Mail Server (Fetchmail working)

[David McGlone]

On Friday 26 October 2007 8:50:18 am Derek Broughton wrote:
> David McGlone wrote:
> > On Thursday 25 October 2007 7:08:47 pm Derek Broughton wrote:
> >> David McGlone wrote:
> >> > Ok so far, I *think* I have fetchmail working, it seems to be
> >> > retrieving my mail, but heck I can't find the mail anywhere. When I
> >> > look in /var/mail it says there are messages for dmcglone but when I
> >> > try to read them they disappear like Chris Angel :-)
> >>
> >> What precisely do you have in /var/mail?  Under no circumstances should
> >> you be using mbox files - there's simply no good reason to use them
> >> these days
> >> for anything but an archive.  Set up delivery to Maildir directories.
> >> Then under /var/mail/dmcglone (or whatever) you should see "new", "cur"
> >> and "tmp" directories.  In the "new" one, there'll be one file per
> >> message - until you look at them in a mail program, when they'll get
> >> moved to "cur"
> >
> > In /var/mail there is just one empty text file:dmcglone
> >
> > How would you suggest creating a maildir mailbox?
>
> What are you using for mail delivery?  In postfix, iirc, you just tell it
> to deliver to /var/mail/$USER/, instead of /var/mail/$USER (the slash
> indicating a directory, and therefore Maildir).  I never used procmail, but
> I think maildrop asked in the debconf settings.
>
> > I use webmin by the way, have you tried it?
>
> No.
>
> >> > after I checked mail, I looked in mailbox and indeed there was 1
> >> > message,
> >>
> >> How?
> >
> > I wish I knew, but when I checked /var/mail it said there was mail for
> > dmcglone when I clicked on it the mail disappeared.
>
> Sorry, I know better than to be so terse.

No problem.

> I meant, how did you look in the 
> mailbox?  I presume you mean you opened it with a mail program, but which
> one?  I'm not sure what difference that actually makes, but we can't
> diagnose it if we have no idea what program you're using.

I don't think I can explain it. I am using webmin, and all I have to do is 
click on an icon in webmin to see all of the mailboxes for my system. did you 
know even fetchmail has a mailbox. :-)

Anyway, So far I have managed to get fetchmail working. Here's how I did it:

I took some of the the suggestion of Bruce Marshall (Thank you Bruce) and 
integrated it into my fetchmailrc, take a look:

defaults
        proto pop3
        port 995
        ssl

        mda "/usr/bin/procmail -f %F -d %T

poll pop.att.yahoo.com
        auth password
        user "d.mcglone at att.net" (at = @ I just changed for precaution of 
spam)
        pass "ha ha your not getting" 
        keep

Now that I can fetch mail, all that is basically left to do is configure 
multidrop or forwarding.

And last configure either postfix or sendmail to deliver mail. I am not 
looking to use my own SMTP, since I can use AT&T's but I do need to configure 
local sending too, so for instance I can send messages to david at lappy or 
dmcglone at buddy, etc, etc

So for this I'll probably set up 2 sending accounts 1 SMTP to send messages 
over the net using AT&T and one sendmail account to send messages to other 
users on the LAN locally.

Maybe there's an easier way. What do you think?

But anyway I have to keep in mind that my main goal is to use my server(buddy) 
to get the mail from AT&T and pass it on to the correct user.


-- 
David M.