Qmail, can I use it a email relay? or someitng similar?
 

Hey all,

again i am reading reading reading and getting lost in al of the reading....

I have a SuSE 8.1 box, that has SuSE firewall2 and Squid and SSH on it. I hope I setup squid correctly and the firewall too.

But what I want to do now is have the SuSE box FETCH my POP3 emails from there accounts and send / relay my outgoing SMTP emails from my internal clients (outlook) back to my outside email server. The idea sounds simple enough but I am (as ususal) having trouble finding a place to start. I have POSTFIX installed and now Qmail also. I some thread someplace I read that one could use Qmail as an email relay agent. I just do not want to poke to many holes in my network and firewall. It took me seemingly "forever" to get this far, (well a week at most).

I would love some pointers to get me started in the right direction. I was also wondering if I could use Fetchmail to get my POP# mail, but then how do I sonnect with outlook to my servers email client? Do I have to setup an IMAP or POP3 email server? should I use POSTFIX or QMAIL (please base reply upon the FACT that I am a newbee) I will try both to get the feel....

Thanks Everyone!!!!

Ash

well that's one of the main uses of an MTA like qmail / sendmail / postfix / exim.

for fetching the mail from a pop3 account, you'd want fetchmail (logically enough) that will go get the mail and then pass it to qmail or such to deal with it as if it were actually sent to it.

personally i'd suggest using exim instead of qmail or postfix, as it's so straightforward to configure (as far as MTA's go...) and just make sure it is set to relay from the internal network. configuring either 3 of these MTA's is much mroe straightfortward than sendmail though, so pick the one you want, not just what everyone else tells you to know.

hi ash... You only need one MTA on your system, I suggest you choose one of postfix or qmail (or exim). actually you CAN only run one, only one at a time can listen on port 25, which it does to be an SMTP server. People have "religious wars" about which MTA is best, but really, unless you're running a huge mailserver or have some unusual requirements, any one will do the job. If you don't have any better reason to choose, pick the one with the best documentation and support.

qmail (and any other MTA) can be a "mail relay" - it means they will accept email messages with SMTP, then pass them on to the right server. This feature doesn't relay POP though.

What you can do though, in the situation you've described, is use Fetchmail to get mail from the server it's on now (like an ISP's POP server?) and deliver it to a user's mailbox on your server. Then the clients on your network can collect it whenever they're ready... you run a POP server (or IMAP or webmail) on your server to allow them to do that. When they send mail, they send it to your server with SMTP... which relays it to the rest of the internet. Is that going the way you want?