dovecot, kmail & thunderbird

[federico]

On Monday 06 March 2006 20:54, Derek Broughton wrote: 
Derek Broughton escribió:

Hi, this is a rough guide with cut'n'paste from
my own system. 

Beware, I just woke up, and I may miss something.
Double check the package names and paths. :-D

> >
> >     To share mailboxes with kmail & Thunderbird.

It works. I use both.

> > Problem:
> >
> >     I can't figure out how to configure dovecot or kmail and
> >     Thunderbird.  All of my Google searches seem to skip over the
> >     nitty-gritty details.
>

>
> You may perhaps be missing the step between Fetchmail and Dovecot - you
> need either an MTA (exim, postfix, or my preference masqmail) or an MDA

I use postfix. If you don't have it installed, install it.
If you have it installed and you are not aware of how it
is configured, do: "sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow postfix" and
tell debconf to configure it for local delivery. That will do
If you don't have a fixed ip and a domain.

Now install/configure dovecot-imap: 

sudo apt-get install dovecot-imap
 
Dovecot will not work just as installed, you must
open "/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf" and find this:

# Protocols we want to be serving:
#  imap imaps pop3 pop3s
protocols = imap

and put whatever protocol you would 
like it to handle. I just use imap and I guess that will
do for you, too.

Do sudo invoke-rc.d dovecot restart

Now you have a working imap system but you need to get
your mail into the server. Enter fetchmail:

sudo apt-get install fetchmail
( if it was not installed )

Then create or edit if it exists : /etc/fetchmailrc

Here goes a sample:
#----------------------------------------------------------
#Every ten minutes check mail 
set daemon 600     

#Give  the  name of the last-resort mail recipient
set postmaster root

#Do   error  logging  through  syslog
set syslog

#Direct error  mail  to  postmaster rather than sender
set no bouncemail

#Here comes the retrieval instructions:

#
#username at server.name
#
poll server.name with proto pop3
        user "username" pass "password" is "art" here
	options keep;

poll pop.gmail.com with proto POP3
    user 'art.alexion at gmail.com' there 
	with password 'artspassword' 
	is art here
        options keep ssl sslcertck sslcertpath /usr/share/ssl-cert/

#-----------------------------------------------------------

Permissions should be:

-rw-------  1 fetchmail root 749 2005-12-21 23:26 /etc/fetchmailrc

or it will refuse to run.

Note that there is a "options keep" part there;
while you test it, this will prevent the messages 
from being deleted from the server. You should 
delete it later. I got some badly misconfigured postfix
to send my downloaded messages into oblivion once, 
so now it serves me well during setup. 

Now do:
sudo invoke-rc.d fetchmail restart

This tells fetchmail to check mail in username at server.name 
using the specified password every 10 minutes.
The user "here" is the same user you will be using in the
account in the MUA and it is - I guess - your local user account
in your machine.

do:
tail -f /var/log/syslog
in a console to see the thingie logging as it 
downloads mail and troubleshoot.

man fetchmailrc is quite comprehensive.

For a complete guide on fetching mail from gmail see:
http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/1673/
It is long but you only need to read the fetchmail part.

The MUA configuration should be straightforward ( mmm, spelling? ),
the issue being sending mail. If your SMTP ( outgoing ) server accepts
authenticated connections, you are fine. But if it uses pop-before-smtp,
you will have trouble sending mail because you may not have  started a 
pop session with the server when attempting delivery. Most servers this
days use some kind of auth.

I use postfix to send mail directly from my machine, but that is another 
story.

Best regards,

f
-- 
Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue...