This is really a general Unix question but I'll post it here since we have
a mix of Digital Unix and Linux machines.
Users have their inboxes on the campus mail server, which is accessible
only via POP (no IMAP--it's beyond my control). So the question is what
is the best way for our users to get their mail from the server. Since we
have many workstations on an NIS domain, we want their mail accessible
from any machine. Saved messages are fine, since they live in the users'
NFS-mounted home directories. But the inbox is a problem since it's
unique to each machine. If someone uses a POP client to retrieve mail to
one machine, it is only accessible from that machine until they save it
in a different folder. (We use pine for email.)
Several solutions come to mind. The inboxes could be placed in an NFS
directory, but that doesn't seem very safe, especially since some of the
workstations run Linux and don't do the same type of NFS locking.
Another possiblilty is setting up an IMAP server which all POP'd mail goes
to. But I haven't found a pop client that stores retrieved mail on an
IMAP server. There's fetchmail, which passes mail to the local sendmail,
which can then be configured to forward it to a particular host.. but that
seems kind of messy.
What do you think of these solutions? Are there any better ones? Could
something like procmail (which I've never used) help? Is there any hope?
We want the solution to be as transparent to the users as possible.
Thanks for any responses.
--Nick Michal
nmichal_at_cs.ups.edu
Received on Wed May 05 1999 - 21:10:14 NZST