su question

[Derek Broughton]

Linda wrote:

> 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.

If you are fetching from an ISP's mail account, then yes.

> 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? 

It could be - it could be procmail.  Procmail is probably all you need if
you're already familiar with it.  Fetchmail - by default - delivers mail to
localhost:25, that is to a local mail transfer agent (like postfix), but
you can give it the name of a mail delivery agent instead (generally
procmail or maildrop).

> 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?

Yes (strictly: some mail clients insist on downloading everything from the
server, too, but they should at least be exact copies, and the original
always stays on the IMAP server, unless deleted).  fwiw, and I haven't
tried it, I think you can also make the IMAP server read-only to the
clients, so that your users can't delete anything from it.
-- 
derek