Fetchmail: fetching for multiple users in one pass
YouDontKnowWho
accounts. Each user has a fetchmail cron that checks their mail and
puts it locally where it belongs.
Well, right now we don't have that many users on the system, so
setting this up is not that much work or overhead on the system. But
that will change soon and I'm dreading the day we have to manage
setting up fetchmail cron jobs and .fetchmailrc files for every person
we add. Not to mention the processing overhead of all those fetchmail
cron jobs running at various times!
How can we get fetchmail to, in one pass, check the e-mail account on
our ISP for each of our users and locally distribute the e-mail
appropriately? Can fetchmail be set up to do that? We would like to
have a single configuration file that tells fetchmail what to check
and who to give the resulting e-mail to. That way, setting e-mail
delivery for new users on the system involves just adding a new line
to the configuration file.
If fetchmail cannot do this, is there anything out there that can do
this?
Thanks!
--
Principle of Minimum Access: "That which is not explicitly permitted
is denied."
ANNOUNCER: And now we return to our regularly scheduled, uncommonly
entertaining thread...
DanH
>
> In article <Z8WC3.48955$Yq5.24...@news2.pompano.net>,
> "YouDontKnowWho" <any...@yourhouse.com> writes:
> > How can we get fetchmail to, in one pass, check the e-mail account on
> > our ISP for each of our users and locally distribute the e-mail
> > appropriately? Can fetchmail be set up to do that? We would like to
> > have a single configuration file that tells fetchmail what to check
> > and who to give the resulting e-mail to. That way, setting e-mail
> > delivery for new users on the system involves just adding a new line
> > to the configuration file.
> >
> > If fetchmail cannot do this, is there anything out there that can do
> > this?
>
> fetchmail configuration a lot easier. IIRC, you can enter a remote pop/imap/etc
> account, and a local user it's got to be addressed to.
Yes, fetchmail can do that. You only have to have one user do the
fetching. I've got it set up to find about a dozen POP accounts for
four users on the local system and it works wonderfully.
poll isp.one.com with proto POP3
user "user1" there with password "theykilledkenney" is jlseagull
here options fetchall
user "user2" there with password "johnisdead" is abbyroad here
options fetchall
add as many 'poll' lines with as you want and have as many user lines
under each as you want.
fetchmailconf makes it a breeze.
Dan
--
UNIX - Not just for vestal virgins anymore
Linux - Choice of a GNU generation
Frank v Waveren
"YouDontKnowWho" <any...@yourhouse.com> writes:
> accounts. Each user has a fetchmail cron that checks their mail and
> puts it locally where it belongs.
>
> Well, right now we don't have that many users on the system, so
> setting this up is not that much work or overhead on the system. But
> that will change soon and I'm dreading the day we have to manage
> setting up fetchmail cron jobs and .fetchmailrc files for every person
> we add. Not to mention the processing overhead of all those fetchmail
> cron jobs running at various times!
>
> our ISP for each of our users and locally distribute the e-mail
> appropriately? Can fetchmail be set up to do that? We would like to
> have a single configuration file that tells fetchmail what to check
> and who to give the resulting e-mail to. That way, setting e-mail
> delivery for new users on the system involves just adding a new line
> to the configuration file.
>
> If fetchmail cannot do this, is there anything out there that can do
> this?
I think fetchmail can. Have you tried using fetchmailconf? This makes
fetchmail configuration a lot easier. IIRC, you can enter a remote pop/imap/etc
account, and a local user it's got to be addressed to.
--
Frank v Waveren
f...@var.cx
ICQ# 10074100
YouDontKnowWho
OK, so fetchmail can do what I need it to do. But, how? If I run
fetchmail as root, won't the permissions get all messed up (the
mailbox permissions)? And, on our system, each user only has access
to his/her home directory (i.e., /home/user permissions are 700), so
one user running fetchmail for all the others may not be possible.
Finally, our Linux server is character-based only, so I can't run
fetchmailconf.
Thanks again for any information.
--
Principle of Minimum Access: "That which is not explicitly permitted
is denied."
ANNOUNCER: And now we return to our regularly scheduled, uncommonly
entertaining thread...
DanH wrote in message <37DC4221...@usa.net>...
Jens Hilligsøe
I got the same setup as Dan. root is running fetchmail as deamon (There is
only 1 .fetchmailrc on the system). This doesn't ness up permissions on the
users mailboxes, as fetchmail uses sendmail to do the actual delivery. This
also means, that you can use a .procmail for each user if you so desire.
Since it's root there's running fetchmail it also means that root has to
know all usernames/passwords, but the difference between that, and looking
in ~username/.fetchmailrc is sutle...
/Hilli
YouDontKnowWho <any...@yourhouse.com> wrote in message
news:0G%C3.49083$Yq5.24...@news2.pompano.net...
johns
>Thanks all for the replies!
>
>OK, so fetchmail can do what I need it to do. But, how? If I run
>fetchmail as root, won't the permissions get all messed up (the
>mailbox permissions)? And, on our system, each user only has access
>to his/her home directory (i.e., /home/user permissions are 700), so
>one user running fetchmail for all the others may not be possible.
Isn't a problem. I ran fetchmail as root (sorry) and everybody gets
their mail.
>Finally, our Linux server is character-based only, so I can't run
>fetchmailconf.
Maybe you can use it by using an x-server on a client?
johns
Peter Straube
I`ve wrote a script for downloading mail for multiple users:
#!/bin/bash
run=0
# programed by Peter Straube
# echo
# echo Starting maildownload!
for i in `cat /etc/passwd |
awk -F : '{ print $1 " " $6}'`; do
if [ $run -eq 0 ]
then
name=$i
run=1
else
home=$i
run=0
if [ -r $home/.fetchmailrc ]
then
# echo Get mail for $name
su -l -c "/usr/bin/fetchmail -s -t 30" $name
fi
fi
done
# echo End of maildownloading!
What you have to do is edit your crontab, to start this script at various
times.
