ePOST Serverless Email System

A Peer-to-Peer Platform for Reliable, Secure Communication

Fri, 09 Feb 2007

ePOST open ring down

Planetlab, the research network that hosts the vast majority of ePOST open ring nodes, has wiped all of its disks as part of a system-wide upgrade. Currently the open ring is unavailable and we are investigating our options for restoring service. Expect an update in the next few days.

Sat, 05 Aug 2006

ePOST 2.4.6 Released.

ePOST version 2.4.6 was released today. This release includes several bug fixes, including some important stability fixes for the Windows platform. It also has a beta version of UPnP (Universal Plug-n-Play) support for easier interoperability with Internet Gateway (NAT) devices. We are interested in hearing your feedback about how the UPnP support works and whether it meets your needs, as well as any other feedback you may have. See the FAQ for more information on our UPnP support.

Fri, 21 Apr 2006

ePOST 2.4.5 Released.

ePOST version 2.4.5 was released today. This version of ePOST contains numerous bug fixes, including performance enhancements and changes to mail delivery. Users mail experience slower mail delivery until they upgrade, and so are uncouraged to do so immediately.

Thu, 16 Feb 2006

ePOST gateways back up

Normal ePost service has been restored. We are making changes to ensure that an outage does not happen again. Thanks for your patience.

Mon, 13 Feb 2006

ePOST gateways down

Both ePOST open ring gateways are currently down. We hope to have service restored within 24 hours. We apologize for the inconvenience and are taking steps to see that it doesn't happen again. Until the gateways are fixed external email for open ring users will be queued or rejected.

Thu, 12 Jan 2006

ePOST 2.4.4_01 Released.

ePOST version 2.4.4_01 was released today. This bugfix release fixes a problem where nodes with forwarding logs could not boot. Also sometimes a brand new ePOST proxy would not boot the first time.

Tue, 10 Jan 2006

ePOST 2.4.4 Released.

ePOST version 2.4.4 was released today. This newest version of ePOST contains many bug fixes and improvements. All users are recommended to upgrade. Changes include upgrading to the newest version of pastry, performance improvements, lower memory usage, many stability fixes, several bug fixes that prevent potential data loss.

Fri, 16 Sep 2005

ePOST 2.4.2_01 Released.

ePOST version 2.4.2_01 was released today. This bugfix release solves a problem where a proxy could close its pastry socket and yet remain running in a zombie state.

ePOST 2.4.3_01 Released.

ePOST version 2.4.3_01 was released today. This bugfix release fixes a bug where SMTP will always use authentication outbound whether requested or not.

Thu, 15 Sep 2005

ePOST 2.4.3 Released.

ePOST version 2.4.3 was released today. This newest version of ePOST contains many bug fixes and improvements. All users are recommended to upgrade. Changes include:

• Usernames now allow "."
• lower bandwidth usage (through the use of smaller liveness check 'ping' messages)
• Outbound SMTP authentication when sending messages. A new GUI tab, 'sending' replaces the 'forward' tab to control these features.
• Some messages with illegal characters are fixed so as not to confuse clients like Apple Mail.
• log files are now named epost.log instead of nohup.out
• Many, many minor internal improvements.

Users should note that some of the options have changed names and so they may need to update their proxy.params file or check their preferences in the GUI.

Mon, 11 Jul 2005

ePOST 2.4.2_02 Released.

ePOST version 2.4.2_02 was released today. This bugfix release uses a smaller message size for keepalive ping messages, reducing ePOST's bandwidth requirements.

Thu, 07 Jul 2005

ePOST Source Code Released

Coinsiding with the release of ePOST 2.3, we have decided to release the source code for ePOST. The source code includes a superset of FreePastry, including core Pastry, PAST, and Scribe, as well as the POST and ePOST code and all support code. The code is under the same BSD-like license as FreePastry, as is provided as a convenience to all interested parties. It can be downloaded from the Latest Code page.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact the ePOST Team.

Java 1.5 Support in Beta Status

With the release of ePOST 2.4, ePOST now supports and runs on Java 1.5. While the support is in beta status, we believe it is stable enough to be released. Please send feedback it epost-team at rice.epostmail.org if you run in to any Java 1.5-related issues.

Thu, 16 Jun 2005

ePOST 2.3 Released.

ePOST version 2.3 was officially released today in stable form. It includes a large number of improvements and bug fixes, and is a recommended upgrade for all users. A highlight of the changes include:

Improvements:

• Mailing list support - users can specify a list of addresses to forward mail to
• GUI support for changing passwords
• Better memory management, reducing memory requirements for ePOST
• Secure ring certificates providing encrypted monitoring and log uploading
• OS X is now officially a supported platform

Bug fixes:

• Fixed bug which incorrectly rerouted direct messages
• Fixed bug with ePOST accepting message with no Inbox
• Better memory management during FETCH IMAP commands
• Added failure indication via SMTP when ePOST address is not found
• Better error handling when PAST lookups fail while reading logs

ePOST 2.2 Released.

