[Techtalk] Way to not organise a mail server

[Anne Wainwright]

Hi,

I have to investigate this further, see comments below

On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 22:50:16 -0200
Ricardo wrote:

|> Hi Anne,
|> 
|> Use the /home/<insert username here>/Maildir (if your MUA supports Maildir)
|> or /home/<insert username here>/.mbox. Its easier then sharing
|> /var/mail/whatever.
|> But, IMHO, the best way is setting up an IMAP server like courier-imap. The
|> mail still resides on the server in the users home directory, but you dont
|> need to a share (NFS or Samba) to get your mailsystem working. It's more
|> secure and provides more features.

I have never played with IMAP but if I get the idea right, this is like a webmail without the web, in that you can access your mail, create directories, etc. Now note that i am still using Pegasus Mail (windows) client which supports IMAP I see.

Pegasus is designed to run across a network, but obviously you have to have all the Windows network stuff set up correctly. I think Pegasius has a Maildir-like arrangement (my knowledge of Maildir could be classified as 'frail'). I have over 2000 directories from within Pegasus, but looking into the pegasus/mail/anotheranne directory shows only zillions of files, no subdirectories (or folders in M$speak).

Not that I think my few staff are hackers, but maria has a point to keep the folders out of the home directory. As-is on the win system I have to 'share' the server mail/ directory for Pegasus to access it - I think. Thus it is accessible to anyone who opens up windows explorer, not really secure.

I think my route is to install an IMAP server on the server and see how I can get Pegasus to interact with it.

Thanks
Anne



|> BTW, if you are going to use some kindo of SMTP server too, I recomend using
|> Postfix. Easier to configure, very robust, well documented and it has a lot
|> of HOWTO's (google for it) that you can use to integrate it with Anti-Virus
|> and/or Anti-Spam systems.
|> 
|> Good luck ;-)
|> 
|> Ricardo 'j0k3r' Dalceno
|> 
|> 2009/1/19 Anne Wainwright <anotheranne at fables.co.za>
|> 
|> > Hi,
|> >
|> > As you will know from other trouble-related posts I have got a ubuntu
|> > server up and running.
|> >
|> > Now on the email side, the MUA/MTA/MDA terminology was a bit confusing with
|> > some of them doing more than one thing, but how I organised it was thus:
|> >
|> > postfix to send the mail to my adsl-allowed smtp server
|> > mpop to get the mail from my isp's mail server
|> >
|> > then I got sucked in and installed dovecot as a pop3 server so the mail
|> > could again be pop'd by my network machines from my ubuntu server.
|> >
|> > Not the way it runs on my current office window setup. There I have Mercury
|> > Mail Server (sends and collects mail, all in one). But the difference is
|> > that it puts the mail in user mailboxes on the server and with the network
|> > up then any instance of the MUA (Pegasus) just connects across the network
|> > to its mailbox withut the need for a pop.
|> >
|> > So I have unnecessarily complicated matters with dovecot, although it works
|> > of course.
|> >
|> > Question. before I set this to rights, I suppose we have to have a share
|> > for each MUA to connect to. It could be a samba share for a windows m/c to
|> > connect & an NFS share for the day that I finally ditch windows. But a share
|> > is a share, and I need a share to connect, not like connecting to a pop
|> > server.
|> >
|> > I seem in my playing about to have created a good selection of mailboxes.
|> > Some in /home/anotheranne and then some in /var/mail/  - what goes in there?
|> > When I get it all simplified, should the MUAs be collecting from /var/mail/
|> > mailboxes or /home/anotheranne mailboxes?
|> >
|> > --
|> > so much to do, so little time :(
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-- 
so much to do, so little time :(