E-MailRelay Windows

Command-line options

There are some differences in the command-line options when running the E-MailRelay server on Windows. These include:

The --syslog option refers to the Windows Event Viewer's Application log.
The --no-daemon option is used to disable the icon in the system tray.
The --hidden option hides all windows and suppresses message boxes (requires --no-deamon).
The --peer-lookup option can be used to add extra information to envelope files for local clients.

Setup program

Installing E-MailRelay on Windows should be straightforward if you have the setup program emailrelay-setup.exe and its associated payload data file.

Run emailrelay-setup.exe as an administrator if you are going to be installing into sensitive directories like Program Files. If you don't want to run it as an administrator then you will have to rename to (eg.) emailrelay-gui.exe to avoid triggering the UAC mechanism.

The setup GUI will take you through the installation options and then install the run-time files into your chosen locations.

Manual installation

In summary, the manual installation process for Windows for when you do not have the self-extracting setup program, is as follows:

Create a new program directory c:\Program Files\emailrelay
Copy the packaged files into Program Files\emailrelay
Create a new spool directory c:\windows\system32\spool\emailrelay
Create a new text file, eg. c:\emailrelay.auth, to contain account details
Add your account details to emailrelay.auth with a line like client login myaccount mypassword
Drag emailrelay.exe onto the desktop to create a shortcut for the server.
Add --as-server --verbose to the server shortcut properties in the target box.
Drag again to create a shortcut for the forwarding client.
Add --as-client myisp.net:smtp --hidden --client-auth c:\emailrelay.auth to the client shortcut.

Move shortcuts to Startup folders as necessary.

Running as a service

If you are installing manually you can set up E-MailRelay as a service so that it starts up automatically at boot-time. You must first have a one-line batch file called emailrelay-start.bat in the main E-MailRelay directory containing the full E-MailRelay server command-line. Then just run emailrelay-service --install to install the service.

When the E-MailRelay server is run in this way the --no-daemon and --hidden options are added automatically to whatever is in the emailrelay-start batch file so that there is no user interface. (The --no-daemon option changes the interface from using the system-tray to using a normal window, and the --hidden option suppresses the window and any message boxes.)

Note that the batch file and the main E-MailRelay executable must be in the same directory; the service wrapper reads the batch file in order to assemble the correct command-line for running the E-MailRelay server, so it needs to know where to find it.

If you need to run multiple E-MailRelay services then pass a unique service name and display name on the emailrelay-service --install <name> <display-name> command-line.

The service name you give is used to derive the name of the <name>-start.bat batch file that contains the E-MailRelay server's command-line options, so you will need to create that first.

For example:

copy emailrelay-start.bat emailrelay-client-start.bat
edit emailrelay-client-start.bat
emailrelay-service --install emailrelay-client "E-MailRelay Client"
copy emailrelay-start.bat emailrelay-server-start.bat
edit emailrelay-server-start.bat
emailrelay-service --install emailrelay-server "E-MailRelay Server"

Diagnostics

E-MailRelay normally writes errors and warnings into the Windows Event Log, which you can view by running eventvwr.exe or going to ControlPanel->SystemAndSecurity->AdministrativeTools->EventViewer; from there look under Windows Logs and Application.

You can increase the verbosity of the logging by adding the --verbose option to the E-MailRelay command-line, typically by editing the emailrelay-start.bat batch script.

Telnet

If you want to test E-MailRelay using telnet (as described elsewhere) then you might need to enable the Windows telnet client using ControlPanel->ProgramsAndFeatures->TurnWindowsFeaturesOnAndOff.

Building from source

E-MailRelay can be compiled using various versions of Microsoft Visual Studio C++ (MSVC) or MinGW.

A Visual Studio solution for MSVC 2012 is provided in the src directory to build the main E-MailRelay executable, although it does not include a project for the Qt-based installation/configuration GUI.

For a complete build that includes the E-MailRelay GUI use MinGW, following the instructions in src/mingw-common.mak and doc/developer.txt.