Provided by: libmail-bulkmail-perl_3.12-5_all 
NAME
Mail::Bulkmail::Server - handles server connections and communication for Mail::Bulkmail
AUTHOR
Jim Thomason, jim@jimandkoka.com
SYNOPSIS
my $server = Mail::Bulkmail::Server->new(
'Smtp' => 'your.smtp.com',
'Port' => 25
) || die Mail::Bulkmail::Server->error();
#connect to the SMTP relay
$server->connect || die $server->error();
#talk to the server
my $response = $server->talk_and_respond("RSET");
DESCRIPTION
Mail::Bulkmail::Server now handles server connections. Mail::Bulkmail 1.x and 2.x had all the server
functionality built into the module itself. That was nice in terms of simplicity - one module, one
connection, one server, and so on. But it had some downsides. For one thing, it only allowed for one
connection. And since I wanted to allow multiple server connections in 3.00, that had to go. For another,
it was a pain in the butt to change the server implementation. This way, you can easily write your own
server class, drop it in here, and be off to the races.
For example, the Mail::Bulkmail::DummyServer module for debugging purposes.
This is not a module that you'll really need to access directly, since it is accessed internally by
Mail::Bulkmail when it is needed. Specify the data you need in the conf file and the server_file
attribute, and you won't ever need to touch this directly.
ATTRIBUTES
Smtp stores the Smtp relay's address.
$server->Smtp("your.smtp.com");
can either be an IP or a named address
Smtp values should be set in your server file.
Port stores the port on which you'll try to connect to the SMTP relay. Probably going to be 25,
since that's the standard SMTP port.
$server->Port(25);
Port values should be set in either your server file, or a single default in your conf file.
Domain When you connect to an SMTP server, you must say hello and state your domain. This is your
domain that you use to say hello.
$server->Domain('mydomain.com');
This should be the same name of the domain of the machine that you are connecting on.
Domain should be set in your conf file.
Tries When you try to connect to an SMTP server via ->connect, you may have issues with creating the
socket or making the connection. Tries specifies how many times you should re-try making the
socket or making the connection before failing to connect.
Make this a small number.
$server->Tries(5);
Tries should be set in your conf file.
max_connection_attempts
This is similar to Tries, but this governs the number of times that you can call the ->connect
method. When you have multiple servers in Mail::Bulkmail's ->servers array, there's no point
in constantly re-trying to connect to a server that fails. it'll just slow you down.
max_connection_attempts makes sure that you stop trying to connect to invalid servers.
Make this a small number as well.
$server->max_connection_attempts(7);
max_connection_attempts should be set in your conf file.
envelope_limit
It's entirely likely that with a very large list you'll have a very large number of people in
the same domain. For instance, there are an awful lot of people that have yahoo addresses.
So, for example, say that you have a list of 100,000 people and 20,000 of them are in the
yahoo.com domain and you're sending using the envelope. That means that the server at
yahoo.com is going to receive one message with 20,000 people in the envelope!
Now, this might be a bad thing. We don't know if the yahoo.com mail server will actually
process a message with 20,000 envelope recipients. It may or may not and the only way to find
out is to try it. If it does work, then great no worries. But if it doesn't, then you're
stuck. If you stop using envelope sending, you sacrifice its major speed gains, but if you
keep using it you can't send to yahoo.com.
envelope_limit fixes that.
envelope_limit is precisely what it sounds like, it allows you to specify a limit on the
number of recipients that will be specified in your envelope. That way, with our previous
example, you can specify an envelope limit of 1000, for example.
$bulk->envelope_limit(1000);
This means that yahoo.com will get 20 messages, each with 1000 recipients in the envelope. Of
course, this still may not be small enough, so you can tweak it as much as necessary.
Setting an envelope limit does trade off some of the gains from using the envelope, but it's
still over all a vast speed boost over not using it.
envelope_limit should be set in your conf file. I recommend setting it to 100, but tweak it as
necessary. Higher values allow you to send more information and do it faster, but you're more
likely to run into server's that refuse that many recipients. Lower values are more
compatible, but slightly slower.
Set envelope_limit to 0 for an infinite limit. You should never have to set it below 100
(unless you're using an infinite limit), since RFC 2822 says that SMTP servers should always
accept at least 100 recipients in the envelope
max_messages
max_messages sets the maximum number of messages to send to a particular server. This is
mainly useful if you're bulkmailing to multiple servers. You may have a server that can take
some of the load, but not much of it. Assume that your list has over 100,000 people on it, and
you're using one primary SMTP relay and one smaller SMTP relay to help take some of the load
off of the main one. Your primary SMTP server can handle lots of messages, but your smaller
one can only take a smaller load. That'd a good place for max_messages.
$aux_server->max_messages(10000);
That way, your smaller server will relay no more than 10,000 messages.
