[Wolves] I been asked a wierd question.

[David Goodwin]

David Morley wrote:
> Can you rout all emails from a network through one machine in order to
> be able to view whats going on. 

Yes, depending on the network you may need to add a firewall rule on the 
gateway device - to redirect all outgoing SMTP traffic through an 
internal box ... (and obviously allowing that one box to connect direct 
to the outside world). That would result in all email going through one 
server.



> I said yes set up a mail server but
> he wants to be able to veiw the mails in something like outlook
> express.  Strictly monitoring purposes not content.  He wants to be
> able to view addresses etc I said just view the log files or setup a
> cron job to print the log files .

Postfix has an always_bcc option which allows you to take a copy of all 
mail passing through it. This can either then be delivered to an 
external mail account, or to another server inside, or just to a 
different email box on the same machine. This would allow him/her to see 
all mail in 'outlook'


> 
> Am I right and would the log files be viewable by something like
> outlook?  (why outlook I have no idea I have a genuine feeling that he
> is just linking anything to do with email to outlook even a log file)

Viewing log files wouldn't be sufficient - most log files only contain 
to/from/date.

I've done things in the past where a perl script stashes a details from 
an email into a database (subject, to, from, date, attachment names and 
sizes), and it is relatively trivial to do more if necessary. Once it's 
in a database, all kinds of magic stuff become possible (i.e. who's sent 
.jpg's around, what are the busy times, who uses email etc.).

thanks,

David.

-- 
David Goodwin

[ david at codepoets dot co dot uk ]
[ http://www.codepoets.co.uk       ]