On Thu, 2001-09-13 at 22:35, Schoppitsch Dieter wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> It's horrible - I can't install Mail Services on my Laptop.
>
> I am a single user and have an Email-Account at my ISP.
> All I want is to dial in to my ISP and put mails from my laptop to
> this mail account and fetch mails from this account to the laptop
> (and read and answer offline).
> As my laptop is very old (486) and I am not that expert in setting up
> I search for small (no X) and simple solution (out of the box).
>
> The last thing I tried was a mutt/masqmail/fetchmail-combination
> without setup-success.
This is two problems. (1) receiving mail, (2) sending mail. I can
relate my experience - I don't know if it is any help, but it might be
interesting...
Firstly, for receiving mail, I use fetchmail. This means that I can use
any mail client I like, locally. I run fetchmail in daemon mode, and it
checks for my mail every minute. Fetchmail is also triggered when my
ppp connection comes up - this is done by the standard Debian install,
and you shouldn't need to do any more.
For sending mail, I use masqmail. I set up a line for each internet
connection location. When each connection comes up I touch a file in
the /tmp directory called masqmail.<connection> For ppp connections I
did this through adding scripts to /etc/ppp/ip-up.d and
/etc/ppp/ip-down.d, and for network connections I use 'whereami' to do
this. My minutely cron job then comes along and if it finds
/tmp/masqmail.*, and /var/spool/masqmail/local/* then it does a masqmail
queue run (masqmail -qo <connection>).
I'm sure this sounds all a little complicated, but I have quite a few
different places I go to where I want to be able to send and receive
mail, and I want it to 'just work' when I arrive there.
Here are some of the scripts concerned:
---------------/etc/ppp/ip-up.d/1masmqmail------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
# Exit if package was removed but not purged.
test -x /usr/sbin/masqmail || exit 0
if [ -n "$PPP_IFACE" ]; then
# Set the provider according to the value of PPP_IPPARAM
PROVIDER="$PPP_IPPARAM"
fi
if [ -n "$PROVIDER" ]; then
# Record the provider name in a file. This is necessary if we're
using
# the "online_detect = file" method (cf.
/etc/masqmail/masqmail.conf)
echo -n "$PROVIDER" > /tmp/connect_route
chmod 0644 /tmp/connect_route
# When the connection goes up, we flush the MasqMail queue using the
route
# defined for the provider by "connect_route.$PROVIDER"
# in /etc/masqmail/masqmail.conf
/usr/sbin/masqmail -qo &
fi
if grep -qsx "^get.$PROVIDER.*=.*" /etc/masqmail/masqmail.conf; then
# optionally fetch mails from POP servers, if a get method is
defined
# in /etc/masqmail/masqmail.conf
/usr/sbin/masqmail -g &
fi
--------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------/etc/ppp/ip-down.d/1masmqmail------------------------
#!/bin/sh
rm /tmp/masqmail.*
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, the script I run every minute to send any queued mail:
---------------/root/bin/mymail-------------------------------------
#!/bin/bash
cd /tmp
MAILQUEUE=`ls | grep masqmail | cut -f2 -d.`
if [ "$MAILQUEUE" = "" ]; then
# logger -tmymail "No mail queue active"
MAILQUEUE=$MAILQUEUE
else
if [ `ls /var/spool/masqmail/input/*-H 2>/dev/null | wc -l` -ge 1 ];
then
logger -tmymail "Queue '$MAILQUEUE' is active - sending mail"
/usr/sbin/masqmail -qo $MAILQUEUE
logger -tmymail "Mail sent"
fi
fi
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In my masqmail setup, for each connection I have:
connect_route.connection = "/etc/masqmail/connection"
and in each /etc/masqmail/connection file, I have something along the
lines of:
mail_host = mail.connection.co.nz
(I think there are newer ways of doing this, but I've been using
masqmail for a couple of years).
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I hope all this helps somewhat - feel free to ask questions if you want
to set yourself up this way.
Regards,
Andrew.
--
_____________________________________________________________________
Andrew McMillan, e-mail: Andrew @ catalyst . net . nz
Catalyst IT Ltd, PO Box 10-225, Level 22, 105 The Terrace, Wellington
Me: +64(21)635-694, Fax:+64(4)499-5596, Office: +64(4)499-2267xtn709
