On Sunday 13 October 96, at 17 h 36, the keyboard of Pete Kelly
<pkelly(_at_)nekton(_dot_)com> wrote:
I'm trying to use a linux machine as a mail server on a windows network.
If you have several users on the Linux machine (which seems to be the
case), yes, you are barking up the wrong tree. You should use UUCP which
is exactly intended for that purpose or may be a special configuration of
sendmail or qmail to do on-demand SMTP.
I'm using popclient to move the mail messages from our ISP to the linux
machine.
popclient (at least version 2, version 3 seems better) is a shame: it
doesn't even test if messages were delivered successfully before wiping
them out on the POP server. If the disk is full, you lose messages. Do
not use it.
The next step (as I see it :-)) is to sort the messages into their
respective mailboxes. I'm trying to do it with formail and procmail.
This has been discussed an incredible number of times on
comp.os.linux.networking and many other lists/newsgroups. Basically, this
is the wrong method. When you receive the mail form your ISP, you've
already lost the most important information: the envelope. procmail
cannot reconstruct it.
It was at the point of, after spending a few unsuccessful hours on this,
that I had the thought of "maybe I'm not using the right program(s) for this
task."
I agree. I strongly suggest UUCP (see the Linux Network Administratoir's
Guide or the GNU-UUCP documentation or both for details).
Replacements for popclient (not for your case but for people who are on a
single-user machine:
popclient : <ftp://ftp.mal.com/pub/pop> but Archie will find many places.
gwpop : <ftp://ftp.pasteur.fr/pub/Network/gwpop> or
<ftp://ftp.std.com/pub/mal/gwpop>, thanks to
Mark Lamourine <mlamouri(_at_)bbn(_dot_)com>
popc : <ftp://ftp.imag.fr/pub/Linux/net>
popmail : <ftp://ftp.cic.net/pub/Software/unix/mail>
fetchpop : <SUNSITE>/system/Mail/pop
getmail : <SUNSITE>/system/Mail/pop
pimp : <SUNSITE>/system/Mail/pop
pop-perl5 : <SUNSITE>/system/Mail/pop