Welcome to POPFile v1.1.0

POPFile is an email classification tool with a Naive Bayes classifier, POP3, SMTP, NNTP proxies and IMAP filter and a web interface. It runs on most platforms and with most email clients.

This is an important release for several reasons: it is the first to use a SQLite 3.x database, it is the first to offer a Mac OS X installer in addition to the usual cross-platform and Windows installer versions, and it is the first version released since the project moved to its new server.

WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE v1.0.1

1. Bug fixes

POPFile now recognizes short TLDs (Top Level Domains) correctly.

POPFile now handles quoted-printable encoded text in multiple lines correctly.

If a message without a SUBJECT line is received POPFile no longer inserts an empty SUBJECT line.

Fixed the bug that sometimes resulted in POPFile concatenating headers into a single line instead of appending them.

POPFile now supports lowercase 'user', 'auth' commands.

The configuration file (popfile.cfg) is saved more safely.

2. POPFile improvements

POPFile now uses the SQLite 3.x database format by default instead of the older SQLite 2.x database format. In addition to reducing the size of the database (a database using the new 3.x format is about one third the size of the equivalent 2.x database) this change means that it is now easier to use another SQL database such as MySQL if you prefer.

If POPFile detects an old SQLite 2.x database when it starts up then it will automatically make a backup copy of the database and convert it to the new format. This conversion may take several minutes, or even more than half an hour if the database is very large.

POPFile now automatically reconnects to the MySQL server when it loses the connection to the server.

The global timeout can now be set to more than 5 minutes.

An error message is now returned to the email client if POPFile finds it is unable to make the necessary SSL connection to the mail server because of a missing SSL support file.

The number of 'uninitialized value' warnings output by POPFile when using an empty corpus has been reduced.

If the mail server does not respond, POPFile now closes the connection.

A new parameter 'pidcheck_interval' is added to set the interval to check the 'popfile.pid' file. If you set this parameter to '0', POPFile will no longer check the pid file.

For Japanese users the MeCab parser has been updated to v0.97.

The NNTP proxy now supports HEAD/BODY commands (thanks to bkeener).

3. Windows version improvements

The installer now handles any necessary database upgrades before it offers to start POPFile. This makes it easier for the installer to monitor the progress of these upgrades. Some database upgrades can take half an hour (or even longer) if the database is huge and this meant the previous installers sometimes had to guess when a database upgrade had finished.

The installer has been updated to display the new SQLite 2.x to 3.x conversion messages.

The popfile-service.exe program no longer exits when the user who started the service logs out.

On some systems when POPFile's system tray icon was used it was possible for POPFile to lock up or freeze if the cursor was moved over the icon while POPFile was checking or downloading mail. For this release the system tray icon code has been re-written to reduce the chance that POPFile will lock up or freeze when the system tray icon is used.

4. UI improvements

The UI's CONFIGURATION page no longer allows the user to set the UI port and POP3 listen port to the same value.

5. Other changes

There is now an official Mac OS X installer for POPFile. It runs on Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) or later.

For more information about the Mac OS X installer, please see:

  http://getpopfile.org/docs/howtos:macosx

WHERE TO DOWNLOAD

  http://getpopfile.org/download/

GETTING STARTED WITH POPFILE

An introduction to installing and using POPFile can be found in the QuickStart guide:

http://getpopfile.org/docs/QuickStart

SSL SUPPORT IN WINDOWS

SSL Support is offered as one of the optional components by the installer. If the SSL Support option is selected the installer will download the necessary files during installation.

If SSL support is not selected when installing (or upgrading) POPFile or if the installer was unable to download all of the SSL files then POPFile's “Add/Remove Programs” entry can be used to add SSL support to an existing installation.

I AM USING THE CROSS PLATFORM VERSION

POPFile requires a number of Perl modules that are available from CPAN. You will need:

Date::Parse
HTML::Template
HTML::Tagset
DBD::SQLite (or DBD::SQLite2)
DBI
TimeDate

You can install all the required POPFile modules by getting the Bundle::POPFile bundle from CPAN.

Please refer to the installation instructions on the POPFile wiki:

http://getpopfile.org/docs/HowTos:CrossPlatformInstall

Japanese users may need to install some extra programs and Perl modules, depending upon which Nihongo parser (wakachi-gaki program) they wish to use. For more information about how to install them, see the POPFile wiki:

http://getpopfile.org/docs/JP:HowTos:CrossPlatformInstall

CROSS PLATFORM VERSION KNOWN ISSUES

Users of SSL on non-Windows platforms should NOT use IO::Socket::SSL v0.97 or v0.99. They are known to be incompatible with POPFile; v1.14 is the most recent release of IO::Socket::SSL that works correctly.

WINDOWS KNOWN ISSUES

1. THE TRAYICON ON WINDOWS.

In earlier releases of POPFile if you attempted to view the trayicon's tooltip or hover your cursor over it while checking or downloading mail POPFile might freeze on some systems. The exact cause is still unknown but it may be related to some video drivers.

For this release a new approach to creating the system tray icon has been used. Initial testing suggests that this new code is much more robust and that POPFile will no longer freeze as often as it did before.

However it is possible that on some systems the new trayicon may still cause some problems. For this release we suggest users of the IMAP module disable the trayicon since a freeze may go unnoticed more easily than when using a mail client to make POP3 connections.

2. ON WINDOWS I WANT TO CHECK MULTIPLE EMAIL ACCOUNTS SIMULTANEOUSLY.

Because the time taken to start a new process on Windows is long under Perl there is an optimization for Windows that is present by default: when a new connection is made between your email program and POPFile, POPFile handles it in the 'parent' process. This means the connect happens fast and mail starts downloading very quickly, but it means that you can only download messages from one server at a time (up to 6 other connections will be queued up and dealt with in the order they arrive) and the UI is unavailable while downloading email.

You can turn this behavior off (and get simultaneous UI/email access and as many email connections as you like) on the Configuration panel in the UI by making sure that “Allow concurrent POP3 connections:” is Yes, or by specifying –set pop3_force_fork=1 on the command line.

The default behaviour (no concurrent POP3 connections) can cause email clients to time out if several accounts are being checked (because POPFile only handles one account at a time it can take a while to process all of the accounts).

If SSL support is being used then the default setting (no concurrent POP3 connections) _MUST_ be used otherwise POPFile crashes.

v1.0.0 and v1.0.1 RELEASE NOTES

If you are upgrading from pre-v1.0.0 please read the v1.0.0 and v1.0.1 release notes for much more information:

http://getpopfile.org/docs/ReleaseNotes:1.0.0 http://getpopfile.org/docs/ReleaseNotes:1.0.1

DONATIONS

Thank you to everyone who has clicked the Donate! button and donated their hard earned cash to me in support of POPFile. Thank you also to the people who have contributed their time through patches, feature requests, bug reports, user support and translations.

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=213876

THANKS

Big thanks to all who've contributed to POPFile, especially naoki iimura for his work on making POPFile work with SQLite 3.x databases.

The POPFile Core Team (Brian, Joseph, Manni and Naoki)