i92guboj

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Hello,

I have a little question regarding mail daemons and stuff like that.

Some background: I've always preferred the Unix way to do the things. However, for some reason that I don't even know, I have always used graphical mail agents to handle/receive/send my mails (I really can't stand webmail interfaces).

The problem that I have is that each time that I have to migrate to any other program or any other version there are always problems. So, I want to find a centralized solution that will download the mail, store it in a given format (I also look for advises on this), parse it, filter it and distribute it in folders in the mail box and all that stuff. UTF-8 support is needed. I don't know if that's a problem or not.

The idea is to be able to read it from any interface (mutt, kmail, sylpheed) using these as readers only while the mail daemons do the work. This will hopefully allow me to use whatever frontend is better at a given time without screwing up my mail folders and other funny stuff.

I am not asking for concrete instructions (I'll do that when it's time if I need them). I am good at researching myself and I can probably find a way to get something working. Instead, I ask for ideas. I want to know what combos do you, people, use to manage your mail. There's a lot of stuff to choose from to fetch mail, to filter it, and to do many cool things with it before you can read it on mutt or sylpheed.

Please, if you use ((sylpheed || thunderbird || kmail ) || a similar thing) to do everything, don't answer on this thread, because that's not what I am looking for. I am looking more for combos like fetchmail + procmail + something else, or similar things. Leave me a note saying what do you use and why. I accept the usage of any of these MTA's that I named above, but only as frontends.

I also want to know what format do you use for your mailboxes and why. I am particularly interested in knowing if someone around is using some kind of database backend, and how does it interact with regular MTA's like mutt or sylpheed.

Thanks for reading and sharing your ideas, and regards.

ehawk

I would think that mutt would be most flexible and interoperable, owing to its ability to make use of macros.

i92guboj

Thanks for the response. It's much appreciated.

I have contemplated mutt as a frontend to read my mail. However my question was about doing something more elaborated.

I have been reading one more day, googling and seeing what other people do. I think that I could use this:

1. Fetchmail, to get my mail from an external imap4/pop3 server from my provider.
2. Procmail, to filter it and put each thing into a given folder.
3. Exim/Postfix/Sendmail to send mails.
4. Dovecot as my imap server, which will serve all my mail so I can see it from anywhere. I will probably install squirrelmail or something like that in top of it if possible.

I am really confused about much of the options. I think that I can live with dovecot, it's almost working for the most part. However I have really zero idea about what should I be using for the other three things. Any comments are welcome. I am doing lots of reading but this is something I never looked into, and while having so much options is something I like, it's a bit overwhelming for me on this matter.

Thanks for reading.

tredegar

You might find this thread useful: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi....php?p=3140734
I confess I have yet to set up an IMAP server, just too busy with real life, but there's a good discussion in that thread.

i92guboj

Thanks tredegar, I will read that thread. On a first sight they talk about the same thing that I want to do: setting up an IMAP server to centralize all my mail and access it from everywhere. Maybe I can get some ideas from there. I will read it.

billymayday

The imap server is the easy bit. Dovecot will generally work out of the box with no modifications to its config. Can't get easier than that! Needs a bit of work if you put mail somewhere out of the ordinary.

On the procmail front, I've never used it - I use maildrop. I hear maildrop is easier and less problematic. Not from persnal experience though.

i92guboj

So, this maildrop thing would be something like procmail. I will look into it.

I would also like to know if anyone has experiences with any alternative for fetchmail.

This whole mail server thing reminds me a lot of tetris for some reason

Thanks for the feedback.

billymayday

See http://www.courier-mta.org/maildrop/

What's wrong with fetchmail? It's simple and it works. Don't know an alternative I'm afraid.

i92guboj

As an user tool I have nothing against it. However I would like something that can operate in a more daemonish fashion. I started to dig a bit because when I run it as root I receive a warning. The investigations took me to this:

https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/f...er/000128.html

The thread is old, yes. But since the same warning is still there, I assume nothing changed in that regard. Of course I can always run it as a user, but I am looking for alternatives if there are any.

The good thing about all this stuff is that, since I know nothing about any of these tools I don't mind learning another. To me it's all the same right now.

billymayday

Run it as fetchmail -d 600


Puts it in daemon mode to check every 600 seconds.

i92guboj

Yes. I know that it can run in daemon mode. I was just wondering if there are alternatives. As I said, when I daemonize it at startup is gifts me with a warning, telling me that running it as root is not a good idea.

billymayday

I run it from a user's crontab, using

@reboot fetchmail -d 600 > /dev/null 2>&1

You can do this for each user and you won't get the "don't run as root" warning.

i92guboj

Thanks everyone, for the ideas. I forgot about this thread. I finally do what almost everyone does, use fetchmail with crontab.