[Probably a bit OT] A question about mail systems

[Rolf Nielsen]

2011-01-08 16:01, Matthew Seaman skrev:
> On 08/01/2011 12:26, Rolf Nielsen wrote:
>> So here's what I want to do.
>>
>> 1. Have fetchmail get the messages.
>
> Should not be a problem.
>
>> 2. Have an MTA (is that the right name, I always confuse them) deliver
>> them locally to a maildir.
>
> While you can use an MTA it's not actually necessary in this case.  What
> you absolutely do need is a Local Delivery Agent (a.k.a Mail Deliver
> Agent: MDA) of which there are several available.  You should be able to
> hook them up directly to fetchmail.
>
> Some LDAs that understand Maildir --
>
>     procmail  -- stand-alone mail filtering and delivery application.
>     deliver   -- part of dovecot IMAP server
>
>> 3. Have either a POP3 or an IMAP server from which I can retrieve the
>> messages to whichever client I choose.
>
>     dovecot works very well serving Maildir via IMAP.  As mentioned
>     elsethread, dovecot v2 isn't really stable yet.  Also lacks some of
>     the add-ons like managesieve.  For a quiet life, stick to dovecot v1
>     for the moment.
>
>> 1 isn't a problem unless I need to make some radical changes.
>>
>> How do I set up 2 in the easiest possible way? Can anyone point me to a
>> tutorial or HOWTO that I've missed? Or perhaps give me some tips on how
>> to do it?
>
> IIRC there's a '-m' flag to fetchmail which is what you want.
>
> The other bit of this is setting up dovecot without needing to install
> LDAP or MySQL or whatever.  That's not very difficult actually, and
> covered in the Dovecot Wiki.  Either use PAM authentication from Dovecot
> (in which case usernames, passwords etc. will be identical to what you
> use to log into your server), or use a local passwd format file.
>
> While you don't need an MTA for *reading* e-mail like this, you will
> definitely need one for sending e-mail.  The good news is that it can be
> on some completely different system eg. provided by your ISP, or via
> gmail etc.
>
> 	Cheers,
>
> 	Matthew
>

Thanks to all who've replied so far. Matthew's ideas strike me as the 
most interesting ones, and I will certainly explore them and see if I 
can get it working.
I guess I should have explained in my original post that I neither need 
nor want an SMTP server locally, since I use the one my ISP provides, 
but I didn't know about the MDA option.

Thanks again,

Rolf