central mail

[James Knott]

Paul Mora wrote:
> 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
> 

I have done something similar, but running onle fetchmail and imap 
server.  All the clients are configured to use the ISPs smtp server. 
This set up even works, when I dial into my home computer or connect via 
vpn.



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