Topic: how to get email from domain hosting email server?

[Patrick Basile]

Hello,

I have a rather silly 'newbie' question - so please bear with me.  I would like my e-smith server to collect mail from my domain hosting provider's email server, and then deposit it into the accounts I have created locally.

I am not going to have this e-smith handle the 'external' email for my domain - only the internal stuff, but I still need mail to be sent to and received from the outside 'external' email server.

How do I set this up.  I know this is a simple answer, but I'm blanking on this one.  Thanks for your help.

Regards,
Patrick

[Klas]

Patrick Basile wrote:
> I have a rather silly 'newbie' question - so please bear with
> me.

There are no silly questions...

>I would like my e-smith server to collect mail from my
> domain hosting provider's email server, and then deposit it
> into the accounts I have created locally.
>
> I am not going to have this e-smith handle the 'external'
> email for my domain - only the internal stuff, but I still
> need mail to be sent to and received from the outside
> 'external' email server.
>
> How do I set this up.  I know this is a simple answer, but
> I'm blanking on this one.  Thanks for your help.
>
> Regards,
> Patrick

I guess you mean is that you have one POP3 account that you have incoming mail delivered to for several users no matter what the name is?

I have that config too. All email for my domain is delivered to one POP-account

What you have to choose is 'multi-drop' in the section 'Email retrieval' and type in info about your mail-account. Servername in 'secondary mail server', username, password and sort method (probably 'default').

Select the interval you´d like it to collect on and you are all set...

However...

You will encounter problems with this setup when one of your users receive mail from mailinglists:

mailinglists tend to remove the receipients name and address (for privacy reasons) and mostly replace it with the name of the list.

Example:
Your mailserver collects a message from mailinglist 'computernews' intended for user bob@yourdomain.com. The receipients address probably have been replaced with computernews@theirdomain.com.

unless you have a user-account or a group with the name 'computernews' your mailserver will not know who the mail is intended for and will place it in your system administrator account instead of Bobs account.

A solution for this is to create a group with the name 'computernews' which contains all the users that wants the newsletter. Bob that is...

But:

If User Greg also signs up for the same newsletter there will be two incoming newsletters for...guess who...Bob. If you add Greg to the group both Bob and Greg will get two newsletters.

Other than the problem with mailinglists multidrop works fine.

/Klas

[Patrick Basile]

Klas, thanks for your quick reply.  Although I was not specific enough about my setup.

My e-smith server is connected to the Internet through a Cisco router via a T1 dedicated line.  My ctrlb.com domain is being hosted by a web/email hosting provider on their servers.  I have email accounts there, ie user1@ctrlb.com, user2@ctrlb.com and user3@ctrlb.com.

I have setup my e-smith server as srv1.ctrlb.com, BUT I am not going to have the MX record changed for email to the ctrlb.com domain - which means that email for ctrlb.com will stay up on my hosting provider email server until it is collected via a client or my e-smith server (in this case).

I have setup e-smith user accounts for user1, user2 and user3.  Based on this type of setup what do I need to configure on the e-smith server in 'Email Retrieval' to get the mail for the user1,user2, and user3 accounts from my hosting provider email server to my e-smith server?

Sorry for the confusion in my first post - I hope this helps to clarify my problem.  Thanks in advance for your help!

Regards,
Patrick

[Ed]

You can (if your isp is using *nix servers for mail) use a .forward file to
forward the mail to user1@srv1.domain.com.  Your ISP must
have a way to forward the mail.

Then use D May's contributed howto to restrict incoming mail
to be delivered only from your ISP.  Search the news groups
for restricting incoming mail.

Good Luck

[Klas Ostman]

Patrick Basile wrote:
> My e-smith server is connected to the Internet through a
> Cisco router via a T1 dedicated line.  My ctrlb.com domain is
> being hosted by a web/email hosting provider on their
> servers.  I have email accounts there, ie user1@ctrlb.com,
> user2@ctrlb.com and user3@ctrlb.com.
>
> I have setup my e-smith server as srv1.ctrlb.com, BUT I am
> not going to have the MX record changed for email to the
> ctrlb.com domain - which means that email for ctrlb.com will
> stay up on my hosting provider email server until it is
> collected via a client or my e-smith server (in this case).
>
> I have setup e-smith user accounts for user1, user2 and
> user3.  Based on this type of setup what do I need to
> configure on the e-smith server in 'Email Retrieval' to get
> the mail for the user1,user2, and user3 accounts from my
> hosting provider email server to my e-smith server?
>

Ok, so i guess you have separate username/passwords for each account? We have the same config at one of my clients. Unfortenately E-smith does not support collecting from multiple POP-accounts. There are a few ways getting round this:

1. Create two accounts i the client workstation. One to collect the mail directly from your host AND the other to collect from E-smith. Outlook for example support this. This is not a good solution if you use a dialup line because the workstations decide when to pick up the mail which can create a lot of connections to the Internet. But since you use a leased T1 its not a problem.

