Topic: Multidrop

[Chris Black]

Hello,

It seems that quite a few people have posted messages about multidrop not 'dropping' recently, but I have been unable to find an answer.

I have configured my system (v5.5) to use multidrop. Set the IP address of my hosts mail server in the 'Secondary mail server' box, entered a valid username and password, told it to check every 5 minutes regardless of the time (until I get it working), and told it to sort by default.

I'm definitely getting an internet connection, I've been on the BBC News site on a client machine. I can send e-mails out from the client to a hotmail address, I can even send e-mails from user1@hostname to user2 without any problems.

The bugs page on the e-smith had a couple of multidrop issues, I have followed their advice to no avail. I also downloaded and installed the updates (update1 and update2).

Does anybody have any advice? Would it help if I posted an extract from a log? If so, which one and what should I look out for?

Thank you for your help.

Chris

[Rob Bracken]

Chris,

Is this a new installation, or something that used to work and now doesn't?

Have a look in the log files (/var/log/maillog and /var/log/qmail/current). There may be some messages in there about what's happening.

Rob

[daley]

Hi Guys,

Can i ask a question? what is really the multidrop mail services? is it the same functionality like UUCP mail services? is multidrop = multipop?

Can i configure uucp mail receive for SME box?

Regards,
Daley

[Chris Black]

Hi Rob,

Thank you for replying.

/var/log/maillog is totally empty and /var/log/qmail/current has one line ..

@400000003dde1c3e32c371fc status: local 0/10 remote 0/20

Looks strange to me!

This is a brand new set up and the multidrop feature has never worked.

Chris

[Rob Bracken]

The multidrop configuration uses a program called "fetchmail" to go out to an external mail server and deliver it to the local qmail. Every so often, cron executes "/etc/startmail" to do this.

Go into "/etc/fetchmail" and remove the "--silent" option from the line that starts "/usr/bin/fetchmail". While you're there, check the rest of the file to see if it looks OK. Save the modified file.

From the command line, execute "/etc/startmail" & see what happens. Let us know the results.

Rob

[Rob Bracken]

daley wrote:

what is really the multidrop mail services?

Multidrop uses a program called "fetchmail" to go out to an external mail server, grab mail messages & deliver them to the local qmail server. The "/etc/startmail" script executes it - it's run by cron every so often.

I don't know anything about uucp mail, but - in theory - you can install anything on e-smith that you can install on RedHat. The tricky bit is usually integrating it with the rest of the system.

Rob

[daley]

Rob,

In other words, multidrop, to retreive / fetch mail from the external pop3 server? or is it also called as multipop?

Regards,
Daley

[Rob Bracken]

fetchmail supports POP2, POP3, RPOP, APOP, KPOP, all flavors of IMAP, ETRN, and ODMR. Have a look at

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail

Rob

[Chris Black]

Hi Rob,

I followed your instructions, but nothing happened. I typed in /etc/startmail, pressed enter and the next command line came up immediately.

Somebody in the other forum suggested that I removed the ^ before the ppp in /etc/startmail - I did this and ran /etc/startmail again. Here is my maillog

Nov 22 14:18:15 swalenet fetchmail[11878]: 4 messages for swalehire at 212.69.196.57 (5445 octets).
Nov 22 14:18:15 swalenet fetchmail[11878]: reading message 1 of 4 (1059 octets)
Nov 22 14:23:15 swalenet fetchmail[11878]: timeout after 300 seconds waiting for listener to respond.
Nov 22 14:23:15 swalenet fetchmail[11878]: client/server synchronization error while delivering to SMTP host 212.69.196.57
Nov 22 14:23:15 swalenet fetchmail[11878]: Query status=7 (ERROR)

There are definitely 4 messages waiting for me, so I suppose I'm almost there.

Can you shed any light on this?!

Cheers!

Chris

[Chris Black]

Hold your horses. It might be working!

Give me 10 minutes just to test it normally and I'll post the results.

[Chris Black]

Hello,

It's worked. I used a combination of removing --silent from /etc/fetchmail and removed the ^ before the ppp in /etc/startmail. I have also rebooted and it seems to be working fine for me. Thank you for all your help.

I hope this helps the other people who seem to have been suffering identical problems to me.

As an aside - when a user sends an e-mail via the e-smith box does it connect and send immediately or does it store all out going mail until it next connects to fetchmail and then sends them all out then?

Thank you.

Chris

[brian read]

That problem (with the ^), has been bugged by me this week.  It happened to me on an ISDN line which gets called "ippp" not just "ppp" in ifconfig.

I believe that it will connect and deliver the email straightaway, butr there is contribution by Stephen noble which will make it buffer.

Try

http://www.dungog.net/sme/

cheers

Brian

[Rob Bracken]

Brian Read wrote:

    > I believe that it will connect and deliver the email straightaway, butr there is contribution by Stephen noble which will make it buffer.

Yes, the default behaviour is to connect & send mail straightaway.

You should put the "--silent" option back into "/etc/fetchmail" for normal operation.

Rob

[Chris Black]

Roger that. Thanks Brian and Rob. It's appreciated.