🚀 go-pugleaf

Linux Magazine's, "Guru Guidance" column has been running a multi-issue
tutorial on PROCMAIL for processing e-mail (filtering & such).  It seems
as though procmail might be "one small part" of what you are looking for.

B


> Hello all,
> I've been faced with a problem to set up a Linux server to replace a
> problematic Netware one. Essentially this server has to share files to
> windows clients, (i'll use samba), be a http, dns, and dhcp server. they
> are all cool - im good with that. It also it needs to do this funky
> little thing to get and sort the email which im not sure about. ok heres
> what needs to happen:
> i connect to the internet via ISDN.... at my provider there is an
> account that holds all of the email for @my.domain.com
> this server holds the email for 24 hours until i retrive it. i need to
> access this server via POP and get all of the emails onto my server.
> from there i need to look at the user  for examle   joe@my.domain.com
> and send the email to the corresponding account on my linux box (via
> sendmail perhaps, unless if someone else has a better idea) from there
> the user has to have web access to his or her email, but not
> POP......(anyone recommend a good, FREE web email system??) any email
> that cant get sorted to an email account (i.e. no user exists on the
> linux box), needs to be put into a central account
> (postmaster@my.domain.com or something similar)  if anyone has any clues
> on how to set up sendmail, fetchmail or any other program that they know
> how to do it with, that would be FANTASTIC!........ currently this is
> all handled by a program on the Netware server that doesnt do it that
> well, has many problems.
> also, this server needs to do one other thing. we have 2 64k ISDN
> lines.....what i need it to do is sit there with one line connected 24
> hours. it needs to monitor the traffic running through this line, and
> when it reaches a certain threshold, to bring up the other line and then
> use channel bonding to double the speed of the link. When the bandwidth
> usage drops back down below a low water mark, it needs to shut down the
> 2nd ISDN line. Again the Netware server is having MAJOR problems with
> this.   This (linux) server will also be running squid as a web cache (i
> have to have about 100 clients handing off these 2 isdns, its a school
> on a low budget).........
> any help on any of these topics would be great  thanks in advance
> Michael Junek
>

In aus.computers.linux on Sun, 15 Jul 2001 21:01:17 +1000
Michael Junek <micjunek@ihug.com.au> wrote:
>
>if anyone has any clues on how to set up sendmail, fetchmail or any other
>program that they know how to do it with, that would be FANTASTIC!........
>currently this is all handled by a program on the Netware server that doesnt
>do it that well, has many problems.

Many people will recommend procmail, I hate it :)

Try a perl module called Mail::Audit.  Admittedly procmail may be
easier if you don't know perl, but the tute on Simon Cozen's site is
pretty good - see simon-cozens.org/writings/mail-audit.html 

Reason I like it is that it was easier to handle complex things than
procmail, and while sorting on the to field's not that hard, you may want
to do other things. Admittedly if you don't know perl then procmail's
probably a better short term choice.

Fetchmail's fairly simple, thre's a fetchmailconf program that can
take a lot of the pain out of it.

Get your stuff via a "getmail" account, have procmail sort that into
the user's maildirs.



>
>also, this server needs to do one other thing.
>we have 2 64k ISDN lines.....what i need it to do is sit there with one line
>connected 24 hours. it needs to monitor the traffic running through this
>line, and when it reaches a certain threshold, to bring up the other line
>and then use channel bonding to double the speed of the link. When the
>bandwidth usage drops back down below a low water mark, it needs to shut
>down the 2nd ISDN line. Again the Netware server is having MAJOR problems
>with this.   This (linux) server will also be running squid as a web cache
>(i have to have about 100 clients handing off these 2 isdns, its a school on
>a low budget).........
>

Hmm...  There may be linux software out there for this, but I don't
know of any, try searching on google.com

I can see a couple of ways to do it, but they all require some scripting
and network knowledge, how much do you have?

As a quick and dirty fix, I'd monitor /proc/net/dev with a shellscript
every few minutes, and if the numbers tell me to, bring the thing up.
You could use MRTG (www.mrtg.org) which graphs usage via SNMP or a
shellscript you write, and use the graphs to finetune the numbers.  I
have found /proc/net.dev a better bet than SNMP for a number of
reasons.

Have you searched freshmeat for any of this?  www.freshmeat.net

A lot of what's there is alpha or beta, but some things are usable.

