I am trying to configure an IT Ticketing System using OTRS on a Fedora 14 box. OTRS works great, but I don't want to have to manage a bunch of users for local log in to the system. It will automatically create tickets from emails sent by users, which is the way I would prefer to go. We have an email address set up for internal helpdesk requests and can use it for the system, but our Corporate Policies prevent me from turning on IMAP or POP access on our Exchange Server.

Considering this, I would like to set up the Linux box to receive email sent to helpdesk@localhost.local and allow OTRS to POP the messages from there. I've been running through the hoops trying to get Postfix working on the server, but feel like I am using a boulder to kill a fly. Is there some way that I can make the Fedora box accept incoming mail connections for this one address without setting up a complete mail server?

Thanks for any help you can give.

Your system probably already has sendmail installed, which is a lighter weight mail application that is capable of sending and receiving. It's syntax is a little bit weird and you need to be careful with it. The man pages and some of the available how-to documents will provide a good starting point to decide if this is how you want to go. Out of the box, a default Postfix system may be fairly close to your needs, being on an internal system only and configured for a particular host at a particular domain.

One thing that wasn't completely clear about your situation is whether or not you need a POP or IMAP server in addition to an SMTP server. Postfix and Sendmail are both SMTP servers and will receive messages, deliver them to a mailbox or maildir, and handle sending mail to an upstream domain. If you want users to be able to retrieve mail using a client such as Outlook or Thunderbird, then you will need a POP / Imap server like Dovecot our Courier. I am not familiar with OTRS, but my suspicion is that you would want your SMTP server to either deliver messages to it via file or pipe or some other form of mechanism and for this, you shouldn't need a POP / IMAP server. You can set your SMTP server to use your primary mail handler as its relay host and any messages generated on your OTRS server will then be forwarded to users via your existing mail handler.