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Evangelion
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Joined: 31 May 2002
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Location: Helsinki, Finland
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 Posted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 7:05 pm Post subject: Pine & Fetchmail |
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I'm having some problems setting up email for my wife. Basically, she likes Pine. Our email-system uses POP3, and Pine doesn't work perfectly with POP3. So I decided to set up fetchmail, that fetches her email from the ISP, and she could then read it with Pine. Simple so far... But it doesn't work. After further studying, it started to seem that Fetchmail requires a running mail-server on the machine, in order to deliver the mail to the user. Is that correct?
Is there any way to set up Pine and Fetchmail so that no mailserver is running? I wouldn't want to run any extra services on the machine. And I fail to see why I would need a full-blown mailserver on my machine just to deliver mail to one user!
I myself use Kmail, and it takes care of those mundane details for me. But if I want to use Pine, do I really need two different programs just to deliver the mail to the user? Why can't Fetchmail simply download the mails to this machine to be read by Pine?
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nephros
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Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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Location: Graz, Austria (Europe - no kangaroos.)
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| Posted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 7:15 pm Post subject: |
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I don't think so, fetchmail in true unix fashion, leaves delivering mail to an app good at that...
However, any small MTA (xmail, exim, postfix) should be able to handle local delivery out-of-the-box. Just make sure outbound mail doesn't get handed to that.
Alternatively you can get pine to connect to your wifes ISPs IMAP server.
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Evangelion
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Joined: 31 May 2002
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Location: Helsinki, Finland
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| Posted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 7:21 pm Post subject: |
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| nephros wrote: | | I don't think so, fetchmail in true unix fashion, leaves delivering mail to an app good at that... |
Well that sucks  . I mean, we are not talking rocket science, we are talking about delivering one users mail to one folder. I would like to keep the number of running services at minimum to reduce security-risks and resource consumption (even though I have RAM and CPU-cycles to spare. But still).
I have been planning to make it so that Fetchmail executes in the background when my wife logs out to KDE, and it would shut down when she logs out. Maybe I could add Procmail to that mix. Then it would only run when my wife uses the machine....
| Quote: | | Alternatively you can get pine to connect to your wifes ISPs IMAP server. |
The ISP uses POP3, so that wont fly .
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jamapii
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Joined: 16 Sep 2004
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| Posted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 9:58 pm Post subject: |
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I always use fetchmail for POP3. fetchmail can deliver directly to procmail with the "-m" option, bypassing any sendmail or SMTP server. procmail delivers to the user's mailbox in /var/spool/mail
My example: | Code: | | /usr/bin/fetchmail --syslog -f ~/.fetchmailrc -a -Z -1 -e 28 -m "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T" |
This command can be run from cron, but can be modified to be started at login and to run in background.
read "man fetchmail" to find out what all the options mean. |
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evoweiss
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Joined: 07 Sep 2003
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Location: Edinburgh, UK
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| Posted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 10:29 pm Post subject: Re: Pine & Fetchmail |
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Hi Evangelion,
| Evangelion wrote: | | I'm having some problems setting up email for my wife. Basically, she likes Pine. Our email-system uses POP3, and Pine doesn't work perfectly with POP3. So I decided to set up fetchmail, that fetches her email from the ISP, and she could then read it with Pine. Simple so far... But it doesn't work. After further studying, it started to seem that Fetchmail requires a running mail-server on the machine, in order to deliver the mail to the user. Is that correct? |
First, let me compliment your wife on her taste in email programs  .
Second, you will need an MTA do help do the job. I am running fetchmail and postfix and use pine as my mail client. I have fetchmail grab the stuff off of the pop server and then have configured postfix to deliver it into /var/spool/mail/myloginname. She may have to configure pine so that it looks in the /var/spool/mail directory, but that's a piece of cake.
Let me know if you need help configuring either pine, fetchmail, or postfix to do the job.
