preparing for fetchmail & postfix

Hi,

I want to set up my home network, so that my Linux box gets the mail from
the ISP and the windoze boxes then get their mail from it. Ultimately, I
want to move all my e-mail clients to Evolution and use OpenThingy for
collaboration (so I can eventually use shared calendaring/tasks without
Notes or Exchange) but that's a different story.

I have a Mandrake 9.1 machine and three/four windowns machines connected
to a wireless ADSL router (which acts as the DHCP server). Between all the
computers here, we have four or five e-mail aliases with My ISP account.

There's too much to do/understand for simple little me so I want to post
these questions one or two at a post and deal with each individually. So,
to start the ball rolling:

1/ My network (192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0) is always connected via my ADSL
router. When I've played with fetchmail, people who have sent me mail
have had it bounced with a message that the address could not be found.
The problem seems to be partly to do with a fully qualified domain name.
At the moment, all I have is a machine name "xyz" but no ".pqr.com". Is
this bit necessary, why and how do I choose a meaningful ".pqr.com"? Could
it also have something to do with machine account names?

Cheers,


Greg

Greg wrote:
.... 1/ My network (192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0) is always connected via my
ADSL
> router. When I've played with fetchmail, people who have sent me mail
> have had it bounced with a message that the address could not be found.
> The problem seems to be partly to do with a fully qualified domain name.
> At the moment, all I have is a machine name "xyz" but no ".pqr.com". Is
> this bit necessary, why and how do I choose a meaningful ".pqr.com"? Could
> it also have something to do with machine account names?

Dear Greg,
since you didn't provide us with your entire network-config here two
possible scenarios:
1. static IP
- go and register a fq domain name
- let your isp add your fqdn in his dns-server (usually it'll be done
automatic...)
- let him add a "MX"-Record for the Mailserver as well
- setup your mailserver and fetchmail
2. dynamic IP
- there are a lot of services on the internet which can assign your
dyn. ip to a certain dom-name: one of them is http://www.dyndns.org/
- go there and sign up your domain with someth. like
gregnet.dyndns.org or greg.homeip.net :-)
- check the field with the MX-Record
- setup your mailserver and fetchmail

depending on your scenario people from outside should be able to send
you mails at (E-Mail Removed).

Cheers,
Monzai

Webmasters, admins and network managers only: http://www.monzai.com/
You'll love it!

I forgot ....

Monzai wrote:
> Greg wrote:
> ... 1/ My network (192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0) is always connected via my
> ADSL
>
>> router. When I've played with fetchmail, people who have sent me mail
>> have had it bounced with a message that the address could not be found.
>> The problem seems to be partly to do with a fully qualified domain name.
>> At the moment, all I have is a machine name "xyz" but no ".pqr.com".Is
>> this bit necessary, why and how do I choose a meaningful ".pqr.com"?

YES! No domain name == no info where to send mail!
It's like: underexposed politicians == war! It's allways the same ....

>> Could it also have something to do with machine account names?

No.

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 13:04:09 +0200, Monzai <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>
> I forgot ....
>
> Monzai wrote:
>> Greg wrote:
>> ... 1/ My network (192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0) is always connected via my
>> ADSL
>>
>>> router. When I've played with fetchmail, people who have sent me mail
>>> have had it bounced with a message that the address could not be found.
>>> The problem seems to be partly to do with a fully qualified domain name.
>>> At the moment, all I have is a machine name "xyz" but no ".pqr.com".Is
>>> this bit necessary, why and how do I choose a meaningful ".pqr.com"?
>
> YES! No domain name == no info where to send mail!
> It's like: underexposed politicians == war! It's allways the same ....
>
>>> Could it also have something to do with machine account names?
>
> No.
>

Not a real fetchmail expert, but I receive mail for quite a few different
accounts using fetchmail and have no fqdn. Just a "machine hostname".
Dynamic IP and dialup PPP connection.

I use a different ~.fetchmailrc for each account, which is no big deal, them
being only a few lines long.


Procmail sorts it all out.

