[gentoo-user] Mail systems

[gentoo-user] Mail systems

[Brett I. Holcomb]

I have been running fetchmail->procmail->pine but would like to use  
Opera.  However, Opera doesn't appear to be able to understand the system   
of mailboxes for Pine.  How can I use Opera with fetchmail, procmail and  
pine or do I need to move to something else - like postfix.  If so what is  
recommeded and how is it setup?  Do I still use fetchmail and procmail  
with something like postfix?

Thanks.

-- 
Brett I. Holcomb
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Re: [gentoo-user] Mail systems

[Jean Magnan de Bornier]

Le 09 octobre à 20:49:12 "Brett I. Holcomb" <brettholcomb@bellsouth.net> écrit notamment:

| I have been running fetchmail->procmail->pine but would like to use  
| Opera.  However, Opera doesn't appear to be able to understand the system   
| of mailboxes for Pine. 

Is not pine a mail client, just as opera(mail)? In which case what would
pine's system of mailboxes be?

| How can I use Opera with fetchmail, procmail and pine or do I need to
| move to something else - like postfix.  If so what is recommeded and how
| is it setup?  Do I still use fetchmail and procmail with something like
| postfix?
>
I think you can use any combination of those, but opera can retrieve your
mail (the basic function of fetchmail), split it into separate folders
(the basic function of procmail), and send your mail through a remote smtp
server (postfix would do it also, with more complicated things).
It all depends of what you expect from your mail system; if you manage one
or two personal accounts, opera alone will do fine, but you can also keep
your fetchmail and procmail with their own settings.

If what you aim at is using alternatively pine or opera (or gnus, or mutt,
or thunderbird, etc...), then you need to use an imap-based system, which
can be done with postfix, or by taking advantage of imap capacities of
your remote servers (if they provide it)

hth,
-- 
  Jean Magnan de Bornier             |        Cours Victor Hugo
  e-mots: jean at bornier.net        |        13980 Alleins   France
  T 08 70 39 34 03                   |        P 06 09 17 35 87

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Re: [gentoo-user] Mail systems

[Brett I. Holcomb]

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Thank you.  Opera is a client but it doesn't understand the system of 
mboxes or maildirs that Pine uses - at least not as far as I've been able 
to discover. It can talk to IMAP or POP servers but doesn't seem to have a 
place for procmail to dump the mail to.  With Pine I can tell it to use 
the local mail folders where mail is dumped after it's fetched and 
processed by procmail.

I've liked the fetchmail->procmail setup as I can have procmail process 
the mail in many ways and even though Opera can do much of that I'ld like 
to keep this process.

Thanks.


On Sun, 9 Oct 2005, Jean Magnan 
de Bornier wrote:

> Le 09 octobre à 20:49:12 "Brett I. Holcomb" <brettholcomb@bellsouth.net> écrit notamment:
>
> | I have been running fetchmail->procmail->pine but would like to use
> | Opera.  However, Opera doesn't appear to be able to understand the system
> | of mailboxes for Pine.
>
> Is not pine a mail client, just as opera(mail)? In which case what would
> pine's system of mailboxes be?
>
> | How can I use Opera with fetchmail, procmail and pine or do I need to
> | move to something else - like postfix.  If so what is recommeded and how
> | is it setup?  Do I still use fetchmail and procmail with something like
> | postfix?
>>
> I think you can use any combination of those, but opera can retrieve your
> mail (the basic function of fetchmail), split it into separate folders
> (the basic function of procmail), and send your mail through a remote smtp
> server (postfix would do it also, with more complicated things).
> It all depends of what you expect from your mail system; if you manage one
> or two personal accounts, opera alone will do fine, but you can also keep
> your fetchmail and procmail with their own settings.
>
> If what you aim at is using alternatively pine or opera (or gnus, or mutt,
> or thunderbird, etc...), then you need to use an imap-based system, which
> can be done with postfix, or by taking advantage of imap capacities of
> your remote servers (if they provide it)
>
> hth,
>

-- 

Brett I. Holcomb
brettholcomb@R777bellsouth.net
Registered Linux User #188143
Remove R777 to email

