Email piping on Windows

[v0lc4n0]

Hi,

we solved problem with email piping on Windows platform. Since there is no native port of exim, postfix or sendmail on Windows, we had to use workaround.

And I add also one additional bonus: solved problem with various charsets in incoming emails. Because eSupport will show tickets in charset you selected in language definition, some emails in different charset are displayed incorrectly.

Ok, now the steps:

1. Install Apache and PHP on Windows, configure and run eSupport. In this example is PHP4 installed in c:\php4 and eSupport is in d:\_htdocs
2. Install Cygwin (www.cygwin.com). Cygwin is a set of unix/linux applications ported on Windows and allows to run windows applications from this "linux" enviroment. While installing select exim in Mail component and python in Python component.
3. setup exim by running script exim-configure. When asked for install exim as service, answer yes. Make sure your port 25 is open in Windows firewall.
4. download script called mimedecode.py from http://phd.pp.ru/Software/Python/ and put it in directory c:\mimedecode
5. in directory c:\mimedecode create file named esupport.sh with content
   

   #!/bin/sh
   cat | /cygdrive/c/mimedecode/mimedecode.py -f utf-8 | /cygdrive/c/php4/php.exe d:/_htdocs/cli/index.php
   

6. change permissions on esupport.sh to 755 : chmod 755 /cygdrive/c/mimedecode/esupport.sh
7. edit file /etc/aliases (c:\cygwin\etc\aliases) and enter for example:
   

   postmaster: hostmaster@company.com
   support: "| /cygdrive/c/mimedecode/esupport.sh"
   

   then run command newaliases to rebuild alias table
8. create Email queue in eSupport Admin area for email support@your_domain_on_server

Now you have configured mailserver for receiving emails and piping them to script mimedecode.py and then to eSupport. Mimedecode.py script converts all parts of email body including headers from any encoding to utf-8, which is mostly default in eSupport.

Enjoy !

[Neil-UKWSD]

Hi,

Thank you for taking the time to post these instructions that others may fnd helpful, I have made this thread sticky.

[murat]

Hi everyone,

Piping on win32 is indeed confirmed. Running quite stable so far, and with impressive response. I'd suggest any windows customer to give this a spin. Many thanks to v0lc4n0 for the brilliant work.

Cheers!

[Hybrid]

Excellent, this might solve the problems we were having too.

Thanks very much for this workaround.

[siliconghost]

I have IMAP working perfectly thus far on Windows 2003. What benefit would I have in using piping?

- SG

[newguy]

It should be noted that if you attempt this on a Plesk for windows, or Ensim for windows server you should REALLY research this before even attempting it. I doubt seriously if this will work for any control panel.

[weetabix]

Here is an alternative if you are using Hmailserver.

Start hmailserver admin console, go to settings|advanced|script, show script, edit script according to the code below, save, read scripts to memory... presto!

Const g_sPHPPath     = "C:\php\php.exe" 
Const g_sScriptPath  = "d:\jadajada\yerdomain.com\wwwroot\support\cli\index.php" 
Const g_sPipeAddress = "support@yerdomain.com" 
Const g_sDQ          = """" 

Sub OnDeliverMessage(oMessage) 
   If g_sPipeAddress = "" Then 
      bPipeMessage = True 
   Else 
      bPipeMessage = False 

      Set obRecipients = oMessage.Recipients 
      
      For i = 0 to obRecipients.Count - 1 
         Set obRecipient = obRecipients.Item(i) 
          
         If LCase(obRecipient.Address) = LCase(g_sPipeAddress) Then 
            bPipeMessage = True 
         End If 
      Next 
   End If 
      
   If bPipeMessage Then 
      sCommandLine = "cmd /c type " & g_sDQ & oMessage.Filename & g_sDQ & " | " & g_sDQ & g_sPHPPath & g_sDQ & " " & g_sDQ & g_sScriptPath & g_sDQ 
      Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell") 
      Call oShell.Run(sCommandLine, 0, TRUE) 
   End If 
End Sub

[joepc]

HELP:

I cant seem to get this working, I have setup as described but no mails are going in or out,

Im on the latest stabe version on Win XP Pro,

Here is my config:

esupport.sh (in C:\minedecode)

#!/bin/sh
cat | /cygdrive/c/mimedecode/mimedecode.py -f utf-8 | /cygdrive/c/Program\ Files/xampp/apache/bin/php.exe /cygdrive/c/Program\ Files/xampp/htdocs/cli/index.php

Aliases files

PHP Code:

postmaster: support@localhost
support: "| /cygdrive/c/mimedecode/esupport.sh" 


Queue setup:



Am I missing something????

Where using the system for internal use, our webserver is "support"

Thanks,
Joe

[adriane]

Does any one know why Exim is throwing this error in failed delivery message?

The following text was generated during the delivery attempt:

------ pipe to | /cygdrive/d/Programs/mimedecode/esupport.sh
generated by support@xxxx.xxx ------

+++ Exim error... failed to open text file: Permission denied


This is part of the Exim main Log:

2006-09-13 13:09:23 J5IGRM-0001G4-JY ** | /cygdrive/d/Programs/mimedecode/esupport.sh <support@xxxx.xxx> R=system_aliases T=address_pipe: Child process of address_pipe transport returned 128 from command: /cygdrive/d/Programs/mimedecode/esupport.sh

[Mandalae]

After trying the above, installing cygwin and all I've run into a problem with the command you have to run to link exim and supportsuite together, I get a permission denied everytime I try, I've tried chmodding it to 755 and 777 nothing works, I've even tried removing the Read-only tag in windows, but everytime I remove it and make it writeable it just pops back to read-only..

I'm at a loss here...any ideas?

[paisano2k]

Has anyone been able to successfully configure e-mail piping when the SupportSuite is installed on a windows web server and exchange is on a separate server?

[murryc]

Where do I find and run the exim-configure script?

[bg_dlv]

Hi All,

I have installed Kayako on a Windows 2000 server. Email is on a seperate server so we have enabled POP3 and then added the WGET file with a Cron Job to pull the emails in. If a customer uses the submit ticket feature, we receive the email but when we respond the customer does not recieve the response.

Since we want the support system to receive all emails, (not just what is being sent via ticket subissions) we have created aliases for the main email address and as of now the emails are not being recieved.

I am wondering if we are missing something? Do I need to give more information? Please Advise and Thanks.

[wwright]

I couldn't find a file called exim-configure, however I was able to find one called exim-config. If you installed Cygwin to the default path, you should be able to find the file in the C:\Cygwin\bin directory. You run the file in Windows by clicking Start > Programs > Cygwin > Cygwin Bash Shell. After the window opens (it looks similar to a DOS window) just type in exim-config, and the program will run. Follow the prompts to set up the program.

[wwright]

Originally Posted by paisano2k

Has anyone been able to successfully configure e-mail piping when the SupportSuite is installed on a windows web server and exchange is on a separate server?

Good question. I'm in the process of trying to set up just such a configuration. All of this PHP, MYSQL and UNIX stuff isn't easy for someone who is used to working with Windows, IIS and SQL Server.