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Binding the Mail Express Server to a Specific IP Address

Karla Marsh
Mail Express - DEPRECATED

THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE APPLIES TO:

  • Mail Express version 3.0-3.2
(In Mail Express v3.3, the port bindings can be set/modified in the administration interface. Although you can edit the server.xml file as suggested in this article, when you edit the bindings through the interface, Mail Express overwrites any bindings you may have added manually. Also, version 3.3 listens to localhost:8443 by default, not on port 443.)

DISCUSSION

The Mail Express Server is, in essence, a fully functioning Web Server that hosts the Mail Express Server web application. The Mail Express system requires the use of port 443 on the computer running the Mail Express Server. By default the Mail Express Server will attempt to listen on all IP addresses.

This may present difficulties when installing on a computer running other applications that are using port 443, such as EFT Server or the Internet Information Services (IIS) web server. Running the Mail Express Server on a separate computer from these applications will avoid resource contention and simplifies network routing. However, running the Mail Express Server on the same computer as another application that uses port 443 may be unavoidable.

If this is the case, then the Mail Express Server and the competing application(s) must be configured to bind to port 443 on separate IP addresses. The following instructions describe how to configure the Mail Express Server to listen on a specific IP address instead of all IP addresses on the computer. (To specify an IP address in EFT, refer to "Changing a Site's IP Address or Port" in the documentation for your version of EFT. To configure other applications to use a specific IP address, refer to their documentation.)

To configure the Mail Express Server to bind to port 443 on a specific IP Address:

  1. Shut down the Mail Express Server Windows service.
  2. Using a text editor such as Notepad, edit the configuration file “<Mail Express Server Installation Directory>\conf \server.xml”
  3. Locate the SSL Connector definition XML Element by searching for the text port=”443”. The element will be similar to:
  4. Add an “address” attribute by inserting the following line into the “Connector” definition:

Where <IP Address> is the explicit IP address on which to listen on port 443. The resulting Connector definition should resemble the following example:

	<Connector
			address="192.168.1.58"
			port="443"
			protocol="HTTP/1.1"
			connectionTimeout="20000"
			keepAliveTimeout="20000"
			enableLookups="true" 
			disableUploadTimeout="true"
			acceptCount="100"
			maxThreads="200"
			scheme="https"
			secure="true"
			SSLEnabled="true"
			SSLProtocol="all"
			SSLCipherSuite="ALL:!ADH:!SSLv2:!EXPORT40:!EXP:!LOW"
			SSLCertificateFile="${catalina.home}\conf\MailExpress.crt" 
			SSLCertificateKeyFile="${catalina.home}\conf\MailExpress.key"
			SSLPassword="mailexpress"
			SSLVerifyClient="none"
			SSLVerifyDepth="10"/>
  1. Save the changes to the file.
  2. Start the Mail Express Server Windows service.
  3. Verify the Mail Express Server is listening on the specified IP address and port by navigating a web browser to that address and port.

Details
Last Modified: Last Year
Last Modified By: kmarsh
Type: HOWTO
Rated 1 star based on 4 votes.
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