central mail

[Paul Mora]

On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 08:16, Chris Aitken wrote:
> Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. I included most of the original
> post below as it has been a while. I have not switched to IMAPI (and I don't
> know yet if my ISP's server supports it) - things will have to get more
> painful before I switch - because pop is now doing what I want it to do.

Hi Chris.

I missed your original post, so I don't know all the details regarding
why you want central mail, but I thought I'd describe what I'm doing at
home with email, and how you can implement something similar yourself.

My problem was that I wanted to access my email from any computer in the
house.  This included the Inbox.  Most ISPs only give you access to mail
via POP3.  This is basically a download protocol, to get mail from the
server to your email client.  The problem with POP3 is that once you've
downloaded the mail from the server, it gets deleted.  Also, it is
stored in the email client's local folders.  Going to another PC, you
wouldn't be able to see the mail you just read on the first PC.

Here's where IMAP comes in.  IMAP is not a download protocol.  The email
stays on the server always, and you use your email client to manipulate
it remotely.  Because nothing is downloaded, you can see your Inbox and
all your other folders from any IMAP capable client on any machine.

Most ISPs do not provide IMAP access, because then they would have to
store your email, and they don't want to do that.  But, you could set up
a simple Linux machine at home and have it pull down your email from
your provider on a periodic basis, then read your mail using your email
client software and IMAP.

The software you need to do this is included in pretty much every Linux
distribution out there.  Personally, my mail server runs Red Hat Linux
9, but you can really use any distro that has the following tools:

- fetchmail (to retrieve mail from your ISP and deliver it to a local
  user
- sendmail/postfix (to deliver outgoing mail)
- imap (either the standard UW IMAP service, or another one like
  Courier-IMAP

Once you get the basic setup going, you can add all sorts of other
things like webmail (to access your email via web browser from anywhere
on the Internet), spam filtering, attachment virus scanning, etc.  My
server scans all inbound email through Spamassassin, and also does some
basic virus checking.

Anyway, if you're interested in setting up something like that, feel
free to email me.  I can send you some documents I found helpful in
setting this whole mess up.

pm

-- 
Paul Mora <paulmora-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org>

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