Fetchmail may do exactly what you want. It is called "multidrop" mode.
However, for multidrop to work properly, fetchmail needs to be able to recreate
all the information it needs to deliver a message
from the headers - which is not necessarily possible in all cases. The reason
is that SMTP messages have 3 components; the envelope,
the headers and the body. POP3 messages only have the headers and the body - by
the time mail arrives in a POP3 mailbox, it is
supposed to have been already sorted so the envelope information is no longer
required. This can be important in the case of mailing
lists or BCC recipients, since the recipient won't always appear in the headers.
If the POP3 server accurately makes the envelope data available, then fetchmail
can (usually) read this information. Many ISPs will
add suitable information, and if you look through the FAQ, you will see
examples of working multidrop configurations for a number of
systems. However, I can't give you all the information because I don't know
anything about Speakeasy's POP3 servers...
--
Bill Michell
bill(_at_)mics(_dot_)org(_dot_)uk (Home)
-----Original Message-----
From: fetchmail-friends-admin(_at_)lists(_dot_)ccil(_dot_)org
[mailto:fetchmail-friends-admin(_at_)lists(_dot_)ccil(_dot_)org]On Behalf Of
Steve Prior
Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 10:46 AM
To: fetchmail-friends(_at_)lists(_dot_)ccil(_dot_)org
Subject: [fetchmail][Fwd: I'm a little confused by the fetchmail docs
and if it could be used for my pblm]
It looks like fetchmail MAY save my bacon for a email backup system,
but from the docs I'm still not sure if this is the case or how I'd
do it. I think I might not be that strange a Linux user so I'm hoping
that this problem has been solved.
First, the current situation:
I've signed up with an ISP (Speakeasy) that is very helpful for users
who want to run their own servers. I own the domain geekster.com and
they host the DNS records for me. I run my own sendmail server through
the DSL connection (machine name home.geekster.com). When I asked them
about doing this, they added their own email server (think it's running
qmail) as a backup MX record for the geekster.com domain. They said
that in case of a DSLor home server outage that their
server (eve.speakeasy.org) would queue up the email sent to ANY user at
the geekster.com domain for up to 12 hours and then send it to my own
sendmail server when the connection came back up. I'd have redundancy
with no effort or configuration at all. It has worked great for the
few small outages I've had.
Until Friday. My DSL went down and it sounds like it's going to be a
while. I know their server is getting the email, but then returning
it after 12 hours and I'm not getting it. My linux box can dial in,
but since it gets a dynamic IP their email server can't spool it to me
properly.
What I thought might work is if I ask them to instead of queuing it up
to be sent to my server (which won't work for a few days), could I ask
them to dump email sent to any userid at geekster.com to a single POP
account, then use fetchmail to get it from there and feed it to my
local sendmail as if their server had forwarded it to me, so my local
sendmail aliases and accounts would all get their email? Email sent
from my local machines would not be affected at all since I just use
speakeasy's smtp server. The incoming email would be entirely sorted
for delivery by the to: address in the email, not the from: address
or anything fancy. When my DSL comes back up the MX records would point
incoming mail right to my own server and they wouldn't go through
speakeasy's server at all until the next outage.
In reading the docs:
Fetchmail can be used as a POP/IMAP-to-SMTP gateway for an entire DNS
domain, collecting mail from a single drop box on an ISP and
SMTP-forwarding it based on header addresses. We don't really recommend
this, though, as it may lose important envelope-header information.
ETRN or a UUCP connection is better.)
I don't know if this applies to me or not or really understand the
warning because it sounds exactly like I want to go from POP to SMTP.
Does this apply to me?
Would you be so kind as to give me a sample fetchmail.conf line that
would accomplish what I'm trying to do?
Thanks,
Steve Prior
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