Re: getmail configuration
Owen Heisler <owenh000@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't want to do anything that is not official supported! :)
>
> But what is fetchmail doing?
>
> And also: can postfix not act as the MDA? I'm not really clear on all
> the M*A stuff, so I looked on Wikipedia for MDA and it says there
> that: "[An MDA] is software that accepts incoming e-mail messages and
> distributes them to recipients' individual mailboxes (if the
> destination account is on the local machine), or forwards to another
> SMTP server (if the destination is on a remote server)."
>
> Okay, so that would be what Postfix does anytime it receives mail.
It doesn't say how it receives the mail. *Usually* an MTA receives mail
through the SMTP protocol listening on port 25, while an MDA receives
the mail on standard input.
> Next:
> "[An MDA] is not necessarily a mail transfer agent (MTA), although
> on many systems the two functions are implemented by the same
> program."
>
> From what I read, postfix does seem to include an MDA...
It certainly can deliver mail. AFAIK exim can also do sorting, but
that's not the primary function.
> Can I not send mail to the Postfix MDA somehow? What I essentially
> want to end up with is for postfix to exist somehow between getmail
> and ~/.Maildir so that only Postfix is writing to ~/.Maildir and any
> spam filtering I set up with Postfix will check the mail retrieved by
> getmail too. And if I change my mail configuration/location, getmail
> configuration doesn't need to be changed.
Do you run your own mailserver?
> Will sendmail (as MDA_external) do want I'm wanting?
This is beyond my knowledge. You will have to dig through the postfix
docs for this, especially the part about the sendmail replacement.
> Also, from a forum
> (http://www.zimbra.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5142): "You don't need
> the MTA path, getmail should forward it via port 25 to zimbra, the
> same way that fetchmail does."
I guess he meant MDA not MTA.
> Is that what fetchmail is doing? Hey, this is it (fetchmail man):
> "As each message is retrieved fetchmail normally delivers it via
> SMTP to port 25 on the machine it is running on (localhost), just as
> though it were being passed in over a normal TCP/IP link. The mail
> will then be delivered locally via your system’s MDA (Mail Delivery
> Agent, usually sendmail(8) but your system may use a different one
> such as smail, mmdf, exim, or qmail). All the delivery-control
> mechanisms (such as .forward files) normally available through your
> system MDA and local delivery agents will therefore work
> automatically."
Hhhm, I tend to believe Charles Cazabon (the writer of getmail) and
D.J. Bernstein (the writer of qmail) and avoid this route. The relevant
quote has already been posted in this thread.
> How can I get getmail to do this? sendmail?
I hope you know postfix provides a replacement sendmail binary for
compatibility.
Regards,
Andrei
--
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)
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