[Wlug] Mail problem for a Monday morning

[Klein, Richard]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brett Russ
> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 1:37 PM
> To: Worcester Linux Users Group
> Subject: Re: [Wlug] Mail problem for a Monday morning
> 
> Oh, in that case, simply explain to her that you couldn't 
> reply to her because your IMAP MUA wasn't properly setup to 
> tunnel SMTP traffic via SSH and all your attempts were just 
> ending up  in /dev/null!  Hiding information is not a healthy 
> start to a new relationship you know...
> 
> ;-)

Excellent advice!  She'll see that I need someone to look after me and
she'll take pity on me.  :)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Stoffel
> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 2:27 PM
> To: Worcester Linux Users Group
> Subject: Re: [Wlug] Mail problem for a Monday morning
> 
> Umm... if you can get into your home mail server via SSH, why 
> can't you send email from there using plain old 'mail' command?  
> 
> Or do you have something similar to what I have, which is my 
> own domain, which gets my email and then dumps it into my 
> ISP's email system for pulling down?  

The problem with setting up a reliable server that you never have to
mess with is you forget how you set it up.  :)
I set up a virtual mail domain, and the mail users of that domain don't
have shell accounts, so I can't log in as one of those users at the SSH
(shell) prompt.  I thought that would be more secure, because I might
want to give email accounts to friends who would have no need for a
shell account.

> In that case, using my ISP's outgoing email servers was 
> problematic, because they didn't like me using my 
> @stoffel.org domain email address on outgoing email.  Or at 
> least they didn't like it much, and people further downstream 
> started dropping/bouncing my emails thinking I was a spammer.

Yeah, I thought about forging the from: header for certain emails, but I
figured my employer's ISP would block that (it *should* block that,
anyway).  Plus, knowing me, I'd forget to change it back after I sent
the email, and then I'd be sending out business emails with my personal
email in the from: header.  I don't think my company would appreciate
that.
 
> So now I have postfix at home setup to use SMTPS to send all 
> outgoing email via my domain's ISP's mail server, encrypted 
> and all is good again. 
> 
> 
> But basically, can you explain your setup in more detail 
> please?  It's not clear where the bottleneck really is.

I'm running Courier-IMAP and...I forget what else...at home.  I added an
account to Outlook at work to check my mail.  It can receive mail fine,
but sent messages just sit in the "outbox" forever.  I tried telnetting
into my server: port 143 gets me the IMAP prompts like you'd expect, but
port 25 gets nothing, so I figure my employer is blocking port 25.
That's not surprising.

My mailserver runs richardklein.org as a virtual domain, and users
@richardklein.org don't have shell accounts.  If I SSH into my shell
account it reports no mail because all my mail gets sent to the
@richardklein.org user(s).

> Richard> What are my options?  Can I use putty to tunnel SMTP through 
> Richard> port 22 SSH?
> 
> Not ideal in my mind, since you're trying to make work act 
> like your home system.  Which as we get more and more mobile 
> in our professional lives, isn't a good idea in my mind any more.  
> 
> Heck, I'm reading this from work, but I'm ssh'd into my home 
> system and all the processing and such is happening within a 
> 'screen' session using Emacs and the mail reader 'vm'.  All 
> text based, and quick and easy to write/read/edit emails. 

I like GUIs for reading email, but the real problem is that mail users
don't have shell accounts on my server.
 
> Richard> One of these days I'll set up webmail and this will 
> be a moot 
> Richard> point, but I'm hoping for a quicker, more immediate solution.
> 
> Blech.  Why is the web the answer to all questions now?  
> *grin* And of course you would make sure to only allow HTTPS 
> connections to your squirrelmail web mail server running on 
> your home machine, right?  

I greatly prefer IMAP to webmail, but yeah, if I ever get around to
installing squirrelmail, it'll only accept HTTPS connections.

-- 
Rich