fetchmail dovecot postfix and filtering

Chris_C · 03-06-2009, 08:26 AM

I have taken the plunge and stored my mail archive on a nslu2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSLU2) running an imap server (dovecot) on Debian (5.0) after the kind suggestions by people here...

I have even managed to get the imap server to hand smtp mail to procmail which then uses my isp as a relay so I even get sent mail stored on imap (rather handy!)

All is good

(after lots of cursing! there are just *so* many ways to set these things up!)

However the one thing I'm stuck on implementing filtering

I have this kind of structure (mbox files)

Code:

mail
|-- Drafts
|-- HelenOS
|-- Sent
|-- Trash
|-- archive
|   |-- 2004
|   |-- 2005
|   |-- 2006
|   |-- 2007
|   `-- 2008
|-- archive-sent
|   |-- 2004
|   |-- 2005
|   |-- 2006
|   |-- 2007
|   `-- 2008
|-- gce
|-- growveg
|-- inbox
|-- scottishpower
|-- sf.net
|-- ubuntu
|-- virgin
`-- wii

where mail is in home/username

so for example if something is coming from bugs.launchpad.net it wants to go in ~/mail/ubuntu
(I'll be good for filter syntax just once I have somewhere to put it and a working config round it!)

my problem is that I have seen so many different tutorials for filtering I just dont know which way to turn! some say sendmail some fetchmail some are using sql (i'm not) some suggest procmail etc etc!
the list in inexhaustible seemingly...

here's some config excerpts that might clue you into how I lashed things together!

.fetchmailrc

Code:

set no bouncemail
set logfile fetchmail.log
set idfile fetchmail_uidls.log
poll pop.myisp.com with proto pop3 service 110 uidl username
"the bit before the @" with password "yeah like I'm telling" is "chris" here fetchall

added to postfix main.cf

Code:

home_mailbox = mail/inbox
relayhost = smtp.myisp.com

I don't remember adding anything to dovecot's config

I do realise that this is probably the simplest case and the simplest set up but with the 1001 different ways to go, finding info from tutorials can be uphill!

oh nearly forgot theres a /etc/init.d/fetchmail yet I have to run a user cron job for fetchmail is this normal?

Oh and if you got all the way down here thanks for reading!

billymayday · 03-07-2009, 01:01 AM

There seems to be a little confusion here (not helped by the crossover in what some packages do). Postfix is an MTA (,ail trandfer agent) that can also act as an MDA (mail delivery agent) which is what procmail is.

Now I don't use procmail, because I use maildrop (another MDA), but that allows me to tell postfix to use maildrop as my MDA (see mailbox_command parameter for main.cf or http://www.postfix.org/MAILDROP_README.html). Once that is done, I have a text file (~/.mailfilter) tha thas pattern matching and deliver rules that allow me to direct mail with various senders, subjects or whatever I choose to match to a specific mail folder.

I'm sure you could do the same with procmail, but as I said, I don't use it.

HTH

Edit - try a line like

Code:

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

in your users crontab. This runs fetchmail as a daemon, checking for mail every 600 seconds.