Re: [gentoo-user] Mail systems

[Jean Magnan de Bornier]

Le 09 octobre à 21:28:21 "Brett I. Holcomb" <brettholcomb@bellsouth.net> écrit notamment:

| Thank you.  Opera is a client but it doesn't understand the system of 
| mboxes or maildirs that Pine uses - at least not as far as I've been able 
| to discover. It can talk to IMAP or POP servers but doesn't seem to have a 
| place for procmail to dump the mail to.  With Pine I can tell it to use 
| the local mail folders where mail is dumped after it's fetched and 
| processed by procmail.
>
| I've liked the fetchmail->procmail setup as I can have procmail process 
| the mail in many ways and even though Opera can do much of that I'ld like 
| to keep this process.

OK, sorry, I remember now why I gave up using opera!

What you can do is setting up a mail server, (postfix, exim, qmail) as an
imap server on your machine. Fetchmail keeps its business as before, now
feeding your mail server; you can point opera to your server.

Procmail would not be used in this case, but you can organize folders
within opera... 

Pine would still be able to read mail from your server 

hth,
-- 
  Jean

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Re: [gentoo-user] Mail systems

[Hans-Werner Hilse]

Hi,

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 15:54:12 +0200
Jean Magnan de Bornier <jean@bornier.net> wrote:

> | I've liked the fetchmail->procmail setup as I can have procmail process 
> | the mail in many ways and even though Opera can do much of that I'ld like 
> | to keep this process.
> 
> OK, sorry, I remember now why I gave up using opera!
> 
> What you can do is setting up a mail server, (postfix, exim, qmail) as an
> imap server on your machine. Fetchmail keeps its business as before, now
> feeding your mail server; you can point opera to your server.
> 
> Procmail would not be used in this case, but you can organize folders
> within opera... 

Hm, a couple of things here:

- both Opera and Pine can talk SMTP. So no need for a SMTP Server (MTA)
here (postfix, exim, qmail,...).

- fetchmail can use arbitrary MDAs, so even for delivery no need for a
mail server (the OP probably knows this as he did only mention
fetchmail and procmail).

- Pine and Opera have different backends for local mail file storage.

- Pine and Opera both support IMAP as backend (can't talk for Opera
here, but IMAP using Pine is just amazingly fast).

Consequence (same as above cited but a little bit different explained)
is: using IMAP backend would probably be the way to go. This could be
e.g. Cyrus, UW-Imapd, dovecot, Courier. I have used Cyrus and Dovecot
and can recommend both. Cyrus makes sense for multiple users and for
those who like the Sieve mailfilter (like me).

IMAP servers usually bring their own utility for dropping mails into
the mailstore. One would pipe the mail from procmail into such a
program and configure Pine/Opera/other MUA to use the IMAP backend.

-hwh
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Re: [gentoo-user] Mail systems

[Patrick Börjesson]

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On 05/10/10 17:36, Hans-Werner Hilse wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 15:54:12 +0200
> Jean Magnan de Bornier <jean@bornier.net> wrote:
> 
> > | I've liked the fetchmail->procmail setup as I can have procmail process 
> > | the mail in many ways and even though Opera can do much of that I'ld like 
> > | to keep this process.
> > 
> > OK, sorry, I remember now why I gave up using opera!
> > 
> > What you can do is setting up a mail server, (postfix, exim, qmail) as an
> > imap server on your machine. Fetchmail keeps its business as before, now
> > feeding your mail server; you can point opera to your server.
> > 
> > Procmail would not be used in this case, but you can organize folders
> > within opera... 
> 
> Hm, a couple of things here:
> 
> - both Opera and Pine can talk SMTP. So no need for a SMTP Server (MTA)
> here (postfix, exim, qmail,...).
> 
> - fetchmail can use arbitrary MDAs, so even for delivery no need for a
> mail server (the OP probably knows this as he did only mention
> fetchmail and procmail).
> 
> - Pine and Opera have different backends for local mail file storage.
> 
> - Pine and Opera both support IMAP as backend (can't talk for Opera
> here, but IMAP using Pine is just amazingly fast).
> 
> Consequence (same as above cited but a little bit different explained)
> is: using IMAP backend would probably be the way to go. This could be
> e.g. Cyrus, UW-Imapd, dovecot, Courier. I have used Cyrus and Dovecot
> and can recommend both. Cyrus makes sense for multiple users and for
> those who like the Sieve mailfilter (like me).
> 
> IMAP servers usually bring their own utility for dropping mails into
> the mailstore. One would pipe the mail from procmail into such a
> program and configure Pine/Opera/other MUA to use the IMAP backend.
In case of Courier, you can just make procmail put the mails in a (set
of) local folder(s) under a given directory, then configure Courier to
use that directory as its base to look for your mails.
The folders under the directory has to be named ".folder_name" where
folder_name is (you guessed it) the name of the folder you sort the
mail into. Every dot in the folder-name will expand to a subdirectory
when you are watching the imap-server in your mail-client. 

