Topic: multiple pop account collection

[Andreas]

Hi!
I'm running E-smith 4.11 and have it set up working as a mailserver-webserver for my domain. Now I want to set up the e-smith box to pick up users e-mail from a couple of different isp's pop3 mailboxes (several different accounts, no multidrop) so that the users mail clients don't have to check the isp's pop3 accounts everytime. (user A has two different pop3 accounts and user B also has two pop3 accounts)

How do I do this, with fetchmail or how?

[Alejandro]

have you searched the forum database?, I think there is a topic "multifetch instead of multidrop" that covers your question
I will look at my printed stuff, I think I printed that topic
Is possible by ading some lines to the fetchmail script.
Give me some time and I'll tell you.
A.

[Alejandro]

Here it is!:
http://www.e-smith.org/bboard//read.php?v=t&f=3&i=1815&t=1814
Hope it helps you!
Alejandro.

[rk]

I just set this up.  The easiest way is to set up one account via the GUI, then edit /etc/fetchmail.  Copy the entry it set up for the first one, and simply replace the user and ISP info.

On a related topic, I get email from the cron daemon about 2-3 times a day that comes from the output of startmail (Subject: Cron /etc/startmail).  The body of the message is a series of '....' (different amounts of .'s).  Does anyone know why this output is generating?  Can I get rid of it?

[Scott Smith]

The output is actually coming from fetchmail not startmail. Startmail is run by cron and simply fires off fetchmail. Any output generated by a cron task is emailed to the root (admin on e-smith) account.

To prevent the messages, redirect the output of the fetchmail calls in startmail to null. For example, put this into the startmail template (at the appropriate locations, of course):

$OUT .= "  /etc/fetchmail >/dev/null 2>&1\n";

The outputs from grep and killall should be likewise redirected.

Disadvantage -- if there are ever errors in any of these calls, you won't see any cron mail about it.

[rk]

Instead of dumping it out to /dev/null could I sed the data to delete any '.' characters (s/\.*//, I think).  Then any errors will be output, minus any periods.  Would I still get an email every time it runs, or is it smart enought to not mail if there is no output?

rk

[Andreas]

With set up one account via the GUI, do you mean to set it up with the multidrop entry in the e-smith manager?

I have done this for one account, set the secondary mailserver to my ISP's mailserver and filled in one of the accounts i want to be collected, but it doesn't pick up the mails, did you have to do anything else to get it working?
the config db shows:

/sbin/e-smith/db configuration show fetchmail

fetchmail=service
    FreqOffice=every5min
    FreqOutside=every5min
    FreqWeekend=every5min
    Method=multidrop
    NoIPUP=yes
    SecondaryMailAccount=myispusername
    SecondaryMailPassword=mysippasssword
    SecondaryMailServer=myispmailserver
    status=enabled

fetchmail config file:
/etc/fetchmail

# multi-drop configuration; fetchmail retrieves all mail from a remote POP mailbox:
/usr/bin/fetchmail --syslog  --fetchmailrc - <set postmaster "postmaster"
set bouncemail
set properties ""
poll myispmailserver
    protocol POP3
    localdomains mylocaldomain1 mylocaldomain1
       username myispusername password mysippasssword to * here
           smtphost localhost
           smtpaddress mylocaldomain1
           fetchall
           forcecr
EOF

[rk]

Yes, set up a multidrop account in the gui.  Then go look at /etc/fetchmail.  That is pretty much what I did.  I didn't mess with the db at all.  I just fired up vi and went right into /etc/fetchmail.

My fetchmail file looks the same as yours down the the 'poll' line, then I have:

poll
    protocol POP3
    localdomains .com
       username password to * here
           smtphost localhost
           smtpaddress .com
           fetchall
           forcecr

These lines are repeated 3 times, one for each of the external mail accounts I have.  I edited out my personal info, but just replace the <...> with other account info.

Hope that helps...
rk

[Andreas]

Thanks for your help! Got it working now! You wouldn't happen to know how to get it to collect the mail say every 2 minutes instead of every 5 minutes you set in the GUI?

[Bruce]

I had a similar problem.  To compound things, yahoo doesn't conform to pure POP3 access, so some special treatments are required.  Here is a sanitized version of the .fetchmailrc file.  I just don't know where to put it on e-smith.  On most platforms it's in the documentation.  I hope this helps.

Bruce


# Configuration created Mon Feb 12 12:06:21 2001 by fetchmailconf
set postmaster "postmaster"
set bouncemail
set properties ""
poll pop.mail.yahoo.com with proto POP3 and options uidl
       user "myyahoomail" there with password "mypass" is mehere here options fetchall stripcr warnings 3600
 mda "sed -e '1s/^\^I/Received: /' | formail | /usr/bin/procmail -d mehere"
    user "wifeyahoomail" there with password "herpass" is herhere here options keep fetchall stripcr warnings 3600
 mda "sed -e '1s/^\^I/Received: /' | formail | /usr/bin/procmail -d herhere"
poll linuxfreemail.com with proto POP3
       user "methere" there with password "passthere" is mehere here options flush fetchall warnings 3600