Topic: How to keep copies of all incoming and outgoing emails

[Nick]

Hello all.

I was just wandering how I would implement this in E-Smith? The qmail FAQ tells you how to set this up but it requires a recompile of Qmail. And I would like to avoid that just incase it breaks E-Smith because it is running beautifully at the moment.

What I would like to be able to do is save a copy of all the incoming and outgoing mails onto a server. And then setup a system, possibly a database or just use a webbased Email Client for Imap so that Employees can search through the Email's (like if they lost a certain email and needed the information contained in it. They can then just log on and perform the search etc.)

Is this possible in E-Smith with out breaking anything?

Thanks in advance.

[Graeme Robinson]

It sounds like you are talking about LDAP, which is already built in and accessable via webmail and LDAP capable clients (Netscape, Outlook).  If users never delete anything their mail will always be there, although I hope you have a lot of spare disk space!  

Seriously tho, what you are suggesting is possible in theory but administratively undesireable for several reasons including;
- it will lead to unrealistic expectations from users about recovering lost mail
- it will impose a significant though variable data load on your server
- it raises privacy concerns for users mail (who will have access etc)
- it raises security concerns (how would you secure a database of mail to allow access to those with permission to view it/prevent access to those who shouldn't see it etc)

[Rick]

I think you mean IMAP instead of LDAP

[Nick]

Thanks for your input.
On the issues of privacy and security there really isn't an issue. Its only a small company (6 people) and they already print out every Email that comes in and goes out which are available for everyone.

Also the use of IMAP is a good solution. However I do not know how I would redirect all emails to say an account called backup as well as the intended recipient? How would this work?

Also as I said above the company is only small and the email traffic is not that high so the load on the server etc will not be great and I have about 7 gigs to play with. And I can offload the emails to another server or something should I require more space.

Thanks in advance.

[Nathan Fowler]

Nick,
You could do this for each one of your users:
Create a new user, name him "mailerdb", use the defaults.

Edit each of your six user accounts, in there field where it says:
Email Deilvery:  'Deliver email locally'

Change this to "Both deliver locally and forward".
For the forwarding address enter in mailerdb@localhost

By doing this you effectively do what you wanted to do, you now have a central email account with all incoming mail stored in this account.

Users will still receive their email, which is delivered locally, and you will retain a copy of all emails in the mailerdb account.

I hope this helped you out.
Nathan

[Graeme Robinson]

I did mean IMAP instead of LDAP and Nathan I think your answer is very good solution to Nick's problem.  

However Nick I have to point out that 7 gb is a pretty puny amount if you are planning long term storage of email, even for a 6 person office.  I have many users whose email folders exceed 400mb within a year (admittedly not on an e-smith system - on MS Exchange).

Using Nathan's plan you could syphon off the email onto a local pc using POP and then archive those mails to cdrom.

[Nathan Fowler]

Graeme has the right idea.  Another suggestion would be to periodically tar.gzip the contents of /home/e-smith/files/users/mailerdb/Maildir/cur (or new, depending on the read status).  You could tar --create --file=/mailbkup/.tar /home/e-smith/files/users/mailerdb/Maildir/cur/* |gzip /mailbkup/.tar

This would conserve space and keep all email on the server, however it appears that Graeme's idea requires less administrative time.  I would suggest using a Windows box with Outlook 2000 and POP3...

Hope this solved your "problem"

Nathan Fowler

[Nick]

Those suggestions are exactly what I was after. Thank you very much.
This will do the job perfectly. The idea of the archiving the emails monthly is perfect as well.

Thanks once again.

[rmt]

Yes I have doing this on my e-smith box and it works great, but how can i send outgoing mail to a specified user (mailerdb@localhost).

thanks

Ronald

Nathan Fowler wrote:
>
> Nick,
> You could do this for each one of your users:
> Create a new user, name him "mailerdb", use the defaults.
>
> Edit each of your six user accounts, in there field where it
> says:
> Email Deilvery:  'Deliver email locally'
>
> Change this to "Both deliver locally and forward".
> For the forwarding address enter in mailerdb@localhost
>
> By doing this you effectively do what you wanted to do, you
> now have a central email account with all incoming mail
> stored in this account.
>
> Users will still receive their email, which is delivered
> locally, and you will retain a copy of all emails in the
> mailerdb account.
>
> I hope this helped you out.
> Nathan

[Robert]

I too would love to keep all outgoing and incoming, and I guess archive monthly.
 
I guess the setting up of duplicate names for inbound is ok
(but a bit high maintenance), but outbound is even more important.

Putting aside the privacy issues (buyer beware etc.), it does
suprise me that this hasnt been a big issue for ages.

Is whats needed, a simple single place that a parallel archive stream could be tee'd from?
I use clam anti -virus: doesnt THIS scan all inbound and outbound?
Is this perhaps a starting point, it  sets the smtpfront-qmail filter to a different file ( /usr/sbin/qmail-queue.amavis).
Could not a similar different filter setting be the tee-point to 'duplicate' emails into another filing stream. And done properly it would hook into clam too.
I know little of perl so dont know how it works, but would happily pass it onto anyone that does.
regards Rob

[Robert]

I too would love to keep all outgoing and incoming, and I guess archive monthly.
 
I guess the setting up of duplicate names for inbound is ok
(but a bit high maintenance), but outbound is even more important.

Putting aside the privacy issues (buyer beware etc.), it does
suprise me that this hasnt been a big issue for ages.

Is whats needed, a simple single place that a parallel archive stream could be tee'd from?
I use clam anti -virus: doesnt THIS scan all inbound and outbound?
Is this perhaps a starting point, it  sets the smtpfront-qmail filter to a different file ( /usr/sbin/qmail-queue.amavis).
Could not a similar different filter setting be the tee-point to 'duplicate' emails into another filing stream. And done properly it would hook into clam too.
I know little of perl so dont know how it works, but would happily pass it onto anyone that does.
regards Rob