su question

[Gérard BIGOT]

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 5:42 AM, Linda <haniganwork at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Derek Broughton wrote:
>> Gérard BIGOT wrote:
>>
>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 5:08 PM, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Linda wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> I have several timeshare employees that I would like to have share the
>>>>> same email account but not the same login. I thought I had a solution
>>>>> figured out by moving the thunderbird-profile to a directory they could
>>>>> all access. However thunderbird ignores umask and on closing sets the
>>>>> inbox as user rw no group permissions.
>>>>>
>>>> I'd say you're going the wrong way.  Set up an IMAP server (dovecot's
>>>> simple).  Create a user with no login (essentially, the shell is set
>>>> as /bin/false), and deliver its email to the IMAP server
>>>> (usually /var/mail/$USER/ or /home/$USER/Maildir/).  Have the users set
>>>> up any email client at all to point to the server's IMAP port,logging in
>>>> with the shared username/password.
>>>>
>>> That's the correct way to do it. It's the most stable way, also.
>>>
>>
>> I believe so.  I'll admit, I've simplified the instructions for setting up
>> an IMAP server, but not by much - it really is pretty simple.
>>
> When I think of IMAP servers I think of web mail which drives me crazy,
> but since everyone suggests it as a stable solution I've spent all night
> reading about setting it up and it does look like it is what I am after.
> I must admit I am a little confused about what all I need to set up.  I
> understand step one is to setup fetchmail. This one is no big deal I
> made my users work with pine until a few years ago and used fetchmail,
> just happened to keep a copy of the fetchmail files.  When I did this it
> looks like procmail placed the mail in /spool/mail I take it postfix
> would be what serves this function? Then dovecot allows the user to view
> and manipulate mail without moving it to the users machine or profile.
> Then the end user will connect with thunderbird but they can all work
> with the same mail and see what each other has done. Do I have all the
> necessary parts?
>                                Thanks
>                                 Linda
>

You can look at it like this (at least, I do ) :

It's a three headed beast.

The head you know the best is the mail server (dovecot). it talks to
thunderbird (or whatever) and present mail to him. It doesn't do any
mail transfer to other mail servers. it uses POP3 or IMAP4. In your
case forget pop3, imap4 is highly recommended.

The second head handles the mail transfer part. it uses SMTP to do it.
The mail are pushed from the  sender to the mail server of the
recipient.

the third one (fetchmail) is itself something strange. From one side
it looks like a mail client (in order to be able to fetch the mails
form the server), and on the other it looks like a mail server, in
order to drop the mail in your mail box. You should not need this, in
normal situation.

G.