Mail forwarding server
 

I would like to set up a mail forwarding server that is flexible to handle also larger amounts of users.

I.e. source server does POP3 or IMAP4, destination server is standard SMTP MIME

user1@source.org --> forwarded --> user1@destination.org
user2@source.org --> forwarded --> user 2@destination.org
....
This should be flexible to also work for several hundred users and should work with as little manual intervention as possible.

I assume I have to use a combination of fetchmail and Exim or Postfix, but couldn't find any real hints on how to set this up.

Does anyone know about guidelines or HowTos for this or can point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance!
Pepe

Not sure if this is helping,

If you use a distribution like Redhat Fedora Core 1 or 2, sendmail and pop etc it is all on the distribution and ready to be ticked off (and installed). Even squirell web mail will work then (which is webmail ala hotmail)

Use webmin (google: webmin) to setup the mail server. it makes it easy.

If the users are on a local area network, you simply limit the IP addresses that can use sendmail to stop spammers using the server. If these users are dial up people using other ISPs it is harder since they might receive random IP addresses. If you want an open relay (no configuration whatsoever) it is easy to set up using sendmail and webmin, but spammers would love you, and the rest of the world hate you. But you can try to install AUTH using http://www.simpaticus.com/linux/howt...UTH-HOWTO.html or http://www.joreybump.com/code/howto/smtpauth.html . These will make users provide passwords when using pop etc also when sending mail. But some setup in each users Outlook express is required then (they have to tick off some options).

Hope it helped a bit..

Cheers :Pengy:

Thanks for your suggestions. Webmin is really a great tool!

However I, as a newbie, want to start a bit more complicated:

Well, I don't even know if this is possible with standard software, at all, or if this would need an application specifically written for this.

- 500 user mailboxes with messages should be forwarded automatically to the corresponding 500 mailboxes on another e-mail server.
- the existing mailservers do not actively push or pull messages from or to the other server. Message flow is only in one direction.
- If a Linux server is used to actively pull messages from the source mailbox and automatically forward the message to the destination mailbox, it shall not store any messages or copies.

- I would like to avoid setting up a (third) user account and mailbox (this time) on the Linux mail forwarding server for each of these 500 users. I would like to achieve the message pull and forward with just a single account on Linux.
- To make this flexible and managable, I guess the user information (source mailbox, password, destination mailbox) would have to be done via a database or at least one ASCII file.

Anybody any ideas if this can be done? Any hints how?

Thanks in advance

Pepe

you can edit your /etc/mail/virtusertable (sendmail install) and say:

joe@joescoffee.com joe@joescoffeehouse.com

any mail sent to joe@joescoffee.com will be forwarded to joe@joescoffeehouse.com


hope this helps!

Hey, that is exactly the type of functionality I am looking for! Thanks!

Now my only problem is that the mails are not coming in automatically, but have to be actively pulled from another server. Can this be done via sendmail, too, or do I need fetchmail for this?

I.e. the messages are actively pulled from a POP3/IMAP mailbox and via sendmail automatically forwarded to a mailbox on another server?

Thanks in advance!!!

:-)

Pepe

Same Thing
 

I am looking to do something similar, except I have a large number of email aliases ( say I make an alias for amazon.com, calling it "joe-amazon@mydomain.org", and then in the aliases file, I map that address to it gets delivered to "joe@mydomain.org". Now say I give this alias out to someone, and I want email from them to the amazon.com alias to be forwarded to my cell phone address ( say, "124567890@att.mobile.com".

Is there a way to set this up? To recap, email from x to y gets forwarded to z.

In the end I used a standard SUSE distribution with FETCHMAIL and POSTFIX. I used WEBMIN to configure it.
I always wanted to use PHP to make a sort of self service page where every user enters his account and forwarding details if he wants to have a forwarding, but never found the time to actually do it.

:-)