Dovecot versus Postfix

[Jan Sneep]

> All my setups use sendmail or qmail and dovecot. If you need
> help there I
> and I'm sure a million others can help.
>
>
> --
> Cheers
> Res

OK, usually I try to find a document someplace before I bother the list with
specific details so I'm not wasting folks time.

Both the Postfix and Dovecot servers are up and running based on all the
tests I have read about and done. Installed themselves when I loaded the
LAMP server software.

But how do you send mail to either one?

I don't have an Internet domain name for the server as it is strictly for
use on the LAN. I have called the machine "Ubuntu", yes I know terribly
creative, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I am trying to replace
an old version of Microsoft Mail that came with the Windows '95 disk. Using
MS Outlook as the client software on my Win XP machine I can go into
Tools -> Services and click on "Add" and select "Microsoft Mail" from the
choices. All I have to do then on the window that pops up is browse to the
folder on the LAN that holds the mailboxes and I'm done the setup. This
setup automatically reads what mailboxes have been created and adds them to
my Address Book, so I just have to click on a name and click send to have it
go.

Using Webmin I can see under Servers -> Postfix Configuration an Icon for
User Mailboxes which shows me 41 mailboxes, 5 of these are the family users
that I have created through the Gnome System -> Administration -> Users and
Groups, which only shows me the 5 family members and the root user.

[This brings up another question: how do I get rid of users "openexchange",
"open-xchange and "oxadmin", which are left over from my attempt to get Open
Exchange working on the server, spent months on that one, but in the end had
to give up as the documentation just didn't work for Ubuntu and no one on
the Open Exchange forum could help, so now have managed to get eGroupware
working]

Up until I started to play around with the settings for Postfix and Dovecot
there were no messages in anybodies mail box, however I now have 123
messages in my "jan" mailbox. Webmin tells me they are in /var/mail/jan and
when I look at them they are all from Cron Daemon. when I open one of them
it is addressed from root at ubuntu.localdomain (Cron Daemon) addressed to
root at ubuntu.localdomain. With a subject of "Cron <root at ubuntu> cd / &&
run-parts -- report /etc/cron.hourly" and the following message "run-parts:
run-parts: component /etc/cron.hourly/spamrunner is a broken symbolic link"

Of course if I try to address any mail from my Win XP machine to either
jan at ubuntu.localdomain or root at ubuntu.localdomain it fails because of course
my default email account attempts to use my ISP's SMTP server to send the
mail and it is looking for an Internet domain name called ubuntu.localdomain
and DNS can't find that one on the public servers ... :O)

So, How does one actually use the server once it is up and running? and now,
How can I fix the Cron problem?

Any help, emails, documentation or links to web sites would be greatly
appreciated.

Jan