Here is a little more concrete example of how to lay it out:

=== Procmail ===
Set MAILDIR in your .procmailrc to the base directory of where you want
to put your mails. For me that is $HOME/.maildir (since that's the
default location Courier is set up to look...)
Then change your filters so that they put the mails into subfolders of
MAILDIR. 

<Example>
:0
* ^List-Id.*gentoo-user\.gentoo\.org
.gentoo-user/
</Example>

Note the dot in front of the folder name! Courier expects this layout!

If you want to make the gentoo-user "folder" displayed as a subfolder of
for example a "lists" folder in your mail client, then you rewrite the
last line like so:
.lists.gentoo-user/

If you look at the directory structure under $MAILDIR when you've let
procmail filter some mails, then it'll probably look something like this
(depending on how you filter your mails):
$ ls -a1 $HOME/.maildir
./
../
.inbox
.lists.gentoo-user
.lists.gentoo-dev
.lists.fvwm
[and so on...]

=== Courier-imap ===
You'll have to emerge courier-imap to use Courier's imap server. 
# emerge net-mail/courier-imap

The only thing you'll have to set in courier-imap's config
(/etc/courier-imap/imapd) is where you store your emails, and what IP
adress you want to bind it too.

Set ADDRESS to the IP you want to bind courier-imap to. For example
127.0.0.1 if you only want local email clients to be able to connect.
Then set MAILDIR and MAILDIRPATH to your procmail recipies base
directory (MAILDIR in ~/.procmailrc without the $HOME/ part). 

In my case (/etc/courier-imap/imapd): 
ADDRESS=127.0.0.1
MAILDIR=.maildir
MAILDIRPATH=.maildir

Also, if you want to use ssl for your connections, you'll have to
generate certificates for the imap server:
# cd /etc/courier-imap
# $EDITOR imapd.cnf
(Change the C, ST, L, CN, and email parameters to match your server)

# mkimapdcert

You might have to change which ways that courier will try to
authenticate you if you have any troubles loggin in. Look for
"authmodulelist" in /etc/courier/authlib/authdaemonrc and remove those
modules you don't want/need. I only have "authpam" there myself. 

Then start the courier-imap service:
# /etc/init.d/courier-imapd start
(if you want ssl encrypted connection:)
/etc/init.d/courier-imapd-ssl start

This should be all you have to do to have a working Courier IMAP server
on your system... 
The biggest problem you'll have is probably to migrate your existing
emails from your local setup to the IMAP way. But that's easily done
with any mail client supporting local maildirs and IMAP (Pine should do
it, I think).
If you have any problems, the mailing list is always open ;)

PS. I'm pretty certain I've forgotten to bring something up, but the
documentation on either Gentoo's official site or [1] will probably
help. DS.

[1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~spider/local-mail-0.3.0/local-email.html

-- 
Regards,
  Patrick Börjesson

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Re: [gentoo-user] Mail systems

[Nick Rout]

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 15:54:12 +0200
Jean Magnan de Bornier wrote:

> OK, sorry, I remember now why I gave up using opera!
> 
> What you can do is setting up a mail server, (postfix, exim, qmail) as an
> imap server on your machine. 

