Re: smail

[Brian Mays <bem5r@virginia.edu>]

On Wed, 19 Nov 1997, Gerald Livingston wrote:

> If I can find a sucker -- errr -- nice person to host for me, would
> it be possible for me to set up a MX on someone's system such as
> force-1.xxx.com and have mail addressed to gvl@force-1.xxx.com be
> held on the host system until it is somehow recognized that I am
> online so SMTP delivery to smail can occur?

remco@Cal011205.student.utwente.nl (Remco Blaakmeer) writes:

> One solution that pops up on me is to get a pop3 account on the host
> and use fetchmail. But you can most likely do that with your isp,
> too. I think you should not let people send e-mail directly to your
> box if you are not on a permanent connection with a computer
> switched on 24/7. fetchmail can run as a daemon and check mail at
> regular intervals. I think this would be an interesting option in
> this case. I am sure the 'go online' script can also start fetchmail
> for different users [1] and the 'go offline' script can kill all
> fetchmail daemons running.

> [1] you probably want to use something like
> ( sleep 10 ; su username -c 'fetchmail --daemon 900 --all --syslog' ) &
> in the script, assuming the script runs as root. Note that I have
> not tested this. I have absolutely no experience with Linux on
> dialup lines, but I do use fetchmail.

Laptop users using a PCMCIA network card can add the following to
their /etc/pcmcia/network.opts script to have their system
automatically poll for mail while the computer is connected to the
network via the PCMCIA card:

    # Extra stuff to do after setting up the interface
    start_fn () {
	fetchmail --fetchmailrc /etc/fetchmailrc --syslog --daemon 300;
	return; }
    # Extra stuff to do before shutting down the interface
    stop_fn () {
	fetchmail --quit;
	return; }

Point-to-point protocol (PPP) users (whether or not they use a PCMCIA
modem) can place

    fetchmail --fetchmailrc /etc/fetchmailrc --syslog --daemon 300;

in the /etc/ppp/ip-up script and 

    fetchmail --quit;

in the /etc/ppp/ip-down to achieve the same effect.

Place all of the fetchmail polling instructions (see the fetchmail(1)
man page for more details) for all of your users with POP or IMAP
accounts in /etc/fetchmailrc.  Since it contains passwords, make sure
that this file is not world readable, that is use `chmod 600
/etc/fetchmailrc' to change its permisions.

Brian


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