(Sorry for ny bad english!)
--
-------------------------------------------------
Talk: Pe...@Peter.tui-net oder ro...@peter.tui-net
ICQ: Pest
-------------------------------------------------
A trainstation is a station where the train stops
what the hell is a workstation? ?-)
Bye Peter Straube alias Gott Lee
bill davidsen
YouDontKnowWho <any...@yourhouse.com> wrote:
| How can we get fetchmail to, in one pass, check the e-mail account on
| our ISP for each of our users and locally distribute the e-mail
| appropriately? Can fetchmail be set up to do that? We would like to
| have a single configuration file that tells fetchmail what to check
| and who to give the resulting e-mail to. That way, setting e-mail
| delivery for new users on the system involves just adding a new line
| to the configuration file.
|
| If fetchmail cannot do this, is there anything out there that can do
| this?
You can reduce the administrative overhead of this, by using the
fetchmailcr and some poll commands to have a single run of fetchmail get
all the mail. However, you are still opening a socket for each user, you
are just putting the parameters in a single file. That file will contain
passwords for mail on the remote machine, so there are some issues
there, as well.
The alternative is to have all the mail for your machine, to any user,
dropped into a single mailbox which can be fetched with a single
connect. I'm told there's an easy way to do this, I don't know how, I
have dropped a rewrite rule into sendmail.cf rather than chase the
"easy" way.
Since fetchmail makes a connect to your smtp port and uses sendmail to
deliver, everything should get delivered correctly.
Oh, if you have a fixed IP address, there's a great way, don't have
mailboxes on the ISP, just get your IP in DNS and let the messages sit
in mailqueue. Then when you want to poll, just send ETRN to the ISP, and
the connect will be made, all mail will be delivered, and you will
never have do *any* per-user config anywhere. To me this is the easy
solution by far!
--
bill davidsen <davi...@tmr.com> CTO, TMR Associates, Inc
I thought I had forgotten how to throw a boomerang, but it's
all coming back to me...
YouDontKnowWho
fetches e-mail for all the users of my system from one .fetchmailrc
file.
What I was missing (and was confused about) is that fetchmail uses
sendmail (in my case) to send the e-mails it retrieves. So, a single
user (not even root, even though that's how I set it up) can run it
and distribute e-mail for everyone. Of course, that would mean that
the user would have access to the e-mail passwords of other users, but
that's not a concern in our case.
--
Principle of Minimum Access: "That which is not explicitly permitted
is denied."
ANNOUNCER: And now we return to our regularly scheduled, uncommonly
entertaining thread...
YouDontKnowWho wrote in message ...
>We are currently using fetchmail to retrieve user mail from our ISP
>accounts. Each user has a fetchmail cron that checks their mail and
>puts it locally where it belongs.
>
>Well, right now we don't have that many users on the system, so
>setting this up is not that much work or overhead on the system. But
>that will change soon and I'm dreading the day we have to manage
>setting up fetchmail cron jobs and .fetchmailrc files for every
person
>we add. Not to mention the processing overhead of all those
fetchmail
>cron jobs running at various times!
>
>How can we get fetchmail to, in one pass, check the e-mail account on
>our ISP for each of our users and locally distribute the e-mail
>appropriately? Can fetchmail be set up to do that? We would like to
>have a single configuration file that tells fetchmail what to check
>and who to give the resulting e-mail to. That way, setting e-mail
>delivery for new users on the system involves just adding a new line
>to the configuration file.
>
>If fetchmail cannot do this, is there anything out there that can do
>this?
>
>Thanks!
Rod Smith
"YouDontKnowWho" <any...@yourhouse.com> writes:
> Well, thanks to everyone who contributed, I have a working system that
> fetches e-mail for all the users of my system from one .fetchmailrc
> file.
>
> What I was missing (and was confused about) is that fetchmail uses
> sendmail (in my case) to send the e-mails it retrieves. So, a single
> user (not even root, even though that's how I set it up) can run it
> and distribute e-mail for everyone. Of course, that would mean that
> the user would have access to the e-mail passwords of other users, but
> that's not a concern in our case.
Concerning passwords, you should be aware of two things:
1) Depending upon permissions on whatever script or data file stores
those passwords, others might have access to them. 0700 permissions
for a script of this nature is a good idea.
2) If security on the system that does the fetching is ever compromised
from the outside, so might be those passwords. I therefore STRONGLY
recommend that you use passwords for that purpose which aren't used for
any other accounts or systems. If possible, the mail passwords from
the ISP should be different from passwords used to connect to the ISP
(if those accounts are even set up to allow dialup connections).
--
Rod Smith
smit...@bellatlantic.net
http://members.bellatlantic.net/~smithrod
Author of _Special Edition Using Corel WordPerfect 8 for Linux_, from Que
YouDontKnowWho
get messages in the syslog indicating that identd is being accessed by
127.0.0.1?
I'm getting quite a few of these. How do I get rid of them?
--
Principle of Minimum Access: "That which is not explicitly permitted
is denied."
ANNOUNCER: And now we return to our regularly scheduled, uncommonly
entertaining thread...
Frank v Waveren wrote in message ...
>In article <Z8WC3.48955$Yq5.24...@news2.pompano.net>,
>I think fetchmail can. Have you tried using fetchmailconf? This makes
>fetchmail configuration a lot easier. IIRC, you can enter a remote
pop/imap/etc
>account, and a local user it's got to be addressed to.
>