[Menai-LUG] email server question

[Kevin Donnelly]

Hi David

On Thursday 27 March 2003 5:17 pm, David Goadby wrote:
> Currently I have lots of POP3 mailboxes on the webhost and each user has
> Outlook configured for their own mailboxes. It works but is now becoming
> inflexible as I have to keep administrating the webhost and changing the
> client's Outlook settings. If I had ADSL I would just setup local POP3's
> but I have a dial-up so my emails are at ther ISP and the webhost.

The short answer is that I've looked at doing this, but never actually ended 
up doing it, because the possible location wasn't sure about whether to 
proceed or not.

What I had been planning to use was fetchmail and postfix, and in theory it 
should have been relatively simple (although with email you never can tell).

> What I want to do is have just one POP3 mailbox at the webhost and filter
> emails by user name into local POP3 mailboxes. The SMTP mail is just the
> reverse except I will add the usual disclaimer texts to the outgoing emails
> and probably strip off attachments unless authorised.

I don't think you even need one POP3 mailbox - fetchmail should be able to get 
email from all the boxes and map them into the local boxes.

> There is a freebie called SME Server (5.5) does this do what I want?
> Anybody used it?

I used its predecessor, e-smith, a couple of years ago, and it was indeed very 
good as a general fileserver.  I haven't looked at it recently.  You could 
install it (there was a copy of the current one on this month's Linux Format) 
and see what it's like.  It might well work for you in this context, but then 
again it might not.  My only attempt with email on e-smith was not entirely 
effective :-).   The other big drawback is that they have added various bits 
to it to make it user-friendly, but these also mean that it takes a bit of 
poking around to see what is where.  The full SME Server is based very much 
on selling value-added services - indeed, Mitel, who bought e-smith out, 
don't seem to give much publicity to the fact that it's available 
stand-alone.

> I know my way around Linux but, until now, I have configured the usual
> POP3/SMTP email facilties as I have been more concerned with local
> applications such as CNC and databases. I know that what I want to do is
> possible but some expert feedback should save me a lot of blind alleys...
> ;-)

There are presumably people on the list who have far more experience of email 
than I have (univ people?), but if SME Server doesn't do what you want, and 
no-one else appears with firm advice, and you want to continue with this, I'd 
be happy to do whatever I can to help (on the basis that if it doesn't work, 
it's not my fault!).  I did do a fair bit of reading up on the topic, so it 
should just be a simple matter of translating that onto a box, and seeing if 
it works.  Do you have a spare box that you could allocate as a test local 
mailserver, and could you set up a couple of accounts to run tests on?

Best wishes

Kevin