Topic: qmail, fetchmail...NO MAIL !!!

[louis]

My ISP hosts the mail for our domain

Problem: my company changed from isdn to adsl. Because we can no longer have a static ip my ISP changed our ETRN account to pop. The server worked fine with the ETRN but now I need some help.

Am I right in assuming that sme comes with qmail installed so I need to use fetchmail.
The only info the isp gave me is the new smtp and pop server with username allusers@mydomain.com and password.

I’ve been looking around the howto pages and found a contribution for installing fetchmail on sme:

1. From the e-smith manager in the "E-mail retrieval" set the retrieval mode to "multi-dop".
2. Make sure to change the secondary mail server to a valid address (suggestion: type our own host name).
3. Configure the check interval and then go to the "Mail Users" section in the server manager main menu.
4. Choose "Individual mailbox" and configure the POP3 name, username and password.

Is this all I must do, have anybody done this successfully?

[Klaus Eckert]

that's what i done for my users.
it works fine for me.

cheers klaus

[George]

It works for me. I haven't had any problems with it at all. It's a nice system.

[Kelvin]

Louis,

If your ISP only created one mailbox for all your users of your domain (ie. anyname@yourdomain.com gets put into the mailbox called allusers@yourdomain.com) and you do not have any additional pop3 mailboxes to collect mail from, you will not need the fetchmail generator add-in. Fetchmail is already installed in SME.

In server manager, set mail retrieval to Multi-Drop, the secondary mail server name to the POP server your ISP gave you, the retrieval interval as appropriate and the POP mailbox username and password. Remember that SME must be set to yourdomain.com or have yourdomain.com as one of the virtual domains or else you won't be able to sort mail correctly. This poses a problem because, if your ISP created the mailbox as allusers@yourdomain.com and your SME is set to yourdomain.com, then SME will think that allusers@yourdomain.com is actually a local mailbox ! Ask your ISP if you can access allusers@yourdomain.com via another name (some ISPs actually create different physical mailbox names and just alias allusers@yourdomain.com to that mailbox - it is the physical mailbox account that we want to access).

Cheers,

Kelvin

[louis]

Hi Kelvin,
My ‘domain.com’ on my sme server and the e-mail that my ISP host is the same. Does this mean that my server will think allusers@domain.com is a user mailbox? To what name or alias must this be changed? (anything as long as it is not a user or allusers?)

[Kelvin]

Hi Louis,

Ask your ISP. As I mentioned earlier, most ISPs have a different (or "real") name for the mailbox for domains they host.

Eg.

Let's say we have an ISP here called IHUG (this is a real ISP here in OZ).
Then say they host a domain called sellersmarket.com.au
Let's say the account with IHUG is called smarket and they were provided with a mailbox called smarket@ihug.com.au

If they created an allusers mailbox for sellersmarket.com.au, the mail server at IHUG must accepts mails in the format anyuser@sellersmarket.com.au and drop them into a mailbox for you to collect. Usually, most ISPs would create an alias, using your example, allusers@sellersmarket.com.au which actually refers to smarket@ihug.com.au.

So, for your SME server to collect the emails from the ISP, you will actually need to collect from the mailbox called smarket@ihug.com.au and not from the mailbox called allusers@sellersmarket.com.au (which your SME server will treat as local).

However, your ISP might do it differently. Check with them. Also, while you are in conversation with them, see if they will be willing to add an additional mail header line to the e-mails for your domain (eg. X-Delivered-To). This will be useful when sorting out your mails that may have had their headers modified / removed or are part of mailing lists, etc. due to the limitations of multidrop mail systems.

Regards,

Kelvin

[louis]

Hi kelvin,
Thanks for all the help! i'm on the line with isp at the moment. will let you know what they said!

cheers,
louis

[louis]

THANKS KELVIN
IT WORKS !!!!