Pls help with Centos + postfix + dovecot....

maceee · 11-13-2008, 02:34 PM

I am years administrator to MS servers but TOTALLY newbie to linux.

I want a little help plsss..

I have an external windows mails server and use to work with groups to get mails.

What i want to do is to setup CentOs with postfix+dovecot.
So far so good, i have setup both postfix+dovecot and have create users and groups in order to manage my internal network and users will use as pop and smtp my Centos.

But how could i retrieve mails from windows mail server first to my Centos and then to users?

Can anyone pls help?

Thank you

billymayday · 11-13-2008, 02:39 PM

How many users are we talking about?

Edit - I take it you mean Exchange Server?

maceee · 11-13-2008, 04:55 PM

We talk about just 5 users
Windows server is not Exchange
What i want to do is to make linux server to download mails from windows one..and then internally to share mails to it's user..

is it possible?

thank you

billymayday · 11-13-2008, 06:38 PM

To be honest, with 5 users, I'd set up Outlook or similar, connect to the Windows server, set up an imap account within Outlook on the linux box and drag and drop the messages/folders across.

Depending how messages are deliverd to the Windows machine, you should be able to use a program called fetchmail in linux to gather mail from either pop or imap mailboxes. We need more info on your setup though.

maceee · 11-14-2008, 02:47 AM

hank you for your prompt reply.

Currently i have a windows mail server where from i download 5 accounts for my 5 users.
They have approximately 200 messages per day.

Cause every user has more than 1 account to the pc, it happens different users to download same message.
So in order to reduce traffic i want to download all messages to my linux server and then to distribute these internall to my office so that i reduce traffic.

I have setup postfix + dovecot to linux server so that it can works like an internally mail server (private id) but i haven't still figure out how will i download messages from windows server to this machine and then to distribute messages to users.

Thank you

billymayday · 11-14-2008, 02:57 AM

Hoe do they download messages, and what type of server is running on the Windows box. If you are using POP or IMAP, see my previous comment on fewtchmail. Otherwise, a bit of detail please.

What does this mean?

Quote:

Cause every user has more than 1 account to the pc, it happens different users to download same message.

maceee · 11-14-2008, 05:31 AM

it is pop3/smtp windows 2003 server

thank you

billymayday · 11-14-2008, 05:33 AM

Fetchmail will help here.

Edit - there's no point sending me an email if you don't enable emails in you profile. I only reply through LQ.

maceee · 11-14-2008, 05:50 AM

ok..sorry..so how could i implement this with fetchmail?

Should i uninstall postfix//dovecot?
thank you

maceee · 11-14-2008, 11:16 AM

anyone that can help plsss??

thank you

billymayday · 11-14-2008, 01:42 PM

No, I'd leave them in place - fetchmail will deliver to postfix.

Install fetchmail and read its man page.

maceee · 11-14-2008, 01:51 PM

thanks for your reply.

i have installed fetchmail as you told me.

Firstly i saw that i have to create .fetchmailrc.

I did one and placed it to /home/user
Can i place different .fetchmailrc files to differens home/user/ locations.

And after i succedd to download messages with fetchmail how i will place these to it's ones respective accounts in order to download these locally?

thank you

billymayday · 11-14-2008, 02:27 PM

Assuming you have a user "mac", and you windows server is "windows.example.com", create a .fetchmailrc in /home/mac along the lines of

Code:

poll windows.example.com
        proto pop3                                # or imap if that's what it should be
        user "mac@windows.example.com"            # whatever the correct mail user on the Windows machine is
        pass "abracadabra"                        # the mail password on the Windows machine
        is mac here                               # the user on the Linux machine

This will collect mail for mac@windows.example.com from the mail server windows.example.com and pass the message on to postfix to be delivered to user mac. You can then connect to your Linux box via dovecot to retrieve the message.

I add an entry to my crontab

Code:

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

That starts fetchmail in daemon mode (-d) and polls the accounts in .fetchmailrc every 600 seconds.

Now, I have all my accounts in one .fetchmailrc, and because fetchmail complains if you run it as root, they run from my account. However, the only machine that runs fetchmail is a home server, so there aren't any password privacy issues.

I would assume that you would want to run an instance of fetchmail for each user, but I'm not 100% sure on that one.

maceee · 11-14-2008, 02:47 PM

thank you for reply..

i have done everything you said ..my only question now is if every user can have his own fetchmail file...
otherwise how could we deliver with one fetchmailk file each message to it's recpective account?

billymayday · 11-14-2008, 03:02 PM

As I said, I think you want .fetchmailrc for each user with the relevant user details as per the example above, and run fetchmail as a daemon for each user (using the crontab method above is one way).

I did a quick test, and this should work fine. You will need the users to enter their password into the .fetchmailrc somehow.

AN alternative would be to change their passwords on the Windows server to something you know, and add multiple entries to your .fetchmail, something like:

Code:

poll windows.example.com
        proto pop3
        user "mac@windows.example.com"
        pass "abracadabra"
        is mac here

poll windows.example.com
        proto pop3
        user "intosh@windows.example.com"
        pass "opensesame"
        is intosh here

and just run one daemon under your user.

That's basically what I do.