On-line engine blitz tourney October

[Joost Buijs]

Harm Geert,

Thanks!

I will try 'history', I used 'stored' and that showed there are no games stored.

Under options there is indeed 'save game', when I looked at this I thought it was just an option to save the last game.
Now I see that it is a way to configure how and where the games are stored.
Maybe the name of this option is a little misleading, at least to me it is.

Is it not possible to use the SMTP server from the provider where you hire the VPS?

[hgm]

I will try 'history', I used 'stored' and that showed there are no games stored.

There seem to be different sets of stored games on the ICS. I never took the time to precisely figures out what goes where.

Under options there is indeed 'save game', when I looked at this I thought it was just an option to save the last game.
Now I see that it is a way to configure how and where the games are stored.
Maybe the name of this option is a little misleading, at least to me it is.

To actually save a game there is a Save Game item in the File menu. It indeed always struck me as a bit confusing that the Option dialogs for configuring these File commands have the same name in another menu. But I didn't worry about it too much, because I figured that everyone would be used to that.

Is it not possible to use the SMTP server from the provider where you hire the VPS?

Alas, not. SMTP servers only accept mail from the known set of customer IPs, to prevent their abuse for spamming.

[Joost Buijs]

Is it not possible to use the SMTP server from the provider where you hire the VPS?

Alas, not. SMTP servers only accept mail from the known set of customer IPs, to prevent their abuse for spamming.

Strange, I would expect you to be a 'known customer' and I guess you have the IP address also from them.

If this really is a problem I can let you make use of my SMTP server for this purpose, it is always up, it is on a fixed IP, 2 hops from AMS-IX.
On the other hand it must be quite simple to configure SMTP under Linux.

[hgm]

I rent the VPS from an independent company, (vpsserver.nl) not from my regular internet provider that supplies my ADSL connection (xs4all). The VPS company doesn't seem to supply an smtp server for general use.

And you are right, it should be quite simple to configure the smtp server under the Linux sytem on the VPS itself. I just never took the time to figure out how.

[Joost Buijs]

I rent the VPS from an independent company, (vpsserver.nl) not from my regular internet provider that supplies my ADSL connection (xs4all). The VPS company doesn't seem to supply an smtp server for general use.

And you are right, it should be quite simple to configure the smtp server under the Linux sytem on the VPS itself. I just never took the time to figure out how.

Even when you configure the SMTP server under Linux, you still need a relay server where you can send your emails to.
I don't know if there are any publicly accessible SMTP servers available.

[hgm]

I was told smtp servers send the mail directly to its destination, specified by the domain name in the mail address.

[matthewlai]

I rent the VPS from an independent company, (vpsserver.nl) not from my regular internet provider that supplies my ADSL connection (xs4all). The VPS company doesn't seem to supply an smtp server for general use.

And you are right, it should be quite simple to configure the smtp server under the Linux sytem on the VPS itself. I just never took the time to figure out how.

Even when you configure the SMTP server under Linux, you still need a relay server where you can send your emails to.
I don't know if there are any publicly accessible SMTP servers available.

If your IP is "clean", there's nothing wrong with sending emails from your server directly. That's what I have been doing for 10 years now.

The only reason you can't just set up an SMTP server at home (most of the time) is that your IP would be in your ISP's dynamic IP block, and many servers are set up to reject emails from servers in dynamic blocks, because most of those servers are spam servers.

If you are renting from a reputable VPS company, the IP should be clean, and it should most definitely not be in a dynamic block.

[Joost Buijs]

I rent the VPS from an independent company, (vpsserver.nl) not from my regular internet provider that supplies my ADSL connection (xs4all). The VPS company doesn't seem to supply an smtp server for general use.

And you are right, it should be quite simple to configure the smtp server under the Linux sytem on the VPS itself. I just never took the time to figure out how.

Even when you configure the SMTP server under Linux, you still need a relay server where you can send your emails to.
I don't know if there are any publicly accessible SMTP servers available.

If your IP is "clean", there's nothing wrong with sending emails from your server directly. That's what I have been doing for 10 years now.

The only reason you can't just set up an SMTP server at home (most of the time) is that your IP would be in your ISP's dynamic IP block, and many servers are set up to reject emails from servers in dynamic blocks, because most of those servers are spam servers.

If you are renting from a reputable VPS company, the IP should be clean, and it should most definitely not be in a dynamic block.

This is the reason why I always had a bad experience when sending emails directly to recipients.
I'm not in a dynamic block, all my IP's are fixed and I assume they are not marked dirty, but it still gives problems when sending directly.
Nowadays most servers use white and blacklists and check reverse DNS.
This is why I prefer to use the SMTP server from my provider.

[matthewlai]

I rent the VPS from an independent company, (vpsserver.nl) not from my regular internet provider that supplies my ADSL connection (xs4all). The VPS company doesn't seem to supply an smtp server for general use.

And you are right, it should be quite simple to configure the smtp server under the Linux sytem on the VPS itself. I just never took the time to figure out how.

Even when you configure the SMTP server under Linux, you still need a relay server where you can send your emails to.
I don't know if there are any publicly accessible SMTP servers available.

If your IP is "clean", there's nothing wrong with sending emails from your server directly. That's what I have been doing for 10 years now.

The only reason you can't just set up an SMTP server at home (most of the time) is that your IP would be in your ISP's dynamic IP block, and many servers are set up to reject emails from servers in dynamic blocks, because most of those servers are spam servers.

If you are renting from a reputable VPS company, the IP should be clean, and it should most definitely not be in a dynamic block.

This is the reason why I always had a bad experience when sending emails directly to recipients.
I'm not in a dynamic block, all my IP's are fixed and I assume they are not marked dirty, but it still gives problems when sending directly.
Nowadays most servers use white and blacklists and check reverse DNS.
This is why I prefer to use the SMTP server from my provider.

Certainly. It requires you to set up your server properly.

Nowadays that means correct reverse DNS, correct SPF/DKIM/DMARC, and proper relay control.

However, if you have run an improperly set-up server on your IP, it's possible that it's on blacklists already, and you'd have to contact them to get it removed first. It's easy to check, though. Just check the popular ones SpamAssassin uses.

If you don't want to go through all the hassle, sending through your provider is the easier way.

[Henk]

In my opinion Eichhoernchen and Giraffe were most interesting engines to play against.