I seem to recall seeing a couple of webmail things.

You might also want to search the SAGE-AU archives - see .sig - as I
seem to recall someone asking about webmail a while back.

(Of course if you joined SAGE-AU, then you could get lots more working
sysadmins helping.  Yes, that was a plug!)

Zebee
-- 
SAGE-AU: The System Administrator's Guild. www.sage-au.org.au
  To advance the profession of System Administration by raising 
  awareness of the need for System Administrators, and educating 
  System Administrators in technical as well as professional issues.

Michael Junek wrote:

> i connect to the internet via ISDN....
> at my provider there is an account that holds all of the email for
> @my.domain.com
> this server holds the email for 24 hours until i retrive it.
> i need to access this server via POP and get all of the emails onto my
> server.
> from there i need to look at the user  for examle   joe@my.domain.com
> and send the email to the corresponding account on my linux box (via
> sendmail perhaps, unless if someone else has a better idea)
> from there the user has to have web access to his or her email, but not
> POP......(anyone recommend a good, FREE web email system??)
> any email that cant get sorted to an email account (i.e. no user exists on
> the linux box), needs to be put into a central account
> (postmaster@my.domain.com or something similar)

it's fairly simple to set up, but forget about using popmail for it,
it's not really appropriate for that sort of use.

what you need to do is run sendmail on your local server. set it up in
your domain's dns record as the primary mail exchanger for that domain
(i assume your local server has got a fixed ip address?) set up your
isp's mail server as the secondary mx (mail exchanger) for that domain
(they shouldn't have a problem with that). and get mail delivered direct
to your local machine. sendmail and (probably) procmail will see to the
local delivery side of it.

for mail addresses that don't have an account of the same name, you can
either put an entry in /etc/mail/aliases or use sendmail's virtual user
configuration (/etc/mail/virtusertable). virtusertable is necessary if
you want a "catchall" option like you describe, so that mail addressed
to non-existent users gets delivered to an administrator or something,
rather than bouncing.

all this is fairly simple to set up. the documentation that comes with
the sendmail sources should be enough to get by with. however, you'll be
much better off if you can get your hands on a copy of the o'reilly
sendmail book. i doubt very much you'll want to buy this (last time i
looked, it was over au$100!!!) but you might just find it in a library
somewhere. i'm pretty experienced in this stuff, so feel free to ask for
more info if you need it. but please don't cross-post to multiple
newsgroups.

later
will

"Michael Junek" <micjunek@ihug.com.au> wrote in message
news:9irt8e$pt0$1@lust.ihug.co.nz...
> Hello all,
>
> i connect to the internet via ISDN....

> i need to access this server via POP and get all of the emails onto my
> server.

There's probably quite a few options for this - starting with fetchmail.
The problem that you'll usually run into with this sort of thing is that POP
isn't really designed with multiple mailboxes combined into one in mind.
You'll see some problems with it handling stuff like mailing lists as they
often only reach their intended recipient due to headers provided by the
MTA.  It's at least three years since I last did this but at the time I
found a percentage of all mail would need manual intervention to end up
going to it's intended recipient.

You say later that your ISDN is up 24/7 - if this is the case you may find
yourself better off just having all mail delivered directly to your machine
and going from there.  If mail is delivered using by an MTA it will be far
more reliable.  At that level you really only need to look at whatever MTA
you want to use (sendmail, postfix, qmail etc).

> from there the user has to have web access to his or her email, but not
> POP......(anyone recommend a good, FREE web email system??)

I've been using Aeromail here (needs PHP and IMAP) but there's endless
choices out there - have a look at http://freshmeat.net/ for plenty more
options in varying stages of development.

> any email that cant get sorted to an email account (i.e. no user exists on
> the linux box), needs to be put into a central account
> (postmaster@my.domain.com or something similar)

This will depend on the software you end up using but shouldn't be a
problem.

> if anyone has any clues on how to set up sendmail, fetchmail or any other
> program that they know how to do it with, that would be FANTASTIC!........

If you can have the ISP set up an MX to your machine and then act as
secondary this is probably going to result in a more reliable result.

> we have 2 64k ISDN lines.....what i need it to do is sit there with one
line
> connected 24 hours. it needs to monitor the traffic running through this
> line, and when it reaches a certain threshold, to bring up the other line
> and then use channel bonding to double the speed of the link. When the

What do you have managing your ISDN?  Is it a card in a PC or is it on a
router of some sort?  If it's not a card in a PC then you're probably best
off using the router to handle these sorts of things - most decent ISDN
routers will provide this functionality although actual effectiveness will
be partially dependent on what service level your ISP provides for this sort
of thing.

