Multiple pop3 accounts with Pine?

KungFuHamster · 11-03-2003, 02:48 AM

I've been wracking my brain trying to figure this one out: Is it possible to use Pine with more than one pop3 account? And if not, are there any command line email programs that do?

yapp · 11-03-2003, 07:02 AM

I would recommend setting up an IMAP server, and download all your POP3 e-mail with fetchmail.

fetchmail is able to download mail, and forward it (for example, to your postfix/sendmail server). Postfix could drop the message in your ~/Maildir/ with procmail or maildrop. (both have a filtering language to sort the mail, and add spam checks / use spamassassin). An IMAP server, for example courier-imap, is able to retreive all messages from your ~/Maildir/.

And there are a lot of IMAP clients

including web based onces

(ie. you could have webmail at your own machine)

this is a bit advanced, but worth all the effort if you want something better

KungFuHamster · 11-03-2003, 11:22 AM

Know of a good place where I can find some documentation on doing this?

yapp · 11-04-2003, 02:41 AM

I've got a lot of help from this site: http://www.firstpr.com.au/web-mail/ but I found it very confusing. But if there is anything about this idea you're confused about, please ask

it took me quite some time before I understood the entire concept

yapp · 11-04-2003, 05:03 AM

I just thought I could explain a little more. Because that link has way to much details

..this story got a little long, but I think it's useful too

postfix + imap

first try to install postfix (and uninstall sendmail). You should be able to send e-mail through postfix to another host.
Try to use 127.0.0.1 as your SMTP server, and try to send a normal e-mail.
Postfix also requires you to use an aliases file. it's created by the program "newaliases". I've configured postfix to send all root@localhost mail to my own user@localhost for example
Then you should configure the local delivery: configure postfix to use maildrop as local mail delivery agent. In other words, when you send an e-mail to you@localhost, it will be passed to maildrop. maildrop will use the ~/.mailfilter to filter the file, and store the e-mail in ~/Maildir/...
Get courier imap working; instead of reading the e-mail directly from ~/Maildir/, you can connect to your system on the imap port. Most e-mail programs, also outlook express support imap.

receiving mail
There are 2 ways you could receive your e-mail:

make the postfix server accessible from the internet, and people could send e-mail to yourusername@yourmachine. You need to be careful with this; If your system is an open-relay, spammers could use your mailserver to send messages. And every service accessible from the internet is a possible way to break into your system.
To retreive pop3 mail you could use "fetchmail". fetchmail downloads pop3 mail, and forwards it to postfix automatically.
I run fetchmail every hour from a cron-job. If my msn messenger receives a new-mail notification, fetchmail is enabled as well

sending mail
Sending e-mail can be done very easy; you don't need to SMTP of your ISP anymore, you can just use localhost

reading e-mail
you can use any IMAP capable mail client. You could use outlook express from another Windows workstation, or KMail, Mozilla-mail, mutt, or Squirllmail (webmail). It doesn't matter which client you use, the e-mail will look exactly the same!

(even the read-status, etc..

)

message filtering examples
Message filtering:
From the ~/.mailfilter file, I sort all messages. Maildrop rules apply to the message text.

This part of my ~/.mailfilter passes the message to spamassassin, and detects the changes that spamassassin makes to spam e-mails.
Code:
```
xfilter "/usr/bin/spamassassin -x"

if(   /^X-Spam-Flag: YES/  )
{
  log "---- *SPAM* detected. "
  to "Maildir/.Spam"
}
```

To filter virus e-mail, that causes outlook express to invoke attachments automatically if you only view a message!:

Code:

if(  $SIZE < 200000  )
{


  # Match the <iframe> exploit of outlook express, that causes execution
  # of programs, loaded my the iframe, because on an mangled content type.
  #
  if(  /<iframe src=3D"?cid:/:b  )
  {
    log "---- *VIRUS* outlook <iframe> exploit"
    to "Maildir/.Spam"
  }


  # Remove attachments with unwanted file extensions
  # It seams another nasty trick is also popular:
  # A lot of spaces between the .ext and .pif extension.
  #
  #  Content-Type: audio/x-midi
  #  <tab>    name=file.ext       .pif
  #
  if(  /[\n\r]Content\-Type: [a-zA-Z\-\/]+;[\n\r]*[:space:]+name=.*\.(bat|pif|scr)"?[\n\r]/:bw  )
  {
    log "---- *VIRUS* unwanted extensions in content-type"
    to "Maildir/.Spam"
  }

  #  Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=file.src
  if(  /[\n\r]Content\-Disposition: attachment;[\n\r]*[:space:]+filename=.*\.(bat|pif|scr|exe)"?[\n\r]/:bw  )
  {
    log "---- *VIRUS* unwanted extensions in content-disposition"
    to "Maildir/.Spam"
  }
}

Finally, this part of the code sorts a message to another folder:

Code:

# messages from my site to another imap folder:
if(  /^Received: from mail\.codingdomain\.com/  )
{
  if(  /(To|Cc|Bcc): .*webmaster@codingdomain\.com/  )
  {
    to "Maildir/.codingdomain.Inbox"
  }

  ...
}

# Default:
to "Maildir/"