Topic: Mail Server

[Bud]

SME Noob wants to know how or what contrib to use for Mail Server usage on 7.1? Will it support POP3, Imap etc. Client has one mailbox (using catchall) I need to filter all mail to users using Outlook etc.

Please help

Thanks

[bpivk]

The SME noob should learn how to read the manual http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation

He would find out that he doesn't have to install any contribs because sme comes with preinstalled mail service.

SME will support POP3s and Imaps (secure pop3 and secure imap).
And he can look in the manual to find out how to set his outlook account.
 

It doesn't support pop3 and imap on wan (only lan), but you can change that by using apropriate commands if needed (that's covered in the wiki too).

[mmccarn]

An unmodified SME server can be congured to use 'multidrop' to download email from an off-site POP3 catch-all mailbox and distribute it to internal mail users.  Here's the relevant manual section (a bit short on details, in my opinion): http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation:Administration_Manual:Chapter13#E-mail_Retrieval

There are also a few contribs available that allow finer control of the 'fetchmail' program used by the 'multidrop' configuration - so you could (I think) configure your system to check off-site pop mailbox "A@b.c" and put all email in the mailbox for user "A", then check catch-all off-site mailbox "C@x.y" and distribute the mail to the appropriate users...

You should be aware that there are some inherent difficulties with catch-all pop3 mailboxes: specifically, mail servers are not required to put the actual addressee's email address in the POP3 message - so if two of your users are "bcc'd" the same message (because they both subscribed to the same mailing list, for example) you may end up with 2 copies of the same message in your off-site catch all mailbox, neither of which actually contains the recipient email address.  (Both messages will probably end up in the Administrator's mailbox...).  

I have always admired the contribs from dungog - they have a couple for collecting email from off-site mailboxes: http://www.dungog.net/sme/email.php#pop

There is another contrib for managing fetchmail.  I know nothing about it! http://wiki.contribs.org/Fetchmail

Here's a forum topic discussing potential problems with fetchmail / multidrop: http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=34291.0

Warning/Caveat: I have not used any of the configurations or contribs mentioned here...

[idp_qbn]

Use "fetchmail".

Fetchmail will collect mail from any email account you have, POP3 or IMAP, on any other ISP or domain hosting. It will deliver that mail to the account you nominate. It can do this for hundreds of user accounts, each with many email addresses on the internet.

In your situation, you have one local user, with several external email addresses. Install "fetchmail" and configure it to collect all your external emails, which it will then deliver to your internal mailbox.

The author provides sufficient documentation for you to sort it out.

Best advice for sending mail is to do it through your ISP SMTP server, not through your SME SMTP.....some ISP's don't like being used as a "mail relay". (BUT - if they don't mind, then use the SME SMTP server.)

Here is a link http://wiki.contribs.org/Fetchmail

Cheers
Ian