Re: e-mail, the next level
nico de haer wrote:
...
> You have:
> - Debian server (mine is called gardian) able to connect to the internet:
> - Mail user agent on your client, that understands POP3 and SMTP (do you
> know one that doesn't?)
> - There is no permanent link to the Internet (Using a modem, thus in most
> cases Dynamic IP's)
> - All users got their own POP3 account (from your ISP or yahoo, probably
> more options)
>
> You want:
> - You want all users to be able to do e-mail as if they are on-line all the
> time
getting email: fetchamil & procmail (or something equivalent) should
do the trick. if you're connected for long periods of time it might be
good enough to set fetchamil to check for email with set period (say
every 10 minutes). If the server is mostly disconnected you might want
to run fetchmail everytime the connection goes up or even set cronjob to
connect-fetchmail-disconnect priodically (with a check whether it's
already connected, of course, you don't want to mess you connection if
it's already up)
sending email: exim should work fine (not sure about detials, I use
postfix). you can set the relay host to your ISP smtp host - it should
work OK no matter what return email address you use. If that doesn't
work then you might want to use proper (real) from address just add
reply-to field with address of the account you want to receive replies
(if ISP doesn't allow that, switch ISP:-) - this second solution is not
preferable, of course.
you can also set exim to send email directly. it's not a big deal to
change it so you can try one solution and if it doesn't work the way you
like try another... note that at least one ISP (earthlink) blocks port
25, or at least blocked it and expressed no intention to unblock it, not
sure if they block it today (so that you cannot send email directly). It
is my _former_ ISP.
user access to email: set up IMAP server - lot of email clients
support IMAP (mutt, netscape, ...). that's easiest for users - they can
access their email from anywhere. IMO this is a lot better then having
pop server - lot more flexible. I use uw-imapd-ssl (debian package). You
can also set up the web email client (they still can use their email
client and view the same email from web or using standalone MUA (I
haven't tried any web based IMAP client yet)
the above is basically my setup and I am quite happy with it even
though I still have rooms for improvement (LDAP address book).
erik
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