Emma Jane Hogbin said on Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 02:01:02PM -0500:
> Sorry, I didn't explain the problem very well. I can send/receive mail on
> the (debian stable) box. Mail goes into /var/mail/username. But now I need
> to figure out how to:
> (1) let users pick up mail from the box
You need to install a POP3 or IMAP server that reads Unix mbox files from
/var/mail/username.
Or, you let your users log in via ssh and run mutt and/or pine.
> (2) forward mail to another email address (I'm not sure at what point I
> can start using .forward files).
I believe that postfix supports .forward out of the box. Run postconf and
check the value of forward_path. If it says something like
$home/.forward${recipient_delimiter}${extension},$home/.forward you're set.
> I've installed courier-pop (because it was alphabetically first in the list
> that I found). But there doesn't seem to be any configuration to it, nor
> does there seem to be a man page.
Unfortunately for you, courier doesn't read Unix mbox; it only does Maildir.
I'm not sure of a good POP daemon; I use Courier currently.
> I am very good at reading documentation, I'm just not sure which
> documentation I should be reading. :)
It's kind of all spread out. postfix.org has good documentation, but that only
covers delivery, not pickup. :)
Basically, your mail system consists of an MTA (Mail transport agent: sendmail,
postfix, exim) which speaks SMTP and handles server -> server and client ->
server, a MDA (Mail Delivery Agent), which handles getting the mail into the
mailbox (usually included: sendmail uses mail.local, postfix uses local,
procmail is a common replacement for both of the above), and a MUA (Mail User
Agent: think mutt, pine, Outlook, Mozilla Mail). You can think of the POP and
IMAP servers as an extension of the MUA.
When building mail servers by hand, you get to mix and match. The usual
difficulty is making sure that all of the parts can deliver and pick up from
the same mail store (Unix mbox files, Maildir, Cyrus's db mailstore, etc).
Your best bet is to pick some parts that you like, and read their
documentation. :)
M
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