After years of procrastination, I'm now trying to master the Zen of
email on linux. I've been using an MUA to poll my remote (POP) server
directly, but now I want to run fetchmail as a daemon and incorporate
procmail for filtering somehow.
There's a ton of Web pages on installing/configuring these app's for
specific purposes, but none explains the basic relationships between
them, which I consider preliminary knowledge.
Question 1: How do fetchmail, my local spool file, and procmail all
relate? None of the sample config's I've looked at for fetchmail
indicate to where fetchmail fetches, and in what format. Kinda looks
like it only knows how to append emails to a local spool file. Is that
right? So procmail can split messages into different folders. Does
that occur at some later stage, or can a fetchmail daemon route messages
directly to procmail, so that they are there ready for my MUA to read?
If not, it seems like the MUA will have to retrieve them actively, and
since they're now on my local machine, I'll need something like postfix
running locally to serve them from the spool. That seems far too
complicated for an end user, so I must be confused.
Question 2: Do I need sendmail? I've heard it's only required if I
want cron jobs and such to be able to email things. Otherwise, I can
just use my remote SMTP server, yes?
Question 3: I have my saved mail in a strange place, not ~/.mail, or
whatever the standard location is. There's a directory for each mail
folder, and each message is a separate file, which I believe is the mbox
format, yes? Will procmail conform to this?
Question 4: After installing fetchmail on Gentoo, I tried running the
start script in /etc/init.d, but it couldn't find /etc/fetchmailrc.
What needs to go into that file? Will it effectively replace my
~/.fetchmailrc file, since I'm running it as root at bootup? If yes,
then I presume the contents would be the same as that dot file in my
home.
What I want in general (and maybe should said in the first place) is for
some daemon to start at boot time, system-wide, so I could configure it
for my email service and then not think about it again. Ideally, that
process would invoke procmail, which would then distribute the mail
finally into my mbox directories, just the way I like it (filtering out
my spam in the process); and my MUA, Sylpheed claws ("It bites!"),
wouldn't have to sort or filter or anything. Better still, I could run
a different MUA against the same files, with minimal configuration. Am
I only dreaming?
Would that I could find a simple diagram of how these pieces fit
together. But perhaps one of you system admin types could wax eloquent
on the matter.
Merci en avance,
--Jason Van Cleve
--
What's the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don't know, and I
don't care.
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