2. Ask if your host can forward user2 and user3 mail into user1 account and only use that account for collecting in E-smith. E-smith will still put the mail in the correct local mailbox based on the name *before* the @-sign. Just make sure that the host does´nt remove the receipients address when forwarding.
***If you can get them to forward all mail into one account, this is the best solution***.

3. Modify the fetchmail scripts to include more than one account. This is what I did at my client. It collects mail from 5 different accounts in sequence. This requires good knowledge as it includes customizing E-smith templates and scripts. My customization is based on E-smith 3.0 and is most likely not identical in newer versions.

/Klas

[Andrew Roberts]

Have a look at:

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/mcas/fetchmail.html

This is a contributed RPM that allows you to add multiple entries to fetchmail through the manager.  I'm trying it out on a test box myself.

[Patrick Basile]

Klas, Andrew, Ed -

Thanks for your help guys!  I'd think at least one of your suggestions will help fix my problem.  I wonder if multi POP collection is going to be added in future versions of e-smith?  Anyway, I'll be trying these things later today, and will let you know how it works.

Regards,
Patrick

[Patrick Basile]

Hey guys,

I installed the E-smith Fetchmail generator (from http://perso.wanadoo.fr/mcas/fetchmail.html) to test/fix my e-mail issue.  I also installed the user contributed Trustaccount add-on (http://www.e-smith.org/contrib/rpm-index/RPM-e-smith-trustaccounts-0.1-1.noarch.html).  Both installs seemed to work fine.

I re-booted the e-smith box, and everything seemed to start-up properly at the console.  BUT, when I tried to access the e-smith web manager thru the console (text based) or from another machine's web browser I get the following error: "You are not authorized to view this page. HTTP Error 403 - Forbidden".

Although the e-smith server is running - I'm dead in the water since I can't admin anything.  Any ideas?  Thanks for your help!

Regards,
Patrick

[Jeff Martin]

I've seen posts on the board suggesting

chmod 550 /etc/e-smith/web/panels/
chmod 550 /etc/e-smith/web/functions/
chmod 550 /etc/e-smith/web/common/
chmod 755 /etc/e-smith/events/actions/


seems to work

[Patrick Basile]

Jeff,

That worked - thanks a lot for your help!

One thing though (for my setup anyway), the last line "chmod 755 /etc/e-smith/events/actions/" came back with a message "no such file or directory exists".  I don't know why.  But when I fired up the e-smith web manager in my browser it came back asking for a login...so I'm happy.

Regards,
Patrick

[Peter]

I have a question that relates to this issue I believe. If someone has email being collected for domain mycompany.com at their ISP's server ( whether in multi-drop or mulitple pop accounts  ) and then the person sets up e-smith with domain as srvr1.mycompany.com. What happens when say in a multi-drop situation an email is rec'd at ISP server for jen@mycompany.com. Then you have Jen set up as a user on e-smith. Now in theory the email address at e-smith for Jen is jen@srvr1.mycompany.com? So when email is rec'd for jen@mycompany.com through ISP, would her mail get deleivered to her account or would is go to admin ( or whatever ) as essentially undeliverable?

Thanks.

[Patrick Basile]

Peter wrote:
>
> I have a question that relates to this issue I believe. If
> someone has email being collected for domain mycompany.com at
> their ISP's server ( whether in multi-drop or mulitple pop
> accounts  ) and then the person sets up e-smith with domain
> as srvr1.mycompany.com. What happens when say in a multi-drop
> situation an email is rec'd at ISP server for
> jen@mycompany.com. Then you have Jen set up as a user on
> e-smith. Now in theory the email address at e-smith for Jen
> is jen@srvr1.mycompany.com? So when email is rec'd for
> jen@mycompany.com through ISP, would her mail get deleivered
> to her account or would is go to admin ( or whatever ) as
> essentially undeliverable?

I'm not sure I understand your question, but I'll give you my take on it.  (I'm sure the other guys will provide more input.

The e-smith server is not setup by default to handle multiple POP accounts at your ISP.  Although the fetchmail rpm (see above threads) will take care of this issue.  I am testing it right now, and it seems to work quite well.

Anyway, hope this helps.

Regards,
Patrick

[Klas]

Peter wrote:
>
> I have a question that relates to this issue I believe. If
> someone has email being collected for domain mycompany.com at
> their ISP's server ( whether in multi-drop or mulitple pop
> accounts ) and then the person sets up e-smith with domain
> as srvr1.mycompany.com. What happens when say in a multi-drop
> situation an email is rec'd at ISP server for
> jen@mycompany.com. Then you have Jen set up as a user on
> e-smith. Now in theory the email address at e-smith for Jen
> is jen@srvr1.mycompany.com? So when email is rec'd for
> jen@mycompany.com through ISP, would her mail get deleivered
> to her account or would is go to admin ( or whatever ) as
> essentially undeliverable?

I understand what you mean, and the anser is Yes, the mail would be delivered to 'jen's account since fetchmail only cares about what's BEFORE the @-sign. So even if you have mail for more than one domain forwarded to your mailbox at your ISP it will work as long the user exists.

/Klas