Docs/Desktop/MTA
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[edit] Fetchmail
Contrary to what I have read about fetchmail, its really easy to use, at least if your ISP is as good as mine (Verizon) and you aren't trying to do something fancy. First off, see that urpmi or rpmdrake is configured to download from the CDs or the net for the version you are running. For me right now, that's 10.1. Then install fetchmail and fetchmail-daemon, fetchmailconf and maildrop.
Fetchmailconf is a GUI that can cover a good bit of ground but you need to understand all the abbreviations and acronyms about email transfer, I won't cover that, but you are free to use it on your own, and it is great for testing. Stick with me if you want to handle it simply and just have fetchmail upload your mail simply.
There are at least 2 ways to launch fetchmail. First is as a user, from your commands. Its a perfectly fine way to do it. Secondly as a service running like a server. The advantage about this is that it will be automatically started on boot up without doing any more.
If you want to run it as a user your fetchmailrc will be in /home/username as .fetchmailrc. If you run fetchmailconf as that user, the file will be created in your user directory.
Here's my .fetchmailconf (remove inline comments if copying):
set syslog --sets the system to log fetchmail in /var/log/mail/
set daemon 300 --sets the daemon to run every 5 minutes, you can pick your spacing in seconds.
set postmaster "username" --complaints to whom?
# Put here each user config
poll incoming.verizon.net with proto POP3 --fetchmail can handle most mailservers, check the man page or use fetchmailconf.
user 'blahblah' there with password '******' is 'username' here
mda '/usr/bin/maildrop -d username' --fetchmail just gets your mail, maildrop delivers it. This is the only line of code maildrop needs.
poll pop.1and1.com with proto POP3
user tweedle there with password '*******' is 'username' here
mda '/usr/bin/maildrop -d username'
Now you can test fetchmail by running fetchmail -v. It should be working fine, and with maildrop to get your mail put in /var/spool/mail/username. If not, the man page is extensive, and ask on the expert list, we are there to help you out.
