Re: mail server of a sorts
On Tue, 15 Oct 2002 10:56:15 -0400
Kevin Coyner <kevin@rustybear.com> wrote:
>
> Is it possible to do the following, or is there a better way ...
>
> Objective: setup a spare box that downloads mail for me and my family
> from various POP3 servers. DL'd mail gets scanned for spam and then
> is held for eventual retrieval by users.
>
> Proposed Setup
>
> _____________________
> | Box 001 |
> | running |
> | fetchmail |
> | for the Cleaver |
> | family: ward, | (June isn't in to computers)
> | wally & beaver |
> | |
> | mail is then |
> | sent to procmail |
> ---------------------
> |
> |
> v
> --------------------- --------------- -------------
> | procmail recipe |---->| /mail/spam |--->| /dev/null |
> | for spamassassin | | for review | | |
> --------------------- --------------- -------------
> |
> | (good mail)
> v
> ---------------------
> | procmail recipes |
> | to put in |----------------------------
> | /var/mail/user | |
> | folders for ward | |
> | wally & beaver |---- |
> --------------------- | |
> | | |
> | | |
> | | |
> v v v
> ------------------ ------------------- --------------------
> | /var/mail/ward | | /var/mail/wally | | /var/mail/beaver |
> | | | | | |
> ------------------ ------------------- --------------------
>
> So here's where I get lost ......
>
> ------------------ ------------------- --------------------
> | ward is on a | | wally is on a | | beaver is on a |
> | Debian box | | win2k box | | dual boot box |
> ------------------ ------------------- | linux & win2k |
> --------------------
>
> I'm guessing that I'll need to run either a POP3 or IMAP server on Box
> 001 in order for the 3 clients - ward, wally and beaver - to be able
> to retrieve their mail. Is this correct? And if so, could you please
> recommend a good yet lightweight mail client, as Box 001 only has
> about 1 gig of free space (it's an old Sparc with small hard drives).
That's essentially what I'm doing here. I don't have the virus/spam
scanning set up completely yet. I have:
exim
fetchmail
procmail
solid-pop3d
courier-imap
apache
squirrelmail
If you all want access to your mail from any box then IMAP is the way to
go. If all email reading is done on a dedicated machine POP3 is fine.
I've been using POP3 and doing interesting things with the various
clients in different places to make sure the mail I wanted to keep
stayed put. I recently set up IMAP so I could get to my mail from
anywhere and manipulate the local mailboxes directly and I love it. Was
going to use Outlook Express on the winboxen at work to read my home
mail but discovered port 143 is currently blocked (we turn off all ports
that aren't actively used at the firewall) so I just fired up a browser
and got to it with squirrelmail -- I really like the interface.
fetchmail graps the mail from the remote mailboxes on my ISP. It
delivers it to exim. Exim drops the mail straigt to /var/mail/[username]
OR, if the user has a ~/.procmailrc it gets sent through procmail.
I'm using procmail only to sort messages into my various maildir type
folders that are used by courier-imap right now. I'm setting up amavis
plus a virus scanner to scan for viruses because I will be adding
accounts for my mom and brother soon. When virus scanning is working
properly I will add spam filtering in also.
Space requirements really depend more on the users. I don't think any of
the packages I'm using take up serious HD space -- the inbound mail on
the other hand can be huge -- especialy before filtering is complete. If
space is a concern then POP3 is most likely the way to go so that you
KNOW email is removed from your server when read. You migt also want to
set up quotas for your users.
Mail handling for a small set of users can be done by just about any old
machine. You might want to consider buying an old used pentium class
machine and sticking a 10G HD in it -- then dedicating it as a mail
server for the house. Make it headless and you can be done for under
US$200.
Later,
G
--
gvl2 (Gerald)
AirBall the Rolling Basket Case (1969 Standard Beetle)
LifeSaver (1974 Bay Window Bus)
http://www.phorce1.com
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