Set max_messages to 0 for an infinite number of messages to go through the server. It is
recommended to set max_messages to 0.
max_messages_per_robin
when you set up your bulkmail object with multiple servers, max_messages_per_robin is used to
determine how many messages are sent to a server before moving onto the next.
This is the maximum number of messages that would be sent to a server in a given iteration
before moving on to the next, but it is not necessarily the exact number of messages that will
be sent. If the server has reached the maximum number of messages allowed, or the maximum
number in a given connection, it will jump to the next server before reaching the robin limit.
Set max_messages_per_robin to 0 for an infinite number of messages allowed on a given server
iteration. It is recommended to set this to 500 if you're using multiple servers, and to 0 if
you're using 1 server.
The message robin counter is reset by reset_all_counters
max_messages_per_connection
This sets the maximum number of messages that would be sent to a given SMTP relay in a given
connection. When this limit is reached, the server will disconnect and return that it has
reached a limit.
set max_messages_per_connection to 0 for infinite messages per connection. It is recommended
to keep this at 0.
The message connection counter is reset by reset_all_counters
max_messages_while_awake
Sometimes, it may be useful to pause and give your server a break. max_messages_while_awake
allows this. This will specify the number of messages to send to a server before going to
sleep for a certain period of time.
$server->max_messages_while_awake(100);
Will send 100 messages to the server and then go to sleep. for the time specified by
sleep_length.
Note that reaching this limit will not cause reached_limit to return a true value, so in a
multi-server environment, you'll end up sleeping a lot.
The message-while-awake counter is reset by reset_all_counters, so it is of dubious utility
when using multiple servers.
Set max_messages_while_awake to 0 to never sleep. It is recommended to have
max_messages_while_awake set to 0 when using multiple servers. Set it to a positive number
when using one server.
sleep_length
Specifies the time to sleep (in seconds) if the server has reached the
max_messages_while_awake limit.
talk_attempts
The response codes for SMTP are pretty rigorously defined, which is obviously very useful. a
5xy error is permanently fatal. a 4xy error is temporarily fatal. It is recommended that if a
4xy error is encountered, that the client (us) should try re-sending the same command again.
talk_attempts specifies the number of times to try resending a command after receiving a 400
level error from the server.
$server->talk_attempts(5);
time_out We can *finally* time out! So if your SMTP relay doesn't respond for a set period of time, the
connection will automatically disconnect and fail with an error. Set this to something high,
the value is in seconds.
$server->time_out(3000); # 5 minutes
time_of_last_message
stores the time that the last message was sent through this server, in epoch seconds.
connected boolean attribute that says whether or not this server object is connected to an SMTP relay.
Don't set this value, only read it.
CONVERSATION
This is an optional log file to keep track of your SMTP conversations
CONVERSATION may be either a coderef, globref, arrayref, or string literal.
If a string literal, then Mail::Bulkmail::Server will attempt to open that file (in append
mode) as your log:
$server->CONVERSATION("/path/to/my/conversation");
If a globref, it is assumed to be an open filehandle in append mode:
open (C, ">>/path/to/my/conversation");
$server->CONVERSATION(\*C);
if a coderef, it is assumed to be a function to call with the address as an argument:
sub C { print "CONVERSATION : ", $_[1], "\n"}; #or whatever your code is
$server->CONVERSATION(\&C);
if an arrayref, then the conversation will be pushed on to the end of it
$server->CONVERSATION(\@conversation);
Use whichever item is most convenient, and Mail::Bulkmail::Server will take it from there.
Be warned: This file is going to get huge. Massively huge. You should only turn this on for
debugging purposes and never in a production environment. It will log the first 50 characters
of a message sent to the server, and the full server response.
socket socket contains the socket that this Server has opened to its SMTP relay. You'll probably
never talk to this directly, but it's here, just in case you want it.
METHODS
increment_messages_sent
This method will increment the server object's internal counters storing the total number of
messages sent, the total sent this robin, the total sent this connection, the total sent while
awake, and the total sent this envelope.
It will also store the time the last message is sent.
reset_message_counters
This message will reset the internal counters for the messages sent this robin, messages sent
this connection, and messages sent while awake back to 0.
reset_envelope_counter
The envelope counter behaves slightly differently than the other counters, so we have a
separate method to reset the internal envelope counter.
reached_envelope_limit
This method returns 1 if we've reached the envelope limit, 0 otherwise
reached_limit
This method will tell you if the server has reached the max_messages,
max_messages_per_connection, or max_messages_per_robin limits. Also, if you reach the
max_messages_while_awake limit, this method will cause you to sleep for the time period
specified in sleep_length
Return values:
1 : reached max_messages limit, server becomes worthless and will not be used again
2 : reached max_messages_per_connection limit, server will disconnect
3 : reached max_messages_per_robin limit
new Standard constructor. See Mail::Bulkmail::Object for more information.
connect Connects this server object to the SMTP relay specified with ->Smtp and ->Port This method
will set ->connected to 1 if it successfully connects.
