[gentoo-user] modest mail server for home network

[gentoo-user] modest mail server for home network

[Robert Persson]

I want to set up a very modest home mail server that will collect emails from 
other pop3 servers and make them available to 2 or 3 users using 1 or more 
different clients on 2 or 3 computers. I have become very confused by the 
various howtos. Even the gentoo ones, which on other subjects are usually 
very good, in this case assume an awful lot of arcane knowledge and also say 
preposterous things, such as that xyz server is easy to set up when it quite 
plainly isn't.

I have spent way to much time trying to get courier running only to find that 
(a) it doesn't work and (b) it doesn't seem to be able to fetch mail from an 
external server. I then installed fetchmail, but can't find any howtos on 
installing it as a service, or any clear explanation of how it plays 
alongside courier or any other imap server.

The absolute #1 consideration is that the system must be easy to set up and 
easy to move to another machine when the time comes. 

smtp is not important at the moment because the isp smtp service usually 
works.

Any advice very much appreciated.

Robert
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Robert Persson

Conspiracy Bears:
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Re: [gentoo-user] modest mail server for home network

[Mickey Mullin]

On 3/7/06, Robert Persson <ireneshusband@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I want to set up a very modest home mail server that will collect emails from
> other pop3 servers and make them available to 2 or 3 users using 1 or more
> different clients on 2 or 3 computers.
> [snip]
> I have spent way to much time trying to get courier running only to find that
> (a) it doesn't work and (b) it doesn't seem to be able to fetch mail from an
> external server. I then installed fetchmail, but can't find any howtos on
> installing it as a service, or any clear explanation of how it plays
> alongside courier or any other imap server.

>From "man fetchmail":
"The --daemon <interval> or -d <interval> option runs fetchmail in
daemon mode. You must specify a numeric argument which is a polling
interval in seconds."

Two things that may help searching for that sort of thing in the
future: 1) "services" as you know them on Windows are referred to as
"daemons" on Linux/UNIX and 2) if you are in man or less, "/" (forward
slash) begins a search, and then "n" repeats the search (after typing
it and hitting enter).

> The absolute #1 consideration is that the system must be easy to set up and
> easy to move to another machine when the time comes.
>
> smtp is not important at the moment because the isp smtp service usually
> works.

Unfortunately, what you describe is not a simple or common setup, so
"easy to set up" may be a difficult goal to accomplish. Also,
fetchmail expects an SMTP service to which it can deliver the mail it
receives.

It seems to me that the minimum you need are: an SMTP server, a POP3
server, and fetchmail. You could probably get by the simplest by
creating system actual users on the Gentoo mailserver box for each of
the people in your scenario and setting up fetchmailconfs in each
user's home directory. Then use the most basic SMTP and POP3 servers
you can find (ssmtp may even work). Ironically, I've never set up such
a simple configuration, so I can't guide you much further than that.

Mickey

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Re: [gentoo-user] modest mail server for home network

[gerrit]

On Tue, Mar 07, 2006 at 11:03:32AM -0800, Robert Persson wrote:
> I want to set up a very modest home mail server that will collect emails from 
> other pop3 servers and make them available to 2 or 3 users using 1 or more 
> different clients on 2 or 3 computers. I have become very confused by the 
> various howtos. Even the gentoo ones, which on other subjects are usually 
> very good, in this case assume an awful lot of arcane knowledge and also say 
> preposterous things, such as that xyz server is easy to set up when it quite 
> plainly isn't.
> 
> I have spent way to much time trying to get courier running only to find that 
> (a) it doesn't work and (b) it doesn't seem to be able to fetch mail from an 
> external server. I then installed fetchmail, but can't find any howtos on 
> installing it as a service, or any clear explanation of how it plays 
> alongside courier or any other imap server.
> 
> The absolute #1 consideration is that the system must be easy to set up and 
> easy to move to another machine when the time comes. 
> 
> smtp is not important at the moment because the isp smtp service usually 
> works.

You should consider using getmail with cron instead of fetchmail. It writes
directly to maildir folders so you could probably do without a smtp server. To
make those maildirs available over pop3 and imap you could use the fairly
lightweight dovecot imap server.

-- 
gerrit
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Re: [gentoo-user] modest mail server for home network

[Alexander Skwar]

Mickey Mullin wrote:

> Unfortunately, what you describe is not a simple or common setup, so
> "easy to set up" may be a difficult goal to accomplish. Also,
> fetchmail expects an SMTP service to which it can deliver the mail it
> receives.

fetchmail will, by default, try to deliver mails to a SMTP
server running on 127.0.0.1. But with the "mda" flag, it can
be easily made to deliver mails using the "mail delivery agent".
procmail is a very well known mda. There are others.

So, fetchmail doesn't need to have a SMTP server.


Alexander Skwar
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