My local lan mail readers ( Express and Thunderbird ) can get mail messages ok, but external mail readers look like they are looking for new messages but return nothing ( and no errors ) when accessing my server.

The mail.log has the following;
Nov 13 18:20:05 ns1 in.qpopper[17292]: (v4.0.5) POP login by user "dannyr" at (CPE-61-9-138-171.vic.bigpond.net.au) 61.9.138.171 [pop_log.c:244]

I am using a dynalink modem and have directed ports 80,21,25,53,7,25,22,110,143 to the mail server. I could not find any other ports that might hold back the get mail.

I have googled this until I am googled out. I can find no documentation that might help, I have tried the debian irc.org and no-one answeres this question, ( they are usually excellent!)

I am using Debian Sarge

Any help will certainly be appreciated, thank you.

Which pop3 server software are you using on the system? In addition, is that pop3 server configured to look in the right places for email on the system?

Thank you for replying,

I _was_ running courier, but have now removed everything and re-installed postfix and dovecote - to at least say that I can get email operating with Maildir's <g>

It is doing the same thing and I have now traced in-mail going to /var/mail/username...

I have posted my dilemma if you care to review it in this form.

Thanks again for replying.

You should be able to simply point dovecot to /var/mail/username and allow it to read the email there. There are a number of different options within the dovecot configuration file for this and for moving the mail over to the users home directory.