Topic: email configuration

[Duncan]

We have an ISP accumulating our mail for a dozen users, 1/3 of which are remote and access their mail via POP3. The remaining 2/3 I want to have e-smith fetch their mail onto the local esmith server and they would then retrieve it via Outlook POP3 while inhouse.

How should this be set up on the e-smith email cfg web page? I'm a bit confused with the one mail account & password value that may be entered - which one do I use if I have a dozen people who's mail needs to be downloaded? Also, does this run automatically or do *I* need to set it up as a cron job?

FYI, the users are identified by firstname@abc.com while stored on the ISP called mail.abc.com. This is a "multidrop" setup, correct?

I looked into the fetchmail cfg and in there it included a line DOWNLOAD ALL or FETCH ALL or something similar - will this indeed grab the remote users mail too? Should I forget this and just set up individual fetchmail commands for each user?

Thanks for any tips!

[Duncan]

Sorry, I forgot to indicate I am using the latest 3.1 CD image version with no other updates applied.

Any idea when v4 is due to be released?

[Charlie Brady]

Duncan wrote:

> We have an ISP accumulating our mail for a dozen users, 1/3 of
> which are remote and access their mail via POP3. The remaining
> 2/3 I want to have e-smith fetch their mail onto the local
> esmith server and they would then retrieve it via Outlook POP3
> while inhouse.
>
> How should this be set up on the e-smith email cfg web page?

You can't really, unless your ISP accumulates the in-house users mail into the one mailbox.

> I'm a bit confused with the one mail account & password
> value that may be entered - which one do I use if I have a
> dozen people who's mail needs to be downloaded?

If your ISP can't or won't combine those users into one mailbox, then I'd recommend that you hand configure fetchmail for each of the users, and run it as their cron job. There is no web interface support for that though.

> Also, does this
> run automatically or do *I* need to set it up as a cron job?

The system mail collection happens automatically.

> FYI, the users are identified by firstname@abc.com while
> stored on the ISP called mail.abc.com. This is a "multidrop"
> setup, correct?

"multidrop" is when one mailbox serves all users in your domain.
I guess that isn't what you have, your ISP has seperate mailboxes for each user.

> Should I forget this and
> just set up individual fetchmail commands for each user?

That's probably what you should do. If you can make a template for a suitable per-user fetchmail spec plus crontab entry, and contribute it, even better. And if you write it into an e-smith compatible web interface - you get the gold star!!!

Regards

Charlie

[Duncan]

OK, thanks Charlie.

[Duncan]

OK, I have another question for your Charlie: is the fetchmail file in the /etc the one to use to pull msgs from my ISP by the cron fetchmail call?

It doesnt seem to work, but if I copy this into my root home dir as .fetchmailrc and remove the fetchmail and EOF lines within the file it correctly pulls my mail off the ISP when I manually run fetchmail, logged in as root. It works beautifully, run manually, spo now I need to get it running automated.

I guess I'm confused between the diff and purpose of the ~/root/.fetchmailrc and the /etc/fetchmail file - what file does the cron fetchmail reference?

Thanks again!