Mail server necessary?
 

Hello all

Our mailserver is hosted elsewhere.
I would like to configure a local computer to fetch mail from our mailserver and filter it if any spam. Then local clients (windows 2000 and linux) can get their own mail from the from the local pc, which is also the squid server.

Would i have to configure a mailserver to suit this purpose? if so, how?
Would i configure the local server's hostname in the pop,smtp settings for the clients mail client
If i have to configure a mail server I would prefer using postfix.

Yes, you will need a POP or IMAP server mail server so your local clients can download the processed mail from it. Postfix is my favorite SMTP server too, but it's only for sending mail.

Some distros come with a configuration tool that will more or less automate the process. Otherwise, Dovecot is pretty easy to set up.

You will then need to download the mail from the remote server, and pass it through your filters. Basically, you'd have a program run regularly from a cron job (something like fetchmail or getmail), which would pipe incoming mail to procmail, which runs the filters and stores it where your outgoing mail server will find it.

If you control the remote mail server, it would probably be easier to tell it to forward mail from your address to your new server, where you'd run an SMTP server to receive it. That would eliminate the need for fetchmail.

The local clients then connect to the new server and download the filtered messages.

Thank you for the quick reply.

Do you have info regarding how to setup my mailserver

i do not know much regarding the configuration


all i know is i have to change the "mydestination" and "myhostname". I have heard of fetchmail but i have no clue of where and how to set it up.

BTW I am running RH9

hy guys,
i have redhat 8.0 with qmail. my favorite mail server is qmail. i think it is faster and more secure than others.
johnnycash, i can advise u qmail. there is a great installation guide including spamassasin and antivirus at www.qmailrocks.org

i use fetchmail to get emails from email server. i added a job for cron to run fetchmail as solnul told.
here is my cron job. it checks emails for every 5 minutes.

*/5 * * * * fetchmail -f /root/getemail

here is my /root/getemail file:

poll mail.domain.com with proto pop3
user "user1name" there with password "user1password" is "user1@local.com" here
user "user2name" there with password "usr2password" is "user2@local.com" here

u must configure local clients' email client software to use your local email server to get emails (only pop3, dont change smtp).

if u have lots of clients and your linux box is also internet gateway for local clients, u may prefer to redirect pop3 recuests which come from local net and go to real email server, to local email server:
#/sbin/iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -s local_net/subnet -d mail.domain.com -p tcp --dport 110 -j REDIRECT --to-port 110

thank you, i will attempt your suggestion and let you know how it works out

thank you again