All mail form ISP end up in root’s mailbox.
 

Hi all

The Linux box is running Fedora Core 3 and I’ve got fetchmail working. So fetchmail get the mail from our ISP. We use sendmail on the Linux box to send mail to the ISP. For every mailbox a user was created on the Linux box. Users use Outlook Express to send and receive mail to and from the Linux box. Mail from our LAN end up in the correct mailboxes but mail from outside end up in the mailbox for root.

Does anyone have an Idea how I can fix this? Is the problem with the configuration of sendmail or fetchmail.

History ( Please skip this if the above description was sufficient)
---------------Begin
My Linux knowledge is limited to what I read since 25 July 2005. On 23 July our data link went down. All Internet connections in our country must be supplied by the a single telephone company, they told us that they could not repair the link to our old ISP (who was big on Linux) because the radio equipment that they used for our connection is now to old to get parts and the telephone exchange in our area of the city do not support ASDL or ISDN lines. Our only option was to change to their satellite connection, which was cheaper but was caped and did not support a reverse link. This meant we had to changed to a new ISP and that the new ISP could not forward our mail to our sendmail server as in the passed. O yes and the satellite connection disconnect every 24 hours and change its WAN IP address.

So far I established that we needed fetchmail to get the mail from the drop box at the new ISP to our Linux server and that sendmail could then continue to distribute the mail to our mailboxes. I got fetchmail installed on the server but were stuck with a SMTP connect to localhost failed error. I did found posts on this which help me to look for the SMTP port settings in sendmail. It was set to "Port=smtp,Addr=10.4.1.2, Name=MTA" fetchmail did not accept this port setting (I used webmin) so I went back and changed the pot in send mail to the default of 25 and fetchmail worked fine.

All mail end up in root's mailbox. To stop local machines from sending local mail to the ISP I add a Domain Routing for “.ourdomain.co.za smtp 10.4.1.2:25” in sendmail and add ourdomain.co.za as a hostname to the network card on the Linux box. This did not work so I add “.linux.ourdomain.co.za” in Local Domains for sendmail which did not work either. After I’ve change the hostname on the network card on the Linux box to ourdomain.co.za emails from local PC’s got delivered into their mail boxes and not into root anymore.

The new ISP say they do not use a catch-all but created one mail box and added the 9 email addresses we’ve been using as aliases to this box.
---------- End

SeckmetLitiz

Here are a couple of examples for multi drop mail boxes from the Fetchmail manual

Your problem may not be with fetchmail but perhaps this might help

Hmm does'nt copy and paste well URL here


QUOTE
Here’s what a simple retrieval configuration for a multi-drop mailbox looks like:

poll pop.provider.net:
user maildrop with pass secret1 to golux ’hurkle’=’happy’ snark here

This says that the mailbox of account ‘maildrop’ on the server is a multi-drop box, and that messages in it should be parsed for the server user names ‘golux’, ‘hurkle’, and ‘snark’. It further specifies that ‘golux’ and ‘snark’ have the same name on the client as on the server, but mail for server user ‘hurkle’ should be delivered to client user ‘happy’.

Here’s an example of another kind of multidrop connection:

poll pop.provider.net localdomains loonytoons.org toons.org:
user maildrop with pass secret1 to * here

This also says that the mailbox of account ‘maildrop’ on the server is a multi-drop box. It tells fetchmail that any address in the loonytoons.org or toons.org domains (including subdomain addresses like ‘joe@daffy.loonytoons.org’) should be passed through to the local SMTP listener without modification. Be careful of mail loops if you do this!

Pete

Hi Pete

Thanks for your help. When I read over the above in the manual at first I thought it was if say domain-A receive mail through fetchmail and have a multi drop box for domain-B.

Currently I am working on the dependency issues for fetchmailconf on the Linux box.

I used webmin for setting fetchmail up till now but could not find a way to enter this multi drop data through webmin. I then tried to find fetchmailrc (locate fetchmailrc) but found only /.fetchmailrc and /root/.fetchmailrc which I think is different paths pointing to the same file. The .fetchmailrc file seems to be totally empty to me, so I decided to try configuring fetchmail using fetchmailconf and received a message that the tinker module is not installed. I got the rpm and as soon as I have tinker and fetchmailconf working I will post again.

OK got .fetchmail open with vi (in OpenOffice Writer it looked empty) it is not empty but contain very little info

pop3.domain.co.za
proto pop3
user "username1@domain.co.za"
pass "secretpassword"
is username1

That was all.

Got a real problem with fetchmailconf Issue the following to run it:
/root/fetchmail-6.2.5/fecthmailconf

Text returned on screen:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/root/fetchmail-6.2.5/fetchmailconf", line 9, in ?
from Tkinter import *
ImportError: No module named Tkinter

I went to http://www.python.org/2.4/rpms.html and downloaded from the Binaries for Fedora Core 3:
python2.4-tkinter-2.4-1pydotorg.i386.rpm

Used "rpm -ivv /root/python2.4-tkinter-2.4-1pydotorg.i386.rpm" to install it.
It needed "python2.4-2.4-1pydotorg" so I went back and downloaded:
python2.4-2.4-1pydotorg.i386.rpm

When I run "rpm -ivv /root/python2.4--2.4-1pydotorg.i386.rpm" it run fine so I run "rpm -ivv /root/python2.4-tkinter-2.4-1pydotorg.i386.rpm" and all looked well. But "/root/fetchmail-6.2.5/fecthmailconf" gave same text message. So I restarted and tried "/root/fetchmail-6.2.5/fecthmailconf" again but got the same text message again.

Anyone an idea what this message from fecthmailconf mean?

SeckmetLitiz

To be honest all you really need to do is edit /root/.fetchmailrc on the command line, it's not that difficult

First thing I would do is backup the original
Simple vi example
This will open .fetchmailrc as a text file

To modify the file press the " i " key, that's lower case letter I

You can now manipulate the file as you would in say OpenOffice Writer

When you are happy with your entries, press the escape key "Esc"

You can now write and close the file in one operation
Thats " : " " w " " q "

No changes are made to the file until you :wq so if you want to abort at any time simply "Esc"
Thats " : " " q " " ! "

The file will be closed and no changes made despite what you may have modified on screen, so if you make a complete mess simply "Esc"
And start again


Pete

Thanks again Pete

It is working now.

Must say I am surprised at how little info this file need in it.

At first got a an error

Checking for mail on server(s) with command fetchmail -v -f '/root/.fetchmailrc' ..

fetchmail:/root/.fetchmailrc:2: syntax error at to

.. checking failed!

But found
pass"secretpassword"
change it to
pass "secretpassword"
and all worked well.

Tried all sort of things because I thought it was the way or place
proto pop3
was entered that caused the 2 error.

Is making a donation at www.affero.com the best way to express one’s gratitude for your help or is there a other place you would prefer?

SeckmetLitiz

The fact I help you solve your problem is more than enough satisfaction for me

I neither want or expect any financial gratitude

Glad it worked out for

Regards

Pete