[KLUG Members] Sendmail as POP3?

[bill]

"Robert G. Brown" wrote:

> >I was worried that the mail location would "now be in PINE" and POP3 would not
> >show it once I got it working, but hey, once I enabled the ipop3 service it
> >(almost) worked.  One last tweak was needed.
> Pine does not move stuff out of the file where your mail is located, until you
> tell it to do so. it will stay in /var/spool/mail/[username], which is where
> the pop3 server expects it to be.
>
> In this case, you are logging in to the mail server and reading the locally
> delivered mail from a remote termianl (telnet,ssh or similar) session.

Perhaps I wasn't clear.  On the sendmail/fetchmail box I logged in using PINE and
found the mail.  Then, after I got pop3 running on that box, on another machine I
pointed my e-mail program (Netscape, in this case) to the sendmail/fetchmail/pop3
machine.  But, it wouldn't accept the legitimate password.  The sendmail/fetchmail
box had a user account with an identical user name.  It wouldn't cough up the mail
until I provided the user account password.  In any case there was no remote shell
involved.  Hence, my question.

> Hoever, what you were asking before were transport-related questions, so we
> were talking about how to move the mail around nicely. This is something of
> a change of subject...instead of ruinning a mail client remote from the mail
> server, you're now coming to the mail server and running PINE locally....

See clarification above.

> >I kind of get it, but can you shed any light on the matter?  Why is Sendmail in
> >your diagram above (I'm not sending anything here)?
> Becasue "sendmail" DOES NOT merely "send mail", it also receives mail, and
> processes it for local delivery. Think of fetchmail as a kind of network
> adapter, connecting pop3 to sendmail (locally) to perform the delivery in a
> consistant way.

I guess it is enough to say I've got it working even if I don't know why yet.

> >And the generic command line command for installing a rpm is ...?
> rpm -ivh [path to rpm file]

gracias.

> I also suggest you:
> man rpm

And that's a whopper.

> >>>Wouldn't that be two hensway?
> >>No. Some people just don't know nothin' about grammar! :)
> >Grammar?  I thought it was avoirdupois.
> Oh, please. Henway are aviary-duplicates! :)

Only if there's more than one.  I guess grammar is involved... spelling maybe, too.

> >> >Actually, it was already installed, I had to enable it as a service (
> >> >calls itself ipop3), reboot, and, 'hey!' it works.
> >> Actually, you don't have to reboot at all. For this kind of thing,
> >> merely restarting xinted is fine.
> >Which is why the option to restart ipop3 wasn't available, I guess.
> Probably. You would need to know that ipop3 is configured to work via xinetd.
> man xinetd or man ipop3d

It's those "you need to know" stuff that gets ya.  Like the old "and first you
should have (pick one) saved your work, parked the disk, unplugged it, defragged it,
checked it, formatted it, backed it up, checked for space, grounded it, dusted it,
ctrl/alt/del-ed it, hit ctrl-F4 while booting it, and/or prayed for divine
enlightenment about it."

> >How to add a service?

Still waiting on that one.

> I beleive you had it right, actually.

Well, those are words to remember.

> >>>Lastly, the default "interval" is zero (0).  Does that mean it never runs?
> >> Beats me. I think there's a default.
> >Yup, the default is 0.
> A perhaps true, but unhelpful reply. What does the default mean? What behavior
> does fetchmail exhibit with this setting?

None that I can see.

> OK. I never actually used that configuration program, the fetchmail
> configuration file uses a very easy-to-learn, almost English-language
> method... here's an example....
>
>  poll thathost.net with proto pop3;
>   user melvin there has password grub3by is
>   bob here

Yup, almost English, almost understandable.  Who is melvin and what is he drinking?

> You can have as many of those "sentences" as you have pop3 (or other) servers
> to poll.

> I hope all this helps...

Well, it seems to be working.  One last note on your script.  It looks like the name
of the script is the same as the program it is calling.  What would happen if it was
in the same directory?  I.e., in Win/dos, the order of precedence is set by the
extension (com/bat/exe, I think).  Does Linux have program calling precedence rules?

kind regards,

bill