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Knowledge base

PMTA knowledge base›Procedure§ 2.1

Installing on Windows

Installing on Microsoft Windows
The same order, different details

Installation on Windows is done with an MSI installer run from a command prompt with administrator rights. After that come the same mandatory things as on Linux: a license file and a verified configuration.

Two Windows specifics. The license is placed in license.dat in the installation directory and saved in ASCII, not Unicode. Spool, accounting and log files are excluded from antivirus scanning and from indexing services — otherwise they lock the engine’s files.

The main trap is saving the license in Unicode. The manual explicitly requires ASCII: a key saved in Unicode looks right in an editor, but in the file it is a different set of bytes.
What the Hub does. We have no Windows nodes; the recipe is useful as a reference. The only peculiarity worth remembering is that the license file must be in ASCII.
Recommended values

What is where on Windows:

What Where
license license.dat in the installation directory, in ASCII
configuration config.dat in the installation directory
start “Services” or net start pmta
antivirus and indexing exclusions spool, accounting, logs
The installation order and the requirements for the license, configuration and antivirus come from the manual (§ 2.1). The table is ours.
Example configuration
# from an administrator command prompt
net start pmta
The command from the manual; the “Services” snap-in does the same.
yellow — — directive names, blue — blocks. They are highlighted the same way in the text of the card.
Compatibility
PowerMTA 6.0
described in the manual of this version · platform: any
The vendor does not state the first version for every directive — there is no note here. The name also appears in the 5.0 edition of the manual.
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Related entries

2 relations

Does not work without

License fileThe file this procedure is about. § 2.1

Can be replaced by

Installing on LinuxA related procedure: they share some of the steps. § 2.1

How to check on the node
Check that the service is running:
sc query pmta
RUNNING — the service came up; if not, look for the cause in pmta-startuperr.log in the logs subdirectory.
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What else to read

3 articles

◇The activation key is a prerequisite for installation, not a step after itWithout an activation key from SparkPost support the engine neither installs nor runs, and the license tier sets the outbound connection ceiling: on Standard everything above 200 is ignored.◇Cloud restrictionsClouds restrict outbound mail on port 25 until you ask them to lift the limit, and mailbox providers treat their address ranges with suspicion.◇How to turn a sending plan into hardwareTwo constants for sizing any node: about 2 KB of memory per queued recipient and spool space proportional to the total size of the messages.

In the Hub
Cost of a mistake
safe: a wrong value breaks nothing
Scenarios
Prepare a node for sending