Best,
Alex |
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Evangelion
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Joined: 31 May 2002
Posts: 1087
Location: Helsinki, Finland
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| Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 8:00 pm Post subject: Re: Pine & Fetchmail |
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| evoweiss wrote: | Hi Evangelion,
First, let me compliment your wife on her taste in email programs . |
Well, my wife is sitting next to me, and she looks mighty pleased with your comments .
| Quote: | | Let me know if you need help configuring either pine, fetchmail, or postfix to do the job. |
Thank you for your offer . I think that I did install fetchmail/postfix-combo last summer, so I should be able to do it again. But I'll let you know if I need any help.
Emerging Postfix as we speak
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evoweiss
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Joined: 07 Sep 2003
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Location: Edinburgh, UK
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| Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 8:07 pm Post subject: Re: Pine & Fetchmail |
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Hi again,
| Evangelion wrote: | | Well, my wife is sitting next to me, and she looks mighty pleased with your comments . |
I'm glad she is and that I'm not the only pine user out there.
| Quote: |
Thank you for your offer . I think that I did install fetchmail/postfix-combo last summer, so I should be able to do it again. But I'll let you know if I need any help.
Emerging Postfix as we speak |
Cool... In postfix you'll need to modify /etc/postfix/main.cf. Here are a few pointers for getting everything up and running quickly.
The big problems folks usually run into when configuring it include not specifying their hostname, and having it specify multiple mail directories (like I said, I only have it set for /var/spool/mail). There is also some set of lines under "debugger_command" which need to be commented out and a line at the end specifying home_mailbox that needs to be commented out.
Also, for fetchmail, I set it to run via configuring .fetchmailrc and have the daemon run regularly. This is very well-documented and shouldn't be any trouble.
Cheers,
Alex |
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Evangelion
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Joined: 31 May 2002
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Location: Helsinki, Finland
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| Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 9:50 am Post subject: |
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OK, I have made some progress on this project. I couldn't get Postfix work properly, so I replaced it with Procmail (It was Procmail I used before, not Postfix), and it seems to be working. If I send test-mail to the user, Fetchmail fetches it, and it appears in Pine's inbox-folder. But Pine is giving me hard time. When I try to access the inbox, it gives me error-message saying: "Can't open inbox: not a selectable folder".
Now, I thought that maybe I had screwed something up when I configured Pine, so I started from a clean slate. I removed the Pine configuration-file, and I removed the Pine-created folders. When I started Pine again, it re-created the folders, and I then proceeded to re-configure Pine. I left the Inbox-path to default setting. But still it gives me the same error. I tried it with a different user, and there Pine works like it should.
I noticed that when I send the test mail, and fetch it vie Fetchmail, it automatically creates new folders. I get "cur" "new" and "tmp" folders beneath the "inbox"-folder in the users mail-directory. The sent tesmail appears in "new".
I just noticed that under /etc/procmailrc there is an entry about using maildir-folders:
| Code: | # Use maildir-style mailbox in user's home directory
DEFAULT=$HOME/.maildir/ |
And yes, there is such a folder in the user's home-directory with sent mails. Could that cause some problems? AFAIK, Pine doesn't work well with maildirs. But in my case, Pine shouldn't even know those folders are there.
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Ferdy
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Joined: 04 May 2002
Posts: 483
Location: España
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| Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 10:05 am Post subject: |
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getmail will get your mail without having to install a full MTA or MDA.
Anyway... I recommend you yo use fetchmail+procmail or fetchmail+maildrop [ both procmail and maildropt are MDAs ], but if you think it's too much to deliver just one user's mail, try getmail.
Cheers,
Ferdy |
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Evangelion
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Location: Helsinki, Finland
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| Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 1:00 pm Post subject: |
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Well, I tried Getmail like Ferdy suggested, and I have it working now . It seemed that Procmail was using Maildir (hence the extra folders it created) and Pine doens't like Maildir. I dropped Procmail and Fetchmail and replaced them with Getmail. It still didn't work (Getmail complained about the mail-folder being wrong type), so I deleted all files/folders that even hinted about inbox, and re-created inbox-folder in Pine. After that, Getmail delivered mails like it should .
I'm happy, and the wife is happy . Thank you all who pitched in on this project.
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