[Gllug] PSU fans, MTAs etc.

[Andy Smith]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2001 at 01:29:51PM +0100, Paul Brazier wrote:

> What MTA would people recommend?

There was just a big thread about this on this very list, there are
probably some archives if you follow the URL that is at the bottom of
every mail.

The summary was that most people advised staying away from sendmail.
qmail, postfix and exim were all mentioned favourably, particularly exim.

> Is fetchmail the standard for fetching pop3 email or are there other
> programs that do the same job?

fetchmail is certainly the most popular for this purpose.  It will
work.

> I've heard the sendmail has fallen from favour but it still sets the
> "standard" for other MTAs to follow?

It used to be pretty much the only option, and so is still in
dominance.  It has its stalwart supporters and its fair share of
implacable foes.

> Should I close my SMTP port to all but my internal network?

You should close everything that that you do not need. :)

More usefully, if you are intending to download from a pop3 server
with fetchmail and then inject locally to smtp, then no you
don't need to listen on anything but port 25 of 127.0.0.1.

> If I want to separate out emails into different mailboxes or
> sub-mailboxes is this possible? Do I get ~/mbox.1, ~/mbox.2 or
> something? Or is the email directory structure internal to the mbox
> file?

Use procmail.  Where you deliver the mail to, in what format,
underwhat names, and by what criteria is then completely up to you.

Personally I use qmail delivering to procmail, which uses safecat to
write into multiple Maildir-format mailboxes, with mutt as the MUA.

(and yes I do know that procmail supports Maildir but under whatever
the latest version of procmail was about 2 months ago it still
didn't work correctly hence I ended up using safecat)

-- 
"The layout once again proves it's OK for 'celebrated' photographers
 to take dirty pictures of 17-year-olds, but if you're a plumber with
 a Hi8 and a neighbor girl, you're goin' away for 20."
  -- Jon Stewart, commenting on a Britney Spears article in Rolling Stone

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