The most recent ePOST code, version 2.2, was officially released today in stable form. It can be downloaded from the Download section. A few of the major changes from the 2.1 versions:

• Removal of a maximum message size cap in the SMTP servers - ePOST now supports arbitrarily sized messages (only limited by the memory constraints of the sending and receiving proxy)
• Fixed a bug with the inclusion of ePOST headers - X-ePOST-Secure is now included to indicate a secure or unsecure message
• Fixed a bug with the transport layer incorrectly declaring nodes suspected when a non-optimal path fails
• Fixed a bug with the transport layer involving improperly closed sockets leading to rare message loss
• Fixed a bug with the Swing components that incorrectly rendered the screen it was resized too small
• Added a bandwidth cap to the Glacier subsystem which limits the amount of data Glacier will download at a given time

ePOST 2.1.4 Released.

ePOST 2.1.4 was released today, which contains two enhancements:

• Automatic code update intergrity verification, via MD5 sums
• A configuration screen to ease the modification of ePOST default parameters

ePOST 2.1.5 Released.

ePOST 2.1.5 was also released today, which fixes a minor logging bug present in the 2.1.4 release.

ePOST 2.4.2 Released.

ePOST version 2.4.2 was released today. It includes a variety of bug fixes and improvements, and is a recommended upgrade for all users. The changes include:

Improvements:

• Data insert verification for object encrypted and inserted into PAST
• Persistence layer is now more efficient, requiring shorter filenames
• Log entries now contain multiple pointers, for a fault resistent DAG
• Removed reliance on Javamail parsing, now use an ePOST-native MIME parser

Bug fixes:

• Fixed bug #41, with the persistence size calculation being off
• Bug #39 is fixed, fixing the 'Empty Trash' button
• Fixed #22, where Scribe children would not notice their parents' death
• Fixed bug #38, where folder names created with XML metacharacters would become broken

ePOST 2.4.1 Released.

ePOST version 2.4.1 was officially released today in stable form. It includes a number of improvements and bug fixes, and is a recommended upgrade for all users. The changes include:

Improvements:

• Removed NAT warning box on each boot
• Automatic node resignation on network partition
• Added natural support for default SMTP server

Bug fixes:

• Fixed Scribe bug which delayed message receipt and broke inter-ring routing

ePOST 2.4 Released.

ePOST version 2.4 was officially released today in stable form. It includes a large number of improvements and bug fixes, and is a recommended upgrade for all users. A highlight of the changes include:

Improvements:

• Significantly reduced memory requirements
• Beta support for Java 1.5 VMs
• Many transport layer improvements include reduced overhead and better death detection
• Added support for exponential backoff retries in the transport layer
• DHT lookups are now more robust to comatose nodes

Bug fixes:

• Fixed aggregation bug which rarely led to a stack overflow
• Fixed logging bug which would occasionally lock the VM
• Fixed log upload bug on Windows
• Fixed bug which prevented the node resigning the network when a log was not found
• Fixed XML deserialization bug with setting final fields
• Fixed Mail.app bug with occasionally lost attachments

ePOST 2.2.1 Released.

ePOST version 2.2.1, was officially released today in stable form. It is mainly a bug fix release, and includes improvements for:

• Speeding up of NAT detection by performing IP queries in parallel
• A bugfix in the transport layer where the proximity() call returned erroneous results
• Another bugfix in the transport layer where routes were occasionally not verified before being used
• Yet another bugfix in the transport layer where datagrams were very rarely dropped if the UDP buffer became full
• A bugfix for the IMAP server where the message size was incorrectly reported in a BODYSTRUCTURE fetch call
• Added automatic precaching of message headers and bodies as soon as the are received by the node
• Fixed a bug in the persistence layer which would repeatedly attempt to synchronized expanded directories

ePOST 2.1.2 Released.

ePOST 2.1.2 was released today, which is yet another minor point release. In this version, the improvements include

• Improvements to the routing layer to quickly detect and route around faulty neighbors
• A bugfix for the email service, clearing up a bug which caused email duplication when other network nodes were hanging
• A bugfix for the local visualization service which caused extra CPU burning when the window was closed
• An improvement to the Selector interface which should get rid of instances where the Selector hogs the CPU when no events are scheduled

ePOST officially supports OS X

With the release of ePOST 2.3, we have added Mac OS X to the list of supported platforms. Before this release, a bug in the OS X JVM's interaction with the OS X kernel was known to occasionally cause kernel panics. However, using the hint from Azureus project, we are able to prevent this from happening.

ePOST 2.1 Released.

The most recent ePOST code, version 2.1, was officially released today in stable form. It can be downloaded from the Download section. A few of the major changes from the 2.0 versions:

• A completely-rewritten transport layer, with support for source routes
• Support for ePOST nodes behind NAT boxes
• New visualization features, including a local status window
• Numerous bug fixes, including better CPU usage and Selector behavior
• Support for extremely large folders (> 10000 messages) via better snapshots

ePOST 2.1.1 Released.

ePOST 2.1.1 was released, which is a minor point release. This release includes support for message prioritization between applications. Therefore, applications like PAST and Scribe now have priority over verbose applications such as Glacier. Additionally, this release fixes a bug in which required libraries were not included in the default installation.

ePOST 2.1.3 Released.

ePOST 2.1.3 was released today, which fixes two minor bugs with ePOST:

• A bug which occured when using the SMTP server with Windows, and would cause an extra '\r' to be printed in header lines
• A node death detection bug which would not update observers when a node handle was marked dead

ePOST-users Mailing List Set Up

To help facilitate the dicussion and use of ePOST, we have set up a mailing list of the users of ePOST. If interested, you can sign up on the Contact Page.

Thu, 13 Jan 2005

New ePOST site live.

Today, we launched the newly redesigned and much more informative new ePOST website. Many thanks to Dan Sandler who, unknowingly, provided most of the new style (I hope you don't mind, Dan). The new site launch also coinsides with the new version of ePOST, version 2.0, which was launched last week.

With this version of the site, we've added new features including a Contact and Feedback page, better Documentation, and an up-to-the minute System Status page.

ePOST 2.0 Released.

The most recent ePOST code, version 2.0, was officially released today in stable form. It can be downloaded from the Download section. A few of the major changes from the 1.0 versions:

• Better security for IMAP, POP3, and SMTP servers with CRAM-MD5 support
• Automatic code updating
• Automatic log collection and deletion
• Better resilience in case of JVM hangs - hangs are detected and the JVM restarted automatically
• General UI improvements, including a status control window

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