[ILUG] Raw newbie wants to do it all

[Alan Sobey]

On Tue, May 30, 2000 at 10:45:24PM +0100, Conor Daly wrote:
> Here's a nasty!
> 
> Having set up my home server, I want to set up email.  Of course, I want
> to get it all at once!  This is my current setup
> 
> Email Accounts
> 
> user.one at oceanfree.net
> user.two at oceanfree.net
> user.three at oceanfree.net
> user.four at hotmail.com
> 
> Users may be running Windows or Linux and have logins that don't match
> the email addresses.  Currently, the email clients connect directly to
> the oceanfree server to send and retrieve (POP) mail.
> 
> I want to use fetchmail on the local server (RH6.2) to retrieve email
> for each user account on the public server.  Then I want to forward it
> to an IMAP server on the same local server.  I want to alias the listed
> email accounts as local accounts and still retrieve from the pop server
> with fetchmail.
> 
> For outgoing, I want to point clients to the smtp server on my local
> server and have that forward to the external server.  I have to supply
> passwords to the external server for smtp.
> 
> I think i've been clear enough here!!-)
> 
> Any pointers to advice, books, programs etc would be most appreciated
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Conor Daly

It looks like you've done the hard work i.e. deciding what programs
are necessary to do what. :) I used the same setup at home and it
worked out fine.  In the meantime I've switched to using mutt instead
though, but that wouldn't suit everyone.  Couple of comments:

I'd recommend using procmail to sort things automatically into
sub-folders on the server.

There's no need to "forward" to an IMAP server.  Once the IMAP server
is running it'll just pick up the local mail; there's nothing more to do.

Netscape, as an IMAP client, won't let you access multiple accounts
from the same server.  One way around this is to use aliased IP
addresses for the server so netscape sees different servers.  On a
home network this'd be fine.  (Mozilla doesn't have this restriction)

Be sure to set up a different local account for each pop3 mailbox
you're receiving mail from (maybe I'm just stating the obvious).

Seeing as you'll be going through an extra server, extra headers will
show up on your e-mails (incoming and outgoing) with the address of
your mail server.  If you wish to strip these, use the "set invisible"
option in fetchmail for incoming mail (man fetchmail for details) and
for outgoing mail I edited my /etc/sendmail/sendmail.cf file (but
couldn't for the life of me remember now what I did).  It's quite
likely that this would be easier using other MTAs.

Overall I'd say just start off and mail the list for support if you
get stuck.

hth,
Alan.