Hi Szilveszter,
On 01/10/2010, Szilveszter Ciurdar <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> OpenSMTPD is an MTA (sendmail, qmail, postfix are others) so it routes mail
> to other mail servers until it reaches the destination's domain's
> mailserver.
Cool. The more I hear these terms the better.
MTA is Mail Transfer Agent.
I have seen that a lot of people use either sendmail or postfix and I
think I've seen recommendations to use qmail and maybe something
called exim.
I do know that sendmail at the moment is the default MTA on OpenBSD (I
have to change this in rc.conf.local to get smtpd cracking and also
edit /etc/mailer.conf as per the smtpd man page).
> Once there, I think you also need to install Courier or Dovecot
> to serve it to people's Maildirs.
So even though smtpd has this - smtpd.conf(5) ...
deliver to maildir path
Mail is added to a maildir. Its location, path, may
contain format specifiers that are expanded before use
(see above). If path is not provided, then ~/Maildir is
assumed.
deliver to mbox
Mail is delivered to the local user's system mailbox in
/var/mail.
... these are not the same in terms of maildir or mbox as far as the
end user is concerned?
> IMAP is preferred since you can have a
> laptop and desktop with Thunderbird (MUA) and your mail will be in sync.
> With POP, you run the risk of some guy pulling his email off the server and
> saving it locally.
Yep I spent a few hours reading here and there about POP and IMAP.
I haven't used an email client in years (I'm a gmailer) but I remember
I used to have choice.
> Here is a good guide using Postfix:
> http://www.kernel-panic.it/openbsd/mail/
Yes, I've been through that more than once.
It's difficult to keep attention. I try to absorb it so I can figure
out how I can transfer that to smtpd. It's very specific though. I'm
reading it again.
> Use what you know.
Unfortunately (surely it's obvious) I know very little.
I am trying hard to figure out if I can do what I want with smtpd or
whether I need to use other programs.
Learning how to do things with procmail or whatnot and then findng out
I didn't need to will probably only add to the confusion.
To me it seems like it could be very simple - I could accept mail via
smtpd and deliver it to maildir or mbox via smtpd and then
authenticate users via smtpd (or via an OpenBSD account tied to
/var/mail/user). Etcetera.
Simple right?
Best wishes.
- Hide quoted text -
>> Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 08:54:26 +0930
>> Subject: IMAP or POP and SMTPD
>> From: [email protected]
>> To: [email protected]
>>
>> Hiya.
>>
>> I'm in the process of setting up a few domains on OpenBSD.
>> This means DNS, Apache and email.
>> I've climbed the DNS and Apache mountains and currently climbing up
>> the mail summit.
>> I've never done this before and have a few questions.
>>
>> I'm pretty sure I want to use OpenSMTPD - it seems to be the future
>> and simple enough for me. I've spent some time reading the man pages
>> and looking at the misc archives but if there's a pressing reason not
>> to use it I'm ears (okay it's not production ready but this is a hobby
>> box ... and 4.8 is a few weeks away).
>>
>> I expect a handful of clients at remote locations to use an email
>> client (either Thunderbird or most likely Outlook) to be able to
>> access their mail on the server (received from the internet) and to
>> able to send mail through the server.
>>
>> As far as I understand it I have a choice of POP or IMAP and that POP
>> does not synchronize changes from the client onto the server whereas
>> IMAP can.
>> Does this affect whether I need to install any other software?
>> I.e. if I use POP can I get away with smtpd on it's own or do I need
>> to install other software?
>> If I use IMAP do I need to install other software?
>>
>> I notice there are two different methods of storing mail on the
>> server, either in an mbox (where email to a user is a concatenated
>> text file) or to a maildir where emails are individual files.
>> As far as I understand it, smtpd will output in either of these ways.
>> Apart from the robustness point of view, do either of these two affect
>> whether POP or IMAP is used by clients?
>> Do either of these (mbox or maildir) affect whether I need to use
>> additional software?
>>
>> I think I can do the incoming mail configuration but I'm not sure
>> (conceptually) how to do outgoing.
>> Unless I make an open relay I need some way to authenticate users (and
>> also authenticate them access their "inbox" to read their mail).
>> I notice there's a secrets database that's used to authenticate from
>> the OpenBSD box to an external server (gmail for instance).
>> Can it also be used to authenticate external mail clients "logging in"
>> to read their mail and to send mail through the OpenBSD server?
>> Failing that I would need to setup user accounts that are tied down to
>> a maildir with mail sending priviliges, correct?
>>
>> I know that there are other programs I should be contending with
>> (spamd for example) to keep the load off and do virus scanning (via
>> procmail maybe) and whatnot.
>> It will probably be an uphill battle for me and I'll content myself
>> with being able to at least get legitimate mail through and accessible
>> for the time being.
>> If it's at all possible to do this with one set of manpages to read I
>> might have a fighting chance and get to the other stuff later.
>> Please let me know if I'm on the moving in the right direction.
>>
>> Best wishes.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Openbsd-newbies mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> http://mailman.theapt.org/listinfo/openbsd-newbies
>
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