Re: Setting up Email on A Linux Box Using Alpine
On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 12:02 PM, Lisi <lisi.reisz@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday 16 August 2011 16:40:26 RiverWind wrote:
>> I would sincerely appreciate all the input I can get regarding
>> setting up email on my debian system using alpine. At present,
>> alpine is behaving very strangely, and it would require quite a
>> lengthy email to this list in order to demonstrate the problems.
>
> None-the-less, it is difficult to help you without more information. Though
> we do have some brilliant mind-readers on this list!
Alpine is a better licensed rebuild of the old wu-imapd provided
"pine" client, which was pretty good but had some long-standing
stupidities. (The incompatibility of handling of the "mail"
subdirectory between pine and the associated IMAP server was a
long-standing issue, but no one sane uses wu-imapd anymore: they
mostly use dovecot to handle IMAP in my experience.)
Can we safely assume that you are using an IMAP server to go with this?
>> The fellow who built the system for me did his best to get email
>> working, but he was ultimately unable, and hence gave it up as a
>> bad job. I know nothing about setting up email on my system, as I
>> am a novice linux user who has of late had very little time to work
>> on things.
>
> Setting up email on Linux I do quite often. Setting up Alpine I have never
> done!
Which SMTP server are you using? I've recently had the opportunity to
compare a few on Debian, and if you insisted on qmail, you've
inherited an unsupportable mess. The exim and postfix SMTP servers
work well, and both can cooperate well with procmail and the dovecot
IMAP server.
>> It has been a very busy summer, and I have only been on
>> line once every week or two. I now have more down time to devote to
>> learning linux and tieing up loose ends and setting up the system
>> that I want to wind up with.
>
> Welcome to Debian. The best distro out there!
And setting up your email to work correctly is a great project to
learn some fundamentals, and have access to a lot of expertise.
>> I wish to thank any and all altruistic parties who are disposed to
>> help me out.
>
> I am _disposed_ to help you out, though in my case you do not have to ascribe
> it to altruism. I owe this list big-time. But having no experience at all
> of Alpine, I am not in a position to help. I am sure however, that there are
> many on the list who do use/have used Alpine and will help. I am interested
> that you equate setting up Alpine with getting email working. They seem to
> me to be different things.
I'd first suggest testing another email client just to make sure it's
the client, not the service giving you trouble. Providing IMAP support
is a basic feature to allow other clients to work well, and I highly
recommend it.
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