You are confused. postfix, exim and qmail are MTA's - they speak smtp.
They do not store mail, they pass it to another smtp server of an LDA 
(local delivery agent).

I think that the appropriate advice is:

Have procmail deliver the mail to an imap mail store appropriate for an
imap server of your choice. Options are cyrus, courier, dovecot and
others. Then you can configure both opera and pine (or any other imap
capable email program) to access the mail via your choice of imap
server.

Your delivery path is:

ISP pop server->fetchmail->procmail->imap store

the path to access the mail is

imap store->imap server->opera
                                                |
                                                ------> pine
                                                |
                                                -----> other imap client 

Pretty well any email client does imap, including thunderbird,
evolution, outlook (and express), mutt, balsa et al.

An imap setup makes it easy to play with email clients until you find
the right one, because everything remains on the server until you delete
it.


PS cyrus is very robust but harder to set up. 




>Fetchmail keeps its business as before, now
> feeding your mail server; you can point opera to your server.
> 
> Procmail would not be used in this case, but you can organize folders
> within opera... 
> 
> Pine would still be able to read mail from your server 
> 
> hth,
> -- 
>   Jean

-- 
Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Mail systems

[Brett I. Holcomb]

Thank you, Nick for the excellent explanation.  I'll save it and look over 
it.  At one time I had some threads on this but I can't find them anymore 
- probably were on the system that crashed <G>.

  On Tue, 11 Oct 2005, Nick 
Rout wrote:

>
> On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 15:54:12 +0200
> Jean Magnan de Bornier wrote:
>
>> OK, sorry, I remember now why I gave up using opera!
>>
>> What you can do is setting up a mail server, (postfix, exim, qmail) as an
>> imap server on your machine.
>
> You are confused. postfix, exim and qmail are MTA's - they speak smtp.
> They do not store mail, they pass it to another smtp server of an LDA
> (local delivery agent).
>
> I think that the appropriate advice is:
>
> Have procmail deliver the mail to an imap mail store appropriate for an
> imap server of your choice. Options are cyrus, courier, dovecot and
> others. Then you can configure both opera and pine (or any other imap
> capable email program) to access the mail via your choice of imap
> server.
>
> Your delivery path is:
>
> ISP pop server->fetchmail->procmail->imap store
>
> the path to access the mail is
>
> imap store->imap server->opera
>                                                |
>                                                ------> pine
>

-- 

Brett I. Holcomb
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Re: [gentoo-user] Mail systems

[Nick Rout]

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 20:05:41 -0400 (EDT)
Brett I. Holcomb wrote:

> Thank you, Nick for the excellent explanation.  I'll save it and look over 
> it.  At one time I had some threads on this but I can't find them anymore 
> - probably were on the system that crashed <G>.

No problems. You should note though that there is a small error that
slightly changes the sense. see below:

> 
>   On Tue, 11 Oct 2005, Nick 
> Rout wrote:
> 
> >
> > You are confused. postfix, exim and qmail are MTA's - they speak smtp.
> > They do not store mail, they pass it to another smtp server 
> >of an LDA

Should be "pass it to another smtp server OR an LDA"  (not "of")

> > (local delivery agent).
> >
-- 
Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Mail systems

[Brett I. Holcomb]

Nick, I take it you use or like cyrus?  Any comments on pros and cons of 
each?


On Tue, 11 Oct 2005, Nick Rout wrote:

>
>                                                |
>                                                -----> other imap client
>
> Pretty well any email client does imap, including thunderbird,
> evolution, outlook (and express), mutt, balsa et al.
>
> An imap setup makes it easy to play with email clients until you find
> the right one, because everything remains on the server until you delete
> it.
>
>
> PS cyrus is very robust but harder to set up.
>
>
>
>
>> Fetchmail keeps its business as before, now
>> feeding your mail server; you can point opera to your server.
>>
>> Procmail would not be used in this case, but you can organize folders
>> within opera...
>>
>> Pine would still be able to read mail from your server
>>
>> hth,
>> --
>>   Jean
>
>

-- 

Brett I. Holcomb
brettholcomb@R777bellsouth.net
Registered Linux User #188143
Remove R777 to email
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