Package: debian-installer-manual Version: 20061102 [ Well, this bug is not the November '06 version but the January '07 version which has not been uploaded yet ]
I've just finished translating the (new) SMTP chapter to Spanish and I've
found that there is no documentation on how to setup the system so that the
local mail (system administrator's) is delivered in such a way that a user
using a *graphical* client (evolution, kmail or icedove) can access it.
The d-i manual boils down to "if you use {kmail,evolution,icedove} you have
to use mutt in Debian's default configuration to read your system's e-mail"
I've recently (almost) succesfully configured a novice's system so that all
the system's mail were sent to his $HOME so that he could easily read them
using the graphical client. I did so by using a different transport definition
for exim4 which would points to a Maildir in the user's home dir and store
the system e-mail in mbox format there. After configuring the local client
so that it would read also ~/Maildir/ as an alternate location for mails.
It took me some time (googling and reading documentation) before I eventually
found out that there was *already* a 'maildir_home' transport definition
in Debian's default exim4 configuration which can be used simply by setting
'dc_localdelivery' (in /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf) to 'maildir_home'
(instead of the default 'mail_spool') and rerunning
/usr/sbin/update-exim4.conf
I see several advantages to this setup:
a.- a novice user does not have to different interfaces (one of them being a
text-only interface which he might not master) to read all the email he is
interested in.
b.- /var/mail/ does not get used so there is no chance that it will fill up
because of mail sent to the sysadmin that the user does not read or delete
(I've seen this happen in desktop systems quite some times)
After I configure the system like that my user was much more happier since he
could see both his personal e-mail and the system's e-mail from a single
interface (even though the behaviour was sub-optimal [1])
I'm not sure if the above was the best solution for this issue [2]. In any case:
wouldn't it be possible to describe in the d-i manual what setup needs to be
done to make it possible for users of graphical e-mail clients to see *all*
the e-mail in a single interface?
Or this is considered out of scope for the manual?
Regards
Javier
[1] I say sub-optimal because when kmail is running it would not see "new"
mail dropped in ~/Maildir/ (since he is not acting as MDA). Actually,
it will not even notice there is new e-mail after stopping it and starting it
again. I had to introduce a small wrapper that would remove the summary file
created by kmail in ~/Maildir/ so that every time it was launched it re-read
the contents of the mbox in there.
[2] I could have probably used procmail with a simple rule to store all the
mails in kmail's mailbox locations instead of changing the mail transport
mode, but I guess that would still be klunky.
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