Very Computer

by **Faceles** » Sat, 13 Jun 1998 04:00:00

I'm connected to the Internet. I can send e-mail out, BUT I can't
receive mail. Basically, my goal is to set up my Linux machine as
an e-mail service provider. How can I do this?

I've read that SENDMAIL is MTA only. I'm ASSUMING that means
that it can only send e-mail out. How can I receive e-mail and store it

in my hard drive? And the next question is: how can I read them.

Sorry for my laziness,
Faceless

by **Sam Trenhol** » Sat, 13 Jun 1998 04:00:00

Quote:>Basically, my goal is to set up my Linux machine as an e-mail service
>provider. How can I do this?

The general procedure is as follows:

* Get a static IP from you ISP. This will cost lots of money.

* Get a domain and set up the mail exchanger to have the IP that is the
static IP your ISP gives you. You will probably have to set up BIND to
do this, or have your ISP do this for you.

* Configure sendmail to accept mail for the domain in question. The simplest
way to do this is to make the hostname of your machine the name of your
domain.

Quote:>I've read that SENDMAIL is MTA only. I'm ASSUMING that means
>that it can only send e-mail out.

Sendmail is also a MDA, that can run in daemon mode. I should mention
that you have other options besides sendmail, namely qmail, exim, and
smail.

Quote:>How can I receive e-mail and store it in my hard drive?

See above.

Quote:>And the next question is: how can I read them.

This is easy. Type in this command:

pine

About being "lazy", it takes quite a bit to do this. Doing it is nice
though--you get an infinite number of email addresses, which makes spam
tracking and spam protection much, much easier.

- Sam
--
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Flames directed to /dev/null -|- Spam sent here may be posted to n.a.n-a.email

by **Nathan Han** » Mon, 15 Jun 1998 04:00:00

> I'm connected to the Internet. I can send e-mail out, BUT I can't
> receive mail. Basically, my goal is to set up my Linux machine as
> an e-mail service provider. How can I do this?

It depends on your connection type.

If you have a non-permanent dialup then your provider probably uses
IMAP or POP3 to store your email. I recommend the fetchmail package
to retrieve the email off your provider's servers.

If you have a permanent connection then you could do something more
fancy with sendmail. The sendmail package included with most of the
Linux distributions come pre-setup for this connection type.

Quote:> I've read that SENDMAIL is MTA only.

Yes.

Quote:> I'm ASSUMING that means that it can only send e-mail out.

No.

Quote:> How can I receive e-mail and store it in my hard drive?

Fetchmail works in conjunction with sendmail. Sendmail will dump an
email message in /var/spool/mail. Fetchmail transfers the email off
your provider's servers and into sendmail for dumping.

Quote:> And the next question is: how can I read them.

You need an MUA. I recommend pine.

Basically, install the sendmail package. Then install the fetchmail
package. Configure /etc/fetchmail.conf according to the instruction
files you get with fetchmail: you need to insert some info.

Finally install the pine package. Type "pine" to read your mail. It
might help you to reboot, to startup the necessary programs. You'll
find this is all fairly straightforward stuff.

If you use a decent distro like RedHat or Debian, then the email is
ready to go if you selected the "mail" subsystem during install.

--
Modern computers have advanced to the point where they are extremely
intuitive, though obviously you have to spend a lot of time learning
how to use them first.

by **John W. M. Steve** » Tue, 16 Jun 1998 04:00:00

>I'm connected to the Internet. I can send e-mail out, BUT I can't
>receive mail. Basically, my goal is to set up my Linux machine as
>an e-mail service provider. How can I do this?

The back bone of the Internet Email system is SMTP (simple mail transfer
protocol). One of the requirements for SMTP to work, is that the receiving
machine be connected and accessible on the Internet at all times.

Obviously, most home machines are anything but fully/constantly connected.

This fact has given rise to a number of store-and-forward services, including
POP (post office protocol) and IMAP.

Quote:>I've read that SENDMAIL is MTA only. I'm ASSUMING that means
>that it can only send e-mail out.

Sorry, but an MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) will indeed both send and receive
email. But with your box being disconnected from the network most of the
time, sendmail cannot receive email.

Quote:>How can I receive e-mail and store it
>in my hard drive?

Best bet: set up a cron job to dial out to your ISP on a regular basis,
connect using POP (since you specified that you want your mail stored
on your hard drive), get all messages from your ISP, delete all messages
off your ISP, then close down the connection.

Quote:>And the next question is: how can I read them.

Any MUA (Mail User Agent) can be used read your mail. Elm, Pine, etc.

Netscape doesn't work really well for this task, unless it is connected
to a local service, such as IMAP.

IOW, setting up an IMAP server on your local machine, then connecting to
it from netscape, seems to work pretty well.

Note that you really need to modify your sendmail configuration to
rewrite your reply addresses to be the address of your ISP. . . otherwise
your correspondents will get a lot of bounces.

Questions? Email me directly.

John S.

by **Redn** » Sun, 28 Jun 1998 04:00:00

I've finally figured out my problem. MX
wasn't acknowledging my IP as an E-Mail
provider.

BTW, I'm using Red Hat 5.1. Installation
was TOO easy. It's scary.

Very Computer

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I'm a lazy newbie with a question

I'm a lazy newbie with a question

I'm a lazy newbie with a question

I'm a lazy newbie with a question

I'm a lazy newbie with a question