I'm new to Linux and have a issue with POP3 and SMTP


What I have done is connect a Windows Network (192.168.0.X) to a SuSE 9,2 Professional linux Box (with two network cards) with the Squid 2.5 proxy running. The SUSE box is then connected to a firewall and ADSL router.
This works well and the windows users can browse the web.

The issue I have is with POP3 and SMTP.

To connect to the web I setup the proxy settings for users of the windows network correctly for the proxy (eg Squid, port 3124). While this works for HTTP it will not work for POP3 and SMTP (I understand that Squid is a HTTP proxy only). I can get people to access POP3 and SMTP if I setup the windows PC to connect directly to the SUSE box (setup the gateway and DNS in windows). I used SUSE 9.2 YAST tool to setup the firewall to allow POP3 and SMTP. While this works I really don't want to use the gateway and DNS settings I would rather be able to use the proxy settings.

Note: We do have a Mailserver that current bypass the proxy and people get their mail from it but several people need to get access to there POp3 and SMTP sources from the outside.


Does anyone have a solution. (be it a all singing a nd dancing Linus proxy (POP3, SMTP, HTTP) or a neat Little trick)

Like you said yourself, Squid is a HTTP proxy.
POP3 and SMTP aren't HTTP protocols. So using squid is impossible.

What is it you want to achieve with the mail setup?

Peter

Basically allow the everybody on our Windows network to have access to our mail server, but allow some user also get mail from POP3 and SMTP accounts. I curently can do that now, using gateway and DNS settings. But have found that this method causes connection issues on the network and therfore want to work around the problem.

you're better off setting up specific forwarding and NAT'ting rules for outbound ports 25 and 110 (with state matching for 'established' connections). Either that, or setup a socks proxy on your linux box...

Does the access to the POP3 and SMTP server need to be userbased or can it be server based?
Because if if ity can be server based you can use IPTables to block all trafic to ports 25 (smtp) and 110(POP3) expect for the boxes that the user need to get to.

Peter

if you want (need) a application-layer proxy capable of dealing with POP and SMTP, for instance, then DeleGate (http://www.delegate.org) might be your choice.