Suggestions for centralizing LAN mail?

nuance9 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Sep 2002 Posts: 85

I have 4 boxes in the LAN.

1) P150 running FreeSCO as a router / firewall.
2) P150 Laptop running Gentoo
3) K6400 Box running Gentoo
4) P600 Box running RH8 / W2K

I have an external webhost that handles my email.

Currently I have email clients setup on each machine, and I can access my email from my remote host on any of them - but the retrieved email then is on that machine and not accessible if I log onto another machine on the LAN.

Basically I would like to setup one of the machines, probably #3 to retrieve email from the remote host and store email for all local users in a single location - thus allowing stored emails to be accessed from any box on the LAN you open your favorite email client on.

I have done a bit of searching, and it seems like there are an overwhelming number of choices. So I am looking for some recommendations.

Thanks!

-JP

PowerFactor · Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2003 9:18 pm Post subject:

I have the following on my server.

getmail to download the mail.
maildrop to sort and filter it.
courier-imap so I can access it from any box.

I download all my pop accounts into one account on the server so I only have to set up that one account in my clients.

kamikaz3 · Apprentice Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Posts: 187

I have:
fetchmail // getting mail from pop3 and imap accounts
postfix // fetchmail dilivers to postfix - smtp
procmail/spamassassin //filters, spamassassin is a great tool (maybe a little CPU intensive)
courierimap //local mailfolders, it's imap so you can read/delete/manage mails from every where on earth
squirrelmail // reading my mails online like hotmail or yahoo, it also requires apache and php_mod

I also send my mail through the server (using postfix as relay)

tgoodaire · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2003 12:00 am Post subject: Fetchmail

I would say, use fetchmail to retrieve the mail, some kind of mta (sendmail, postfix, qmail...), and then run an imap server. This way, the email will stay on your central server, and be accessable to all of your machines.
_________________
I bent my wookie.

nuance9 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Sep 2002 Posts: 85

Sounds like fetchmail is the way to go as far as retrieving the mail from the remote server.

Then I need an MTA and IMAP, right?

Has anyone used Exim as an MTA? Exim or Postfix sound like a good solution for the MTA layer.

As far as IMAP - sounds like courier-imap is the way to go from the available posts in the forums.

With that setup (fetchmail, exim || postfix, courier-imap) will I be able to sort the various incoming mail to seperate mailboxes? I.e., will mail retrieved from the account for userX@mydomain get routed to a different mailbox than mail from the userY@mydomain? If not, what do I need to add to the above formula to achieve that functionality?

Again, thank you all very much for you helpful replies!

-JP

tgoodaire · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2003 5:20 am Post subject: Email

You can route email from different accounts to different mailboxes with your mta. I've tried exim in the past. It's very easy to configure.
_________________
I bent my wookie.