Topic: Fetching mail for individuals..

[Roald Opsahl]

Tonight I'm a bit lazy, so I ask instead of read and think..

Is it easy (is it worth trying) to collect mail for individuals who has
different accounts at different sites and deliver it through e-smith?

I have two scenarios in mind:

* Some people come together in a new location, they are from different
   organizations on a short term assignment to  do a specific job. They all
   have existing mailboxes in different domains. No time or need to register
   a new domain, but a technical requirement to have a single machine
   connect to the world, and to use something like ibays on their own project.
   (inspired by the DILI article and own work)

* A family using e-smith to connect to the world. Each family member has
   one or more e-mail accounts at work and school etc.. (inspired by us)

I don't expect full instructions, just a YES or NO is OK, but if you have
more, such as what setting to use in the EMail Retrieval mode: box. it
would be great. I'm guessing that I will have to edit the fetch-mail
configuration by hand, that is OK. However, for scenario one above I could
see the need to find a simple way for an administrator to specify one or
more external e-mail accounts for each e-smith user.
and that's OK.

[Charlie Brady]

Roald Opsahl wrote:

> Is it easy (is it worth trying) to collect mail for individuals
> who has different accounts at different sites and deliver it
> through e-smith?

Just create a fetchmail configuration and cron entry for each user.

> I have two scenarios in mind:
>
> * Some people come together in a new location, they are from
> different organizations on a short term assignment to  do a
> specific job. They all have existing mailboxes in different
> domains.

The best way to do that is to get each of the outside mailboxes forwarded to the user accounts set up at the e-smith site. They will then be delivered directly to the users' mailboxes. They can continue to use
their existing email addresses in outgoing mail - only people who read email headers will know that they are really user@customer1356.isp.domain.name...

> * A family using e-smith to connect to the world. Each family
> member has one or more e-mail accounts at work and school etc..
> (inspired by us)

I would suggest that you set up a fetchmail config and cron entry for each user. Get that working, then develop the web interface to allow people to set it up for themselves. Then send the code to Joe

Charlie