Home IMAP server

[Jeffrey F. Bloss]

Dotan Cohen wrote:

> > This isn't absolutely necessary. The typical solution for dynamic IP
> > addresses is to use an automatic DDNS redirect service like Yi.org
> > or DynDNS.com. Even with a static IP and your own domain, you might
> > want to consider a free redirect unless you can reconfigure your
> > domain MX to use your home server directly. Something you might not
> > want to do for a number of reasons.
> 
> I'd use the static IP for connecting the laptop to the home machine
> only. Email addressed to me will wind up in myu POP3 box on the
> webserver, and from there I'd pull it down.

Just a generality here, but if you decide to run your own server at
all the closer you can get your home server to a "real" mail server the
better. If you take half measures you're likely to find that it's
unusable or unreliable from some locations. That's just a fact of life
when you're wading around in the world of "anti spam measures" and big
business. :(

Fair warning is all. Things always looks like they should work fine
on paper until you find out some mail server in Podunk thinks it's a
bright idea to silently drop mail with on odd Received: header or
something. You may get a "bare bones" setup to fill your specific needs
with no glitches, you may not. Can't predict the future. ;)

> > Either way there's some other minor considerations that make having
> > a "name" assigned to your home mail server preferable to accessing
> > it by IP. Most of them have to do with incoming mail and SPAM/RBL
> > stuff which may or may not be an issue depending on whether or not
> > your mail server has any public exposure.
> 
> No name will be assigned to my home machine, and as far as those
> sending/receiving mail from me, there will be no difference at all.
> The MX records will still point at the webserver and the mail will
> still come from there.

I wouldn't want my home mail server to be my primary mail server
either, but with a static IP and the ability to use your web hosting
server as a backup MX it's certainly is a viable option. And it would
truly make any issues that come up resolvable by virtue of you being
"the man". ;)

> 
> > > 2) The machine must always be turned on (which it is)
> > > 3) Fetchmail, which would pull the email from the server and
> > > store it. Then the IMAP server (dovecot for example) would make
> > > the mail available to both Kmail running locally, and Kmail on
> > > the laptop.
> >
> > I would *strongly* urge you to include an SMTP server in the
> > configuration. It's possible to have Fetchmail do local mail
> > delivery with the -mda (?) switch, but this raises certain security
> > and functionality issues you might want to research.
> 
> Er, I thought that was the whole idea of Fetchmail! So what you are
> saying is that Fetchmail will get the mail from the server, then and
> SMTP server (name of this program?) will devliver it to the IMAP
> server (dovecat), which will serve to multiple Kmail instances.

Sort of. Fetchmail collects messages and hands them off to your MTA
(Postfix, Exim, sendmail, whatever), The MTA or "SMTP server" routes
mail to a local mail spool of some sort, possibly by way of another
application or two if you want any internal spam/virus processing.
There it sits in the mail spool until your IMAP/POP/Whatever server
goes looking for it at your request. In other words, there's no direct
"hand off" between your SMTP server and your IMAP server, nor should
there be.

Again, fetchmail *can* be configured to insert mail directly into a
local mail spool, or even hand off directly to something like procmail
which does a fine job of that (and is the utility that's most commonly
used to link in your virus/spam processing). But such a setup is
definable as "flaky and crippled" by a lot of people, myself included.
Experience tells us that a little extra work now will prevent headaches
later. It sounds like an awful lot to go through just to do something
as simple as read mail, but it's all worth it when you're sitting in an
air terminal in Alaska "doing business" while the rest of the peeps are
banging their heads against the wall trying to figure out how to get
that 5 meg PDF to the client before the competition at "Joe's Widgets"
does. :)

> 
> > Opinions vary on this of course. I'd suggest some Google time and
> > searches on things like 'fetchmail without SMTP' and 'fetchmail IMAP
> > support'. I think you'll come away with the opinion that it's
> > generally better to have the proper tool for the proper job. ;)
> 
> Yes, lots of time on google has been invested in this!

At some point you're probably going to give up Googling and just do
it. :) The good news is you'll still have KMail configured to suck mail
directly from various servers so if it doesn't work you can burn it
down and rebuild it with little or no serious injury.

> > > 4) I'd continue sending email via SMTP on the server. That means
> > > that sent mail will only be available on the machine that it was
> > > sent from.
> >
> > Here again I would probably want to use the local mail server for
> > outgoing delivery. It keeps things "centralized" and under your
> > control. Configuring most SMTP servers to relay mail through a
> > "smart host" like your domain account's mail server is a snap
> > compared to everything else. And you can still send directly
> > through your domain/Gmail accounts from KMail if you want, using
> > different profiles. KMail does allow multiple send profiles, right?
> > It's been a while....
> 
> I'll look into that, but I'd like to know what it the advantage of
> adding yet _another_ link to the chain. The outgoing mail remains
> simple. Why make it complicated as well?

*shrug*

Why do you want to mess with incoming mail? The same logic you're
following to justify setting up a centralized collection point applies
to outgoing mail. If you want "simple" install XP and Outlook Express
everywhere, and just use the servers you're using now. ;-)

-- 
     _?_      Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
    (o o)         Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
-oOO-(_)--OOo-------------------------------[ Groucho Marx ]--
    grok!              Registered Linux user #402208
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