Dnia 29.04.2025 o godz. 19:10:19 Rooma Zoom Zoom via Postfix-users pisze: > > A local email server would be useful for many purposes as an > additional method for communicating between all the different types > of devices on the network, in particular for being able to send > files between them with only the use of email clients rather than > needing to configure networking.
How do you want to use an email client without networking configured? :) > Additionally email has a lot of unique aspects that SSH and SFTP > don't have, such as being able to alert you when something in > particular has been sent. Yes, I agree local email server can be very useful for many things, but I don't think file transfer is one of them. > I've seen some links that explain how to use Postfix as a local > email server, such as this one: > https://gist.github.com/raelgc/6031274 It mentions using the > Thunderbird email client with the "Unix Mailspool (Movemail)" > setting, but it didn't mention any standard-looking types of > settings. It uses "localhost" which I assume will only work with an > email client that is on the computer where Postfix is running. Yes, "movemail" setting is for strictly local usage scenario, ie. when the mail client runs on the same computer as mailbox is located. > But > wouldn't it be relatively easy to allow the rest of the network to > access the server as well? Postfix is only a MTA, ie. it sends and receives mail, and stores the received mail in the user's mailbox. To access that mailbox remotely, you need additional software. The simplest way is to install a console mode email client (like mutt, which I'm using :)) on the server, and ssh into the server to run the mail client from command line and read/send mail. But this has disadvantages, like you can see only the plain text content in emails, and to download/upload attachments, you have to use tools like SCP anyway. Therefore it's common to install an IMAP server in addition to a MTA (a popular IMAP server that is often used together with Postfix is Dovecot), to be able to access the mailbox remotely with email clients like Thunderbird. So you need both Postfix and Dovecot to be able to use mail non-locally. You may add a webmail application (like eg. Roundcube) to complete the stack (but you need an IMAP server anyway, as most webmail applications run on top of IMAP), to access the mail via a web browser, without a mail client. Or you can skip this and just use a mail client to connect to IMAP server. > How do most people use Postfix? As far as I can tell most people > use it to enable scripts to send emails as alerts. But how do > people receive those emails if Postfix can't easily be interfaced > with email clients? See above. > What is it about private networks that mail programs don't like? > Aren't private networks essentially the same as larger ones where > the difference is mostly just one of configuration? Nothing. You are completely right, email in private network can work exactly the same way as on the Internet. If you have only one mail server, and your mail clients are all set up to access that server, you don't even actually need a functioning DNS for that, the only thing you need is that the private domain you choose is set up in the Postfix configuration so that Postfix recognizes it as its proper destination domain. -- Regards, Jaroslaw Rafa r...@rafa.eu.org -- "In a million years, when kids go to school, they're gonna know: once there was a Hushpuppy, and she lived with her daddy in the Bathtub." _______________________________________________ Postfix-users mailing list -- postfix-users@postfix.org To unsubscribe send an email to postfix-users-le...@postfix.org
