Hello Debian friends, I'd like to invite you to talk about 'how to do your e-mail' in the following scenario. This scenario is farly common (i think) but there is no howto recepie to do it.
scenario: You have: - Debian server (mine is called gardian) able to connect to the internet: - Mail user agent on your client, that understands POP3 and SMTP (do you know one that doesn't?) - There is no permanent link to the Internet (Using a modem, thus in most cases Dynamic IP's) - All users got their own POP3 account (from your ISP or yahoo, probably more options) You want: - You want all users to be able to do e-mail as if they are on-line all the time What needs to be done: (also the part requiring some more work/thinking) The following things can happen: 1. someone on the local network sends e-mail to a user on the local net 2. someone on the local network sends e-mail to an internet account 3. someone checks their e-mail The only way to get this working at all is to handle all mail on your own server. thisone is always there. I'm thinking of running POP3 on the local server, and telling the clients to poll that account. This way your client can 'get' mail for you regardless of the state of your internet connection. We need a way of getting the mail out of your pop3 box, located somewhere on the internet. I've been experimenting on getting Fetchmail to collect my mail on Yahoo.com. Works ok for me. Fetchmail polls my mailbox and adds all new messages to my mailbox located on the server located on my own network. This needs to be done automagicaly when one goes on-line and while on-line on a set interval. Last but not least, it needs to get mail for all users on the local network. (I'll spare you the 'man fetchmail', this can all be done by fetchmail, and the ip_up/down scripts) Next part is a bit more difficult, sending mail. The general idea is that all mail that has to be sent goes to your own SMTP server (Exim in Debian). and youre done on the client part. Exim on the other hand gets to do all the hard work like figuring out what to do with this e-mail. Is it for some local user? send it now. If not, try sending it yourself. If you are on-line, contact the host the mail has to go to and deliver it using smtp. If not, hold the mail and send it later. I hear some of you saying: use the smpt of your provider or yahoo's. My comment: loads of mail services only offer pop3 and loads of isp's don't allow a return address that differs from your account (to deal with spam mostly). Also, have you noticed the "Do you yahoo? get free email at www.yahoo.com" line on the bottom of my mail? I don't want it there. So to prevent all this shit i think it's simpler if you do the sending part yourself. One thing that needs to be done is to rewrite the return address ([EMAIL PROTECTED] isn't valid on the internet, only on my local network) to the address of your pop3 box on the net ([EMAIL PROTECTED] must be changed to [EMAIL PROTECTED]) so that if someone replies to one of my mails he/she will be sending it to yahoo. I had this working but i had a major downside. If i wrote a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and the admin (also me) replied, he was sending his reply to [EMAIL PROTECTED] too, while it *should* go straight back to [EMAIL PROTECTED] At current i'm focussing on fetchmail, exim and a pop3 server. Perhaps there is something to say for dumping the pop3 server in favour of imap. I'd like to see your ideas / flames / insights Yours, Nico de Haer _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com