On 6/8/06, rblythe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Host System Setup (Mepis) - I use Thunderbird to get my e-mail from Comcast without a problem. It is stored on a separate partition that I can also access from Suse 10.0 and Windows Xp (my machine is a multi-boot set-up). In the year I have been running this way, I have not had any problems.
Thunderbird is just a client, so you can tell it to fetch mail from Comcast and send mail via Comcast. The only trick (which you seem to have overcome already) is that you need to tell Thunderbird to store its mail in a different location. By default it will try to store it in .thunderbird in your home directory. Since you have this working on Mepis, I think I can assume that you know how to tell Thunderbird where mail is stored. It's been a while since I tried to do it.
I am really interested in the various servers and security applications right now. For the mail, I wanted to install Postfix and configure it so that it would get the e-mail from the Comcast server and download it to a separate folder on my vfat partition.
What you really want in this situation is probably Fetchmail as Ken described. It would grab mail via pop3 from Comcast and store it on your machine. The only problem with this setup is that Thunderbird stores email and a Mozilla specific format. It's kind of like mbox, but not really. So, this setup would be incompatible with the other hosts your using unless you also set up a similar Fetchmail setup on them. Postfix is an smtp server. It doesn't handle getting your mail from somewhere else. It handles sending mail and processing mail that is sent to you.
My other reason for wanting Postfix (or any MTA) is that right now, if I want to compose and e-mail, I have to boot back into a system with and e-mail program on it instead of staying in my build environment.
Here's where you need a client, like Thunderbird. Since you're in the middle of the build, I'm guessing that you don't have Thunderbird installed yet. In that case, you could use Mutt or Pine. They're console based mail clients with POP3 and IMAP cababilities. With Mutt, though, you need a local MTA like Postfix to actually send mail. However, both would be incompatible with your current Thunderbird mail store.
My thinking is that with an MTA, if I run into a compile problem or get confused about something while learning more about BLFS, I could just compose and e-mail to blfs-support and go on to something else until I receive a reply. My hope also is that if this can be done, then I could download the e-mail responses as outlined above and keep the integrity of my existing Thunderbird e-mail box on a separate partition.
If you had an MTA, you could send mail from your machine without having client access to any external mail server. But any mail there would be a separate account than your Comcast account. My suggestion would be to use a simple client like Pine while you're getting your build up and learning about Postfix. If your Comcast account is POP3 access only, you can set up your client to leave copies of your mail on the server. Then when you boot into one of the other hosts and try to access mail with Thunderbird, they'll still be on the server. Then when you eventually get Thunderbird set up on LFS, you can tell it to store mail on that shared partition, and you'll be good to go.
Plus in my research about Postfix, I have seen some interesting things (spamassassin, virus protection) that I would like to learn how to use as well.
Postfix is a really great MTA, but you should realize that It will be a different entity than your Comcast account. If you just want to use the Comcast account, all you need is a client. If you want to set up your own mail server, then you'll need Postfix. If you still want to learn about that and you don't mind buying books, then the Book of Postfix helped me a lot when I was learning (Google for it). -- Dan -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
