Re: Newbie comments & queries
On Sat, Dec 08, 2001 at 12:07:52AM +0200, Ian Balchin wrote:
| I am running mutt (what does that stand for?) as suggested by Brenda.
Mutt is a "mutt" -- a mix of other mailers. Really it is a separate
code base, but it borrows much of its interface (keybindings at least)
from elm and features and ideas from other mailers.
| I have run eximconfig because this is what is going to SMTP my mail to my
| ISP. From the example.conf I have deduced that the part after the @ in my
| email address is what is wanted and entered that for the answer to the first
| question. Now, when I want to send an email from address1@imaginet.co.za
| (the address that this machine is going to pop from) to
| address2@imaginet.co.za it cannot be delivered because (presumeably)
| 'unknown local part "address2" in domain "imaginet.co.za" ' is not on this
| machine. This will prevent me from sending any mail to anyone @imaginet.
| Where have I gone wrong? HELP
First pick option "(2)", smarthost.
The "visible" mail name of your system should be the same as "echo
$HOST". Don't worry about it too much, just don't pick the name of
your ISP (or some other real server).
There are no other visible mail names for your system.
You don't want to relay any mail.
No systems use you as a smarthost.
Don't bother trying to use the RBL. It won't work for your setup.
(RTFM (google for exim, it is explained in the docs) if you want to
know the details)
When you get to the question
Which machine will act as the smarthost and handle outgoing mail?
this is where you enter in the name of your ISP's SMTP server.
("imail.imaginet.co.za" according to what you wrote farther down)
Your username should be given as the 'postmaster'/'root' alias.
Then you are done.
What you did before was tell exim that "imaginet.co.za" was the name
of your machine. Thus when you tried to send mail to "foo@..." it
wanted to deliver it locally but couldn't find the user 'foo'.
| How do I get the mail written in mutt to be sent? HELP
Get exim to work, then mutt will work. mutt doesn't do SMTP because
it is the responsibility of an MTA, not a MUA. It pipes the message
to 'sendmail' (on your system that is symlinked to exim) or whatever
you specify in mutt's config. If exim doesn't work, then mutt won't
be able to send.
| How do I pop the mail from imaginet? When I use 'G' in mutt it gives the
| message 'POP host is not defined' I see that mutt has an inbuilt pop feature,
First you need to tell mutt which host. Edit ~/.muttrc for that.
Instead I use fetchmail for retrieving the mail.
| but why install wvdial or diald if one is going to use that.
They do different things. wvdial and diald dial the modem, no more no
less. They won't get your mail. Mutt won't dial your modem. The one
tool creates a connection bewteen you and another system (your ISP).
The other tool performs mail-related activities. Mutt doesn't care
whether or not you have a modem, and whether you use PPP, ethernet or
whatever for your network.
| I have been going over the emails and Karsten said that I should install
| fetchmail but fetchmailconf needs to be run from a graphical environment
| according to the Bible, and this I do not have.
Yeah, but the config file (.fetchmailrc) is easy enough to create.
-------
set postmaster <your local username>
set no bouncemail # don't bounce to sender if RFC1894-conformance error
# (bounces to postmaster instead)
# MDA needs recepients as argument ;-)
# (%T is used for the local delivery name)
poll imail.imaginet.co.za protocol pop3
user "<user>" , password "<pass>"
is "<local username>" here
options fetchall , stripcr , mda "/usr/sbin/exim %T"
-------
| I thought that wvdial or diald by running the ppp protocol would be
| doing this, but now it looks to me as if ppp just lets the computer
| talk to my isp and that I need fetchmail to actually get the mail.
exactly!
| Somehow with all this lot there has to be an internal arrangement whereby
| the stored mail is sent and new mail fetched.
There is an internal arrangement, but it is not obvious just by seeing
some program names.
o something creates a TCP/IP network connection
(wvdial or pppd or diald in your case)
o something handles mail delivery (SMTP and local delivery)
(exim in your case)
o something retrieves mail from a server (ie POP or IMAP)
(mutt or fetchmail or something else)
o something allows reading mail and composing new mail
(mutt, but uses editor of your choice for composing)
| I will stick with POP3 rather than switch to IMAP at present although that
| could be a good idea with email at home and the shop.
Do you have a login on the server? My school runs Solaris, so I just
log in to that machine and do all my mail there instead of on my
debian box. If you use fetchmail, it won't give you the IMAP benefit
of server-side folders. mutt has some support for IMAP, but I've
never used it.
| When people have accounts @hotmail.com and the like, is that IMAP
| (Pegasus has it, but do not
hotmail is not IMAP (the last I knew). Go to www.hotmail.com and
you'll see what it is like. You use a web browser to see everything
via html and write your mail in some html forms. Ugh. The upside is
that it is server-based and all clients have a web browser. I prefer
using a *nix server and all clients having ssh readily available.
| know if my ISP has). I have a free email at a local server but
| Pegasus Mail has 'multipop' and collects from all my email addresses
| one after the other.
Heh, "multipop", sounds like a marketing term. You can add extra
stanzas to your fetchmailrc to retrieve from additional servers. You
can also use fetchmail for IMAP and other protocols.
-D
--
"...the word HACK is used as a verb to indicate a massive amount
of nerd-like effort." -Harley Hahn, A Student's Guide to Unix
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