Re: Reading mails: Procmail, Fetchmail, and what?

[Richard Riley]

Merciadri Luca <Luca.Merciadri@student.ulg.ac.be> writes:

> Hello,
>
> I have Procmail and Fetchmail both installed on my computer. I have
> configured an .authinfo file, to be able to read my mails using
> news.sunsite.dk. However, it does not work.
>
> There is something that I do not understand:
> 1. Do I need to use Procmail or Fetchmail to fetch my mails, using
> news.sunsite.dk?

Your mails do not come from here. News (usenet) comes from here. I assume
you mean things like your googlemail (or whatever you use for email)  is
what you want? As a suggestion I recommend not using your ISP email
account since you will change isp in coming years. Get a good
independent email account. I like gmail - fast, access via pop3 and imap
and lots of storage.

> 2. Is it really possible to use news.sunsite.dk to fetch my mails? If
> so, how?

No.

> 3. I have configured a .procmailrc (for Procmail), but it seems to be
> unuseful, as I already have an .authinfo file for Gnus;

Procmail *filters* your email after fetchmail fetches it. This has
nothing to do with .authinfo.

>
> Any help would me much appreciated.

I personally use getmail. I have a script which processes all getmail rc
files in a certain directory so: (~/bin/getmails)

,----
| #!/bin/bash
| host=$(hostname)
| mailserver="hermes.richardriley.net"
| if [ $host != "hermes.richardriley.net" ]
| then
|     echo "Doing remote call to mailserver $mailserver"
|     ssh $mailserver /home/shamrock/bin/getmails
|     exit
| fi
| 
| cmd="getmail -d -q"
| 
| for file in ~/.getmail/*.rc; do
|     cmd="$cmd --rcfile $file "
| done
| 
| $cmd
`----

an rc file on the remote system looks like this:

here we see ~/.getmails/rileyrgdev.rc getting my pop3 emal and calling
procmail ...

,----
| [retriever]
| type = SimplePOP3SSLRetriever
| server = pop.gmail.com
| username = rileyrgdev@gmail.com
| port = 995
| password = **********************
| [destination]
| type = MDA_external
| path = /usr/bin/procmail
`----

Note it telling getmail to invoke procmail. procmail then filters the
mail and places it where the procmail config tells it. In this case the
rule in the .procmailrc is:

,----
| :0
| * ^(To|Delivered-To):.*rileyrgdev.*
| $MAILDIR/.DevelopmentEmail/
`----

(The .DevelopmentEmail is a MAILDIR for Dovecot which is an IMAP
server. I then connect to my own IMAP server to collect all my email in
my mail program).

Its a lot to learn at the start but a valuable process!

Oh, and "getmails" is run via cron on my mailserver or I can invoke it
manually from my local machine where it ssh's into my mail server to run
it.


Have fun!


>
> --
> Merciadri Luca
> See http://www.student.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~merciadri/
> I use PGP. If there is an incompatibility problem with your mail
> client, please contact me.
>

--