AC

--

take control of your mailbox ----- elrav1 ----- http://tinyurl.com/l55a
spammers hate this program because they can't beat it

> Not a real fetchmail expert, but I receive mail for quite a few different
> accounts using fetchmail and have no fqdn. Just a "machine hostname".
> Dynamic IP and dialup PPP connection.

right, if you fetch mails :-) from your isp or somewhere else,
it's not mandatory to have a fqdn for your own machine...

>
> I use a different ~.fetchmailrc for each account, which is no big deal, them
> being only a few lines long.
>
>
> Procmail sorts it all out.
>
> AC
>

Cheers,
Monzai

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 22:28:22 +0200, Monzai <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>
>> Not a real fetchmail expert, but I receive mail for quite a few different
>> accounts using fetchmail and have no fqdn. Just a "machine hostname".
>> Dynamic IP and dialup PPP connection.
>
> right, if you fetch mails :-) from your isp or somewhere else,
> it's not mandatory to have a fqdn for your own machine...
>
>>
>> I use a different ~.fetchmailrc for each account, which is no big deal, them
>> being only a few lines long.
>>
>>
>> Procmail sorts it all out.
>>
>> AC
>>
>
> Cheers,
> Monzai
>


So where is he fetching them from? The mailbox out at the curb? :-)

Where do you get mail but from a pop or imap server someplace?


AC


--

take control of your mailbox ----- elrav1 ----- http://tinyurl.com/l55a
spammers hate this program because they can't beat it

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, Greg wrote:
> Just to clarify. As my carefully disambiguated question seems to have been
> ambiguous after all ;o)

Missing parts.

> So the question is: if I have a stand alone network, using Fetchmail to
> periodically get e-mail from my ISP, why do I need a FQDN and if I don't
> how do I configure it to stop bouncing mail it's collected back to the

fetchmail by default feeds the mail to your local MTA, most likely
sendmail, which most likely is misconfigured. MTA's don't work without
DNS and FQDN's, in general, and sendmail in particular is the subject of
an enourmous book. IOW, don't expect an easy answer along the lines of
"click here to fix your sendmail."

The easiest answer, which is fine if you're using Windows-style MUA's,
is to use fetchmail's "mda" option to bypass sendmail. Have the MUA's
use the ISP's SMTP server to send mail.

If you really want your own MTA, such as if you want to accept mail for
your own domain or dynamic DNS hostname, postfix or exim is going to be
easier for you to get working.
--
/dev/rob0 - preferred_email=i$((28*28+28))@softhome.net
or put "not-spam" or "/dev/rob0" in Subject header to reply

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 10:15:27 +0100, Greg wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I want to set up my home network, so that my Linux box gets the mail from
> the ISP and the windoze boxes then get their mail from it. Ultimately, I
> want to move all my e-mail clients to Evolution and use OpenThingy for
> collaboration (so I can eventually use shared calendaring/tasks without
> Notes or Exchange) but that's a different story.
>
> I have a Mandrake 9.1 machine and three/four windowns machines connected
> to a wireless ADSL router (which acts as the DHCP server). Between all the
> computers here, we have four or five e-mail aliases with My ISP account.
>
> There's too much to do/understand for simple little me so I want to post
> these questions one or two at a post and deal with each individually. So,
> to start the ball rolling:
>
> 1/ My network (192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0) is always connected via my ADSL
> router. When I've played with fetchmail, people who have sent me mail
> have had it bounced with a message that the address could not be found.
> The problem seems to be partly to do with a fully qualified domain name.
> At the moment, all I have is a machine name "xyz" but no ".pqr.com". Is
> this bit necessary, why and how do I choose a meaningful ".pqr.com"? Could
> it also have something to do with machine account names?
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> Greg

Just to clarify. As my carefully disambiguated question seems to have been
ambiguous after all ;o)

1/ I have an account with an ISP who provides me with a mail service (POP
and IMAP - I use POP - habit mostly). To get my mail, I have configured an
e-mail client on each machine with the appropriate POP & SMTP server names
and UID & P/W.

