Adam Tauno Williams wrote:

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Procmail, from my reading seems to be a glorified filter mechanism to sort email. Considering I have extensive filters customized into my current Mozilla Mail client that will be imported into Thunderbird, I hard;y think Procmail is necessary. I would assume its use is if more than a single email account's email is collected?

Personally, I don't think procmail has any use, but this is a really a theological thing.

I love Procmail. We have many servers configured as null mail clients so all mail is sent to the only server that has receipt of mail enabled. So, output of cron jobs such as backups, port scans, security checks, update availability checks, virus scans, quota checks, etc... get sent to that server. The account that receives it is also subscribed to tons of mailing lists like this one. We use procmail filters to sort the mail out into folders for each host and sub-folders for each category as well as for each list. Then, any of the four people who are supposed to keep track of this stuff can check the mail in the appropriate folder with whatever client they want to use. Since the rules are server based it doesn't matter where they are or if they use squirrelmail, usermin, thunderbird, pine, or whatever. All the mail is still neatly organized in just the same way. There may be other tools I'm unaware of that do this job as well or better than procmail but it has certainly been useful to me. Trying to configure all the sorting rules on multiple mail clients would be a nightmare. Jason Joines ==============================

Adam Tauno Williams wrote:

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Fetchmail only retrieve email from the ISP and it can place it either in the IMAP store or route it to Procmail. It is configured bu going to Yast->Network Services->MTA.

Fetchmail delivers to the local MTA. So fetchmail itself isn't the MTA, it only acts as the transporter from an external mailbox to your local MTA, in this case Postfix.

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Postfix seems to both receive and send email but its exact purpose is unknown, other than it is a MTA.

You said it, it is an MTA - a thing that RECEIVES and SENDS mail - but does not STORE mail or provide ACCESS to mail. .....So, like Fetchmail is the transporter of incoming mail does Postfix, how is outgoing email sent? Does Postfix use an inbuilt SMTP to transport sent mail?

[Procmail snipped, as it is deemed unnecessary, for now]

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clamav is an antivirus mechanism which will be used as Windows clients(my laptop) will be accessing the IMAP store.

Yep. What would invoke Clamav, Postfix as it is the processor in-between the external source and internal IMAP store?

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SpamAssassin is a spam combat tool and should be called into service before the antivirus.

However you want to do it, SA hammer to kill a fly, greylisting kills 98% of SPAM for us with no fuss, but your operating disconnected so you need to use something more clumsy.

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So therefore the procedure would be?: 1) A cron job starts pppd and connects to my ISP. 2) Postfix sends any 'Outbox' email. 3) Fetchmail then receive all incoming mail 4) Fetchmail passes it with what to SpamAssassin 5) SpamAssassin passes the messages using ?......? to clamav to check for viruses. 6) Clamav passes the checked email to the IMAP store using ?,,,,,,?

Postfix should encapsulate both SA and CLAM, you shouldn't have to worry about them. So Postfix will invoke both SA and Clamav and then pass the mail to the IMAP store.

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putting the spam into the Thunderbird Junk folder and the virus messages into the Deleted Items, leaving all messages UNREAD.

Beats me. ok, As long as the spam and virus messages coming into the Inbox have a certain subject, I can setup a Thunderbird filter.

Sendmail isn't nearly that scarry, except for ninnies that can't spell M-4. No one edits sendmail.cf. Why would I need sendmail, surely I have all the above packages to receive(Fetchmail) and send(Postfix) mail?

-- The Little Helper ======================================================================== Hylton Conacher - Linux user # 229959 at http://counter.li.org Currently using SuSE 9.0 Professional with KDE 3.1 Licenced Windows user ========================================================================

Adam Tauno Williams wrote:

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So fetchmail itself isn't the MTA, it only acts as the transporter from an external mailbox to your local MTA, in this case Postfix.

Your correct, fetchmail is sort of a pretend MTA, a 'shim' if you will to get mail from point A to point B (point B bieng an MTA). Basically a transporter :)

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.....So, like Fetchmail is the transporter of incoming mail does Postfix, how is outgoing email sent? Does Postfix use an inbuilt SMTP to transport sent mail?

Postfix is an MTA, thus SMTP is its native tongue. OK :) So I don;t need to setup a transporter to send mail as postfix will do it, like I had to setup Fetchmail to receive email?

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So Postfix will invoke both SA and Clamav and then pass the mail to the IMAP store.

Yes, postfix recieves mail and runs it though a 'milter' process, which may contain SA, clamav, whatever.... gets the mail back and then drops it somewhere. Aaah, FANTASTIC, now I understand the process and what does what.

Thank you Adam, and others, for bearing with me. I have just read or rather tried to read the Postfix manual and boy did I step in the deep-end when I wanted to setup a mailserver :) Such is the price of tuition. I'm going to refer to the Postfix-friends list for help on Postfix. -- The Little Helper ======================================================================== Hylton Conacher - Linux user # 229959 at http://counter.li.org Currently using SuSE 9.0 Professional with KDE 3.1 Licenced Windows user ========================================================================