Announcements about the fetchmail MUA

Dave Beach | 1 Sep 2009 02:48

Re: Setting up e-mail capability

Hi Rob - thanks for your patience. I also appreciate that of the list
moderator(s).

> Then I'd definitely recommend an all-in-one package.

I haven't been able to find one yet that describes itself as incorporating
the ability to pop my mail from my ISP, in a manner similar to how Fetchmail
describes itself. Am I missing something? Is there a package you would
recommend by name?

>>> 1) What SMTP software you want to use (Sendmail, Postfix, Exim, or
others)
>
>> So, here's a good example. Do I need to use SMTP software in the first
>> place?

> Yes.  That is what fetchmail will hand the mail over to, that's how
> you will send outbound email.

Er, okay. This confuses me. I thought fetchmail would, uh, fetch my mail
from my ISP and hand it off to whatever mail server software I ran, which
would somehow "pop-to-smtp" it and take care of storing it in an appropriate
manner. I figured that "sending" mail would be handled by the mail server
software (a term I'm using interchangeably with "MTA", probably in error).
How does Fetchmail send mail - unless I can interpret that to mean that
Fetchmail would hand mail over to an MTA, which would send it if the user
was not local to the server the MTA is running on. Is that generally
correct, or am I missing something?

>> It is my

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Rob MacGregor | 1 Sep 2009 08:42

Re: Setting up e-mail capability

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 01:48, Dave Beach<drbeach <at> rogers.com> wrote:
>
> I haven't been able to find one yet that describes itself as incorporating
> the ability to pop my mail from my ISP, in a manner similar to how Fetchmail
> describes itself. Am I missing something? Is there a package you would
> recommend by name?

Even if none of them include fetchmail, adding fetchmail is trivial.
Packages I'm aware of (I've not used any of them) include Zimbra and
OpenGroupware.

> Er, okay. This confuses me. I thought fetchmail would, uh, fetch my mail
> from my ISP and hand it off to whatever mail server software I ran, which
> would somehow "pop-to-smtp" it and take care of storing it in an appropriate
> manner. I figured that "sending" mail would be handled by the mail server
> software (a term I'm using interchangeably with "MTA", probably in error).
> How does Fetchmail send mail - unless I can interpret that to mean that
> Fetchmail would hand mail over to an MTA, which would send it if the user
> was not local to the server the MTA is running on. Is that generally
> correct, or am I missing something?

The process for inbound email, in general is:

Sender -> Their ISP's SMTP -> Your ISP's SMTP -> Your ISP's POP/IMAP

When you add fetchmail this adds the following to the end of that:

-> fetchmail -> Your SMTP -> Your POP/IMAP

Fetchmail simply collects the email from a remote POP/IMAP host and

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Matthias Andree | 2 Sep 2009 08:35

Re: Setting up e-mail capability

Am 01.09.2009, 08:42 Uhr, schrieb Rob MacGregor <rob.macgregor <at> gmail.com>:

> On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 01:48, Dave Beach<drbeach <at> rogers.com> wrote:
>>
>> I haven't been able to find one yet that describes itself as  
>> incorporating
>> the ability to pop my mail from my ISP, in a manner similar to how  
>> Fetchmail
>> describes itself. Am I missing something? Is there a package you would
>> recommend by name?
>
> Even if none of them include fetchmail, adding fetchmail is trivial.
> Packages I'm aware of (I've not used any of them) include Zimbra and
> OpenGroupware.

XMail perhaps - I don't know its feature set.

> The process for inbound email, in general is:
>
> Sender -> Their ISP's SMTP -> Your ISP's SMTP -> Your ISP's POP/IMAP
>
> When you add fetchmail this adds the following to the end of that:
>
> -> fetchmail -> Your SMTP -> Your POP/IMAP
>
> Fetchmail simply collects the email from a remote POP/IMAP host and
> then hands it over to another SMTP server (MTA).
>
>> Okay, but mail has to be stored somewhere, right, by something?
>

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