Re: IMAP + fetchmail + procmail
On Mon, Jun 03, 2002 at 09:38:37PM -0400, Jason Bleazard wrote:
> I've found a lot of good documentation about IMAP, fetchmail and
> procmail individually. However, I'm trying to figure out how to make
> them all work together and I'm afraid I don't quite get it. I've tried
> some Google searches and found myself overwhelmed with information that
> didn't really apply to my situation. If anyone could point me toward
> some good documents or offer a few pointers, I'd sure appreciate it.
> I'm just looking to download from three POP3 accounts and serve e-mail
> to two users (myself and my wife), so I don't need a large capacity
> setup.
>
> Read further if you want to know more details of what I want to do.
>
> We have a (modest :-) home network of four machines scattered around the
> house, running a mix of Debian and Windows. I'm building a fifth to act
> as a central file server, and I'd like to put our e-mail on there as
> well.
>
> Our ISP has their e-mail set up with POP access for downloading and an
> SMTP server for sending. Pretty standard stuff. Their setup guide just
> tells us to configure these servers directly in Outlook or Netscape.
> This works okay, but it pretty well ties my e-mail to one machine, mail
> program and/or operating system on our network.
>
> I figure the best way to centrailize our mail is to set up an IMAP
> server. I know that I need fetchmail to bring our mail in from our
> ISP. I also know that I can use procmail to filter incoming messages to
> different folders (for example, I want debian-user messages to go to
> their own directory). It's a DSL connection that's active pretty much
> all the time, so I don't need to worry about triggering it manually. I
> can just let it grab stuff every so often.
>
> Unfortunately, I can't grasp how to get everything working together.
> Does fetchmail automagically filter things through procmail once the
> latter is set up? How do I get procmail to play nice with IMAP
> folders? Does it matter if I use mbox or maildir format?
AFAIK the standard way to pass mail to procmail is via .forward which is
heeded by local MDA. A line such as |/usr/local/bin/procmail should do
the trick. I don't know a lot about IMAP servers, but it depends on how
they implement their mail storage. At a guess, mbox format might play
nice with procmail.
>
> Also, I'm not sure how to set up exim, or if there's another alternative
> that would be better suited for what I want to do. I've noticed that if
> I get any mail from cron it sits in my local mailbox on each machine, so
> I get the new mail notice when I log in to that machine. It would be
> nice if all the machines on the network could send stuff to my central
> IMAP inbox.
Should be possible via a .forward or similar
>
> Do I need to really worry about remote mail routing, or should I just
> tell my mail client to connect directly to my ISP's SMTP server (the way
> it is now)? With only two users, I can't really think of a reason I'd
> need to send mail internally other than messages from cron, and they
> don't use my mail client anyway.
>
> Our ISP gives us up to 6 e-mail accounts. One thing I'd like to do is
> set up one or more of them so that any mail sent to that address will be
> forwarded to both of us. My thinking is to create a dummy user account
> that receives the e-mail from the special address, then that account's
> procmail settings forward the message to both of our regular accounts.
> I want two copies, not just a single IMAP inbox that we both access
> (then we get questions like "did you read that? Can I delete it?")
I'd be doing something pretty close to that, fetchmail to a "special"
user account, then .forward from that account to the other two "normal"
accounts.
>
> The reason I want to use procmail is I'm hoping once I get that set up,
> I can then do some intelligent filtering on messages. Some things
> should go to me, some things to my wife, and some things to both of us.
The trick will be to avoid duplication of effort. Hopefully you can
find a way to do some "common" filtering that applies to all your mail,
and then apply specific filtering to your mail individually. Others
might have some ideas on this...
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