2/ I have a network which runs Linux and W'doze happily together with a
simple unqualified netbios name - actually it's 'atlantic' for the linux
box and various other seas for the W'doze boxes.

3/ I now want to try to move towards the Linux box using fetchmail to do
all the ISP collection, distributing each e-mail to a folder for each
account. Then the clients can pick up the mail from the Linux box. I guess
this should be configured as a POP/IMAP server itself.

So the question is: if I have a stand alone network, using Fetchmail to
periodically get e-mail from my ISP, why do I need a FQDN and if I don't
how do I configure it to stop bouncing mail it's collected back to the
senders???

Simple really

Greg

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 00:11:59 +0100, Greg <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>
> Just to clarify. As my carefully disambiguated question seems to have been
> ambiguous after all ;o)
>
> 1/ I have an account with an ISP who provides me with a mail service (POP
> and IMAP - I use POP - habit mostly). To get my mail, I have configured an
> e-mail client on each machine with the appropriate POP & SMTP server names
> and UID & P/W.
>
> 2/ I have a network which runs Linux and W'doze happily together with a
> simple unqualified netbios name - actually it's 'atlantic' for the linux
> box and various other seas for the W'doze boxes.
>
> 3/ I now want to try to move towards the Linux box using fetchmail to do
> all the ISP collection, distributing each e-mail to a folder for each
> account. Then the clients can pick up the mail from the Linux box. I guess
> this should be configured as a POP/IMAP server itself.
>
> So the question is: if I have a stand alone network, using Fetchmail to
> periodically get e-mail from my ISP, why do I need a FQDN and if I don't
> how do I configure it to stop bouncing mail it's collected back to the
> senders???
>
> Simple really
>
> Greg
>


If the accounts at the POP server have seperate passwords, as far as I know
you need a seperate ~/.fetchmailrc for each, like so:



poll pop.earthlink.net
tracepolls
proto pop3
user "(E-Mail Removed)"
pass "xxxxxxx"
is alanc here
and wants mda "/usr/bin/formail -ds /usr/bin/procmail"
fetchall


Give them each a name like user-fm and run a script like this:


#!/bin/sh

for file in user-fm user2-fm user3-fm ; do

mv $file .fetchmailrc

fetchmail

mv .fetchmailrc $file

done

exit 0


Notice the second-to-last line in the .fetchmailrc? That filters the mail
through procmail.

Here's your ~/.procmailrc (you can ignore formail)

SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin
MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail
LOGFILE=$MAILDIR/log
DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/your_inbox

:0:
* ^To.*user
! destination address on their machine (email address)


#etc. This forwards the mail, without keeping a copy on the machine.




:0:
${DEFAULT}



This is very close to workable for you, I think.


HTH


Alan C


--

take control of your mailbox ----- elrav1 ----- http://tinyurl.com/l55a
spammers hate this program because they can't beat it

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 00:11:59 +0100, Greg <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

I should have also noted that you could, if the other boxes weren't
accepting mail or up, have them send a signal to your gateway linux box
that have it run fetchmail with their .fetchmailrc

Like /dev/* said, sendmail, and even the other mtas, which you would need
if you are going to queue the mail, are monstsrously complex (stay away
from sendmail, like he said, for SURE).

I use a very tiny and simple "sendmail emulation" called ssmtp. Works great
and has a 4 line config file.

You can send the mail, with procmail, to a file on the gateway linux
(assuming mbox format) then that could be retrieved at will by the other
users when they wanted to check their mail (with rcp or ftp or the like,
scripted for simplicity) to their own maildirectory to be handled from then
onward by their mail client.

That way you could have that script run every n minutes with by wrapping it
up like so:

#!/bin/sh

while true; do

(the other script here, minus the #!/bin/sh and exit 0 )

sleep n

done


This would run like a daemon, fetching everyone's mail every n minutes,
and putting it in a file for them to retrieve at will.

The procmail recipe for that would be:


:0:
* ^To.*user
name_of_file_in_$MAILDIR


Alan C



--

take control of your mailbox ----- elrav1 ----- http://tinyurl.com/l55a
spammers hate this program because they can't beat it