If you're doing it with a card in a PC then check the software appropriate
to that card - I'd hope that sort of functionality would be included.  We
use ISDN routers normally so I can't help much on that score.

> with this.   This (linux) server will also be running squid as a web cache
> (i have to have about 100 clients handing off these 2 isdns, its a school
on
> a low budget).........

If you're doing squid you may also want to look at transparent proxying to
force traffic through the proxy - this will improve the effectiveness of
your cache without having to rely on correct configuration of client
machines.  It may introduce fine-tuning problems with some web sites -
there's some out there that don't cache well.

Hope that's of some help.

CYA, Dave

Hi there,

Here is what you can do:

1. With 1 ISDN up 24/7 you should set up an E-Mail server on-site.

2. For your mail server you can use "qmail", a very compact and
   reliable mail server, used here for 3 years - never goes down.

   Qmail can be set up to run with the more reliable "/Maildir"
   mailbox setup.  It will also run E-Mail accounts without the
   need to set up "shell" accounts on the Linux box.

   Go to www.qmail.org and take a look.

   There are other mail servers out there like Exim that may be
   more to your liking.  Sendmail is probably the most difficult
   one to set up in a secure fashion.

3. Have your ISP deliver all mail to your mail server by having
   the appropriate settings set on the DNS.

4. All your machines can then get mail via POP3 (Or Imap) from
   your mail server.

5. For your ISDN you need either a decent ISDN router like a Cisco
   801 or a Netgear RT328 (RT338) or if you are on a budget
   then get a NetJet card from Traverse Technology in Melbourne.

   The NetJet is a HiSax Chipset based ISDN card and is supported in
   all newer linux kernels. (2.2.5 and onwards), it costs AU$ 269.-
   and is a PCI card.

   An added advantage is that the card forms one side of a firewall
   interface - add and extra network card and bingo, you have a
   firewall.  Set NAT up as well and you have a good secure system.

   We do that here and it works like a charm on an old Pentium PC,
   firewall, router and ISDN access device all in one.  It can also
   bring up the 2nd ISDN channel with multilink PPP enabled for
   an additional 64K bandwidth on demand.

Hope this helps.

Anthony White
System Admin


Michael Junek wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I've been faced with a problem to set up a Linux server to replace a
> problematic Netware one. Essentially this server has to share files to
> windows clients, (i'll use samba), be a http, dns, and dhcp server. they are
> all cool - im good with that. It also it needs to do this funky little thing
> to get and sort the email which im not sure about.
> ok heres what needs to happen:
> 
> i connect to the internet via ISDN....
> at my provider there is an account that holds all of the email for
> @my.domain.com
> this server holds the email for 24 hours until i retrive it.
> i need to access this server via POP and get all of the emails onto my
> server.
> from there i need to look at the user  for examle   joe@my.domain.com
> and send the email to the corresponding account on my linux box (via
> sendmail perhaps, unless if someone else has a better idea)
> from there the user has to have web access to his or her email, but not
> POP......(anyone recommend a good, FREE web email system??)
> any email that cant get sorted to an email account (i.e. no user exists on
> the linux box), needs to be put into a central account
> (postmaster@my.domain.com or something similar)
> 
> if anyone has any clues on how to set up sendmail, fetchmail or any other
> program that they know how to do it with, that would be FANTASTIC!........
> currently this is all handled by a program on the Netware server that doesnt
> do it that well, has many problems.
> 
> also, this server needs to do one other thing.
> we have 2 64k ISDN lines.....what i need it to do is sit there with one line
> connected 24 hours. it needs to monitor the traffic running through this
> line, and when it reaches a certain threshold, to bring up the other line
> and then use channel bonding to double the speed of the link. When the
> bandwidth usage drops back down below a low water mark, it needs to shut
> down the 2nd ISDN line. Again the Netware server is having MAJOR problems
> with this.   This (linux) server will also be running squid as a web cache
> (i have to have about 100 clients handing off these 2 isdns, its a school on
> a low budget).........
> 
> any help on any of these topics would be great
> 
> thanks in advance
> 
> Michael Junek

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