$server->connect() || die "Could not connect : " . $server->error;
Upon connection, ->connect will issue a HELO command for the ->Domain specified.
This method is known to be able to return:
MBS001 - cannot connect to worthless servers
MBS002 - could not make socket
MBS003 - could not connect to server
MBS004 - no response from server
MBS005 - server won't say HELO
MBS010 - can't greet server w/o domain
MBS011 - server gave an error for EHLO
MBS015 - timed out waiting for response upon connect
MBS016 - server didn't respond to EHLO, trying HELO (non-returning error)
MBS017 - cannot connect to server, no Tries parameter
disconnect disconnects the server object from the SMTP relay. Before disconnect, it will issue a "RSET"
and then a "quit" command to the SMTP server, then close the socket. disconnect sets
->connected to 0.
disconnect can also disconnect quietly, i.e., it won't try to issue a RSET and then quit
before closing the socket.
$server->disconnect(); #issues RSET and quit
$server->disconnect('quietly'); #issues nothing
talk_and_respond
talk_and_respond takes one argument and sends it to your SMTP relay. It then listens for a
response.
my $response = $server->talk_and_respond("RSET");
If you're not connected to the relay, talk_and_respond will attempt to connect.
This method is known to be able to return:
MBS006 - cannot talk w/o speech
MBS007 - cannot talk to server
MBS008 - server won't respond to speech
MBS009 - server disconnected
MBS012 - temporarily won't respond to speech...re-trying
MBS013 - could never resolve temporary error
MBS014 - timed out waiting for response
MBS018 - No file descriptor
create_all_servers
create_all_servers will iterate through the file specified in server_file in the conf file and
return an arrayref of all server objects created.
define package Mail::Bulkmail::Server
server_file = ./server_file.txt
your server file should be of the format of another Mail::Bulkmail conf file, containing
definitions for all of the SMTP servers you want to use. See the examples below for how to set
up the conf files.
If you would like to specify a different conf file, pass that as an argument.
my $servers = Mail::Bulkmail::Server->create_all_servers('/path/to/new/server_file.txt');
This will then ignore the server_file in the conf file and use the one passed.
You may also pass hashrefs of init data for new servers.
my $servers = Mail::Bulkmail::Server->create_all_servers(
{
'Smtp' => 'smtp.yourdomain.com'
},
{
'Smtp' => 'smtp2.yourdomain.com'
},
{
'Smtp' => 'smtp3.yourdomain.com'
}
) || die Mail::Bulkmail::Server->error;
This is called internally by Mail::Bulkmail's constructor, so you probably won't ever need to
touch it.
SAMPLE SERVER FILE
It is recommended that you define your server entries in your server file. See Mail::Bulkmail::Object and
Mail::Bulkmail for more information on conf file set up and how to define your server_file.
#in your conf file, you want this
define package Mail::Bulkmail::Server
#your server file
server_file = /etc/mb/server.file.txt
Now, your server file should look like this:
define package Mail::Bulkmail::Server
#set up the first server
Smtp @= smtp1.yourdomain.com
Port @= 25
Tries @= 5
max_messages_per_robin @= 1000
envelope_limit @= 100
#set up the second server
Smtp @= smtp2.yourdomain.com
Port @= 25
Tries @= 5
max_messages_per_robin @= 1000
envelope_limit @= 100
#set up the third server
Smtp @= smtp3.yourdomain.com
Port @= 25
Tries @= 5
max_messages_per_robin @= 1000
envelope_limit @= 100
Alternatively, you can use defaults in your master conf file.
#your server file
server_file = /etc/mb/server.file.txt
#These values will apply to all servers
Port = 25
Tries = 5
max_message_per_robin = 1000
envelope_limit = 100
Now, your server file should look like this:
define package Mail::Bulkmail::Server
#set up the first server
Smtp @= smtp1.yourdomain.com
#set up the second server
Smtp @= smtp2.yourdomain.com
#set up the third server
Smtp @= smtp3.yourdomain.com
Be warned that if you want to set up a value for one server, you should set it up for all of them. Either
specify the attribute for a server in the master conf file, or specify it multiple times for all servers.
SEE ALSO
Mail::Bulkmail, Mail::Bulkmail::DummyServer
COPYRIGHT (again)
Copyright and (c) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 James A Thomason III (jim@jimandkoka.com). All rights
reserved. Mail::Bulkmail::Server is distributed under the terms of the Perl Artistic License.
CONTACT INFO
So you don't have to scroll all the way back to the top, I'm Jim Thomason (jim@jimandkoka.com) and
feedback is appreciated. Bug reports/suggestions/questions/etc. Hell, drop me a line to let me know
that you're using the module and that it's made your life easier. :-)