Re: [Evolution] [ANNOUNCE] Evolution-EWS (Exchange Web Services) Alpha release

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

On Thu, 2011-04-28 at 00:04 +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-04-27 at 23:36 +0100, Pete Biggs wrote:
> > The problem with our setup is that the real address is aliased to the
> > Exchange address before Exchange even sees the email.  So my email
> > address of pete biggs unit xx yy zz is aliased to my exchange address of
> > pbiggs exchange xx yy zz before it hits the exchange server
>
> Oh, joy. So the address that is publicly visible is just a 'vanity'
> address that forwards to the 'real' address behind the scenes?

'vanity' implies desireable :-)  But yes, that is the general scenario.
The issue really is that we are a large academic institution - the
exchange mail service is provided centrally, but departments (aka
"units") are autonomous and it is desirable from an administrative point
of view to maintain the separation.  Some units also provide their own
mail service to add to the confusion.

> When you attempt to *send* an email, Exchange puts an address on it
> automatically, and will *reject* any attempts to send messages with a
> From: address that doesn't belong to you
>  (which means it's broken for
> the 'forward as redirect' operation, and I don't see any way to fix it).

Well as far as I can see MS applications have never believed in the
importance of the "redirect" facility and have never implemented it.

> What address(es) will your server accept when you attempt to send mail?

I can set my Email address in Evo to either my exchange address or real
address and it's accepted - change it to something else and I get an
error "The user account which was used to submit this request does not
have the right to send mail on behalf of the specified sending account."

> Does it make you send using the exchange.xx.yy.zz address, and then
> rewrite it to the unit.xx.yy.zz address automatically? Or do you send
> using the unit.xx.yy.zz address?

I can send using either, but it rewrites it to the Unit address.

> Your current configuration uses the unit.xx.yy.zz address, but has the
> URL which was obtained with the exchange.xx.yy.zz autoconfiguration?

Yes.

> Have you tried to send mail yet?

Yes.  Works fine.


> > I have no doubt that the setup at my work is bizarre so I doubt it is
> > worth it, or even possible, to alter the code to accommodate it.
>
> I suspect it's not *that* uncommon. Nobody in their right mind would
> really want to have an Exchange system facing the public Internet;
> wouldn't you *always* want it behind some kind of buffer server?

Yes, there are other complications with the mail setup as well - the
outward facing mail servers are not, as you suspect, exchange servers -
we have a bunch of *nix based machines that do all the sanity checking
on incoming mail - virus & spam protection etc. - and the redirection of
mail to the correct server.  I actually don't really use the Exchange
server, all my mail is directed to my own server that does a bunch of
server side filtering and runs a proper IMAP server :-)  I'm sorting all
this out because it should allow our Linux users to finally get full
benefit from the central servers.

> > Finally, you've labeled this as an Alpha release - do you have any idea
> > of the timescale for getting it to beta and ultimately to stable?
>
> Within 2-3 months, I hope. If that.

Sounds good.

> Read-only calendar support is already working, and we've fixed a few
> long-standing bugs in Evolution that our QA team found when testing
> that. We are currently working on write support for the calendar, and
> personal addressbook support. And on a few nasty implementation details
> that we postponed until after the Alpha release.

I haven't really looked at the calendar yet - I can see that it knows
the calendar exists, but nothing is actually being displayed!  I'll do
some investigation...

P.