is not a Sun/RaQ feedback forum. :rolleyes:

We're discussing the "Site Made Easy" control panel; it is not the RaQ GUI.

Originally posted by Devorius
The way I see most do it is to include the domain in the username. Shouldn't be hard to program.
Go for it. I'll be interested to see what you come up with.

Originally posted by Intelligent Hosting

Go for it. I'll be interested to see what you come up with.

I don't have to. As far as I know, both Plesk and CPanel already do this.

Create an alias as info then make a forwarder forward whatever is sent to info to another address.

From reading the postings by "netmastan", I see two questions being asked and just want to clarify.
His site's run ok and there is no problem at all.However, he can't use "info" as a user name for pop3 email account. He really needs to use this email address info@hisdomainname.com.
Would this refer to fact that the Domain Name must be included within the Username? If so, that problem has been addressed already and is so that the Server only allows one specific and unique Username per Domain Name. Not being familiar with the Control Panel being used, it does not sound like it uses a "catch-all" Email setup. A shame actually, as methinks it would clear up the whole situation.

Best solution is the one mentioned of creating the POP3 Email (using whatever Email address/Username/Password you want) then Forward it to the main Email account. Then one only has to worry about accessing the main Email account. Only time you really want to use a seperate POP3 Email address is when the setup requires individuals to have privacy -- only they can read Emails send to their Email address.

From the control panel I tried to use info user name for pop3 account it says.
Error
User exists. Choose another username.

but in the user list i don't see this name and i never added this name .so how come i can't use this user name.
This question no one has yet addressed and I too, fail to see why it cannot be used or why it cannot be determined who is using "info@hisdomainname.com"

Have you checked with your Hoster "netmastan", to see if they can tell you who is using it?

Originally posted by Website Rob
This question no one has yet addressed and I too, fail to see why it cannot be used or why it cannot be determined who is using "info@hisdomainname.com"Uh... no one is. Someone is using the username info, and so netmastan's friend can not use that username. He could, though, use info@hisdomainname.com and point it to any username he'd like, provided that username is not already in use by any other domain holder on the server.

Usernames are not associated with any particular domain. The username "info" is in use. The mailing address "info@hisdommainname.com" is not in use, by anyone. He cannot use that username, "info." He can still set up an email address "info@hisdomainname.com" and point it to any unused username he'd like. A username is unused only if no account on the server is using it. If someone else is using a particular username, he cannot. But he can establish a mailing address within his domain, even if someone else who has a different domain on the server is using that domain's equivalent of the same mailing address. So if there is an "info@someotherdomain.com," he can still use "info@hisdomainname.com." But he can't use a username that someone is already using.

Hmm... I'm running out of different ways to say this. :)

I understand what you are saying Jay, I'm justing having trouble I guess, believing someone would actually setup a Hosting account with the Username of "info". That is the only way, I can see, as to why it cannot be used as an Email address for the friend's Domain Name.

No, it's not necessarily the case that it's the username on a hosting account... there's a pop user "info," so no other pop user can have that name.

Again, while it's common for actual pop accounts to be created with the domain included or with some similar approach to avoid duplication, that seems not to be the case here. I don't know anything about the system in question, that's just what I infer from what's been written.

Sorry little confused with this post :confused: Please confirm

If I have 5 domains and I want to use sanjay@1domain.com, sanjay@2domain.com... and so on. I will be able to use is only for one domain (provided someone else is not taken that away).

Also what about come email addresses which most of the companies will need like sales@company.com, info@company.com, webmaster@company.com, feedback@company.com

Thanks

That's correct. There can only be one "sanjay" user. If you want to use it on different domains on the same server, create another user like "sanjay1" and then create a mail forward/alias that for "sanjay" at the second domain to forward to "sanjay1".

Originally posted by El Nino
and then create a mail forward/alias that for "sanjay" at the second domain to forward to "sanjay1". Exactly. The thing is, again, some systems/control panels may be set up in such a way that this is hidden from the user. Still, it is exactly what's happening.

It's an interesting development in hosting that people can actually be running hosting companies and such, yet have been so protected from having to learn the technical aspects of how their server, software, and operating system really work that they don't have to know this stuff.

Something is going off track here. It is possible to have POP3 Email accounts using the same Username/Password but different Domain Names. I know this because I have done it. Two different Domain Names hosted on the same Server were setup with a POP3 Email account and each using "test@domain1.com" and "test@domain2.com" as their Email address and Login; and with each having the same Password. No forwarding to some other account is required and each can send/receive Email without a problem.

Now this Server is using RedHat 7.2 and Cpanel which I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes. It was my understanding that as long as the Domain Names are different, there is no problem. This is how it works on all the Servers I've ever used (which have all been RedHat/Apache setups).

So, where does that leave us? Back to the original question: "Why can't "info@friendsdomain.com" be used if, to the account holder's knowledge, no POP3 account has been previously setup? Until the original poster queries their Hoster for an in-depth response, I doubt any of use will figure out the answer without being familiar with the Server setup being used.

Originally posted by Website Rob
So, where does that leave us? Back to the original question: "Why can't "info@friendsdomain.com" be used if, to the account holder's knowledge, no POP3 account has been previously setup? Until the original poster queries their Hoster for an in-depth response, I doubt any of use will figure out the answer without being familiar with the Server setup being used. [/B]

Trust us, it can't be done if its linux type hosting. I've been involved with webhosting (as a customer) since 1997 and that's the way its always been. In the days before control panels, if you wanted email addresses like info, sales, admin etc. usually you had to set up an alias and redirect because chances are someone on the server already had that user name.
Cpanel and the other control panels are probably doing the same thing, but its invisible to the user.
Setting up the alias is a fairly easy process but if he feels like he can't deal with it, then the only alternative is to find a host that has cpanel or the like.

I too, remember those days (back in 1998) of setting up Aliases but it there is/was a difference between an Alias and an assigned POP3 Email address -- or so I believed. After using Cpanel for the last 2 years there is no doubt, I now take for granted a lot of the things it does "behind the scenes" for people. Just another reason I guess, why it's so popular.

I do believe though, the only way the original question will get answered is for the Thread starter to sit down with their Hoster and have an in-depth discussion at to how the Control Panel (or Email features of it) operates. Should give them a good idea of how willing their Hoster is, to work with Clients. Just a thought. :)