Question about email

[reg]

First off, I hope this is a good place to put this.

I have been running a wen server with TCE on a thin term, the webroot on a USB stick, for years now and it works great.  I am really happy with it.  However, I would like to be able to have email as well.

Ideally I do not want to have to use a unix mail client on the thin term, what I would like is for the mail to go to my gmail account via imap or pop3.  I would prefer the mail be spooled up on my machine for as short an amount of time as possible.

Traditional thinking points to sendmail and a pop3 server.  If possible I am looking for something smaller and lighter, with less of a footprint on my machine.

I found one solution but that did not use POP or IMAP to drop things at google and it required your google credentials on it, and that is a show stopper.

Do any of you have any ideas?  Is there a reason why there is not a sendmail or imap or pop 3 extension prebuilt?  This also enters another area, I am new to mixing home built pieces with prebuilt pieces.  But for now I need to find a solution first and than I can worry about how to get the pieces to play nice together..

As always, thank you!

[Rich]

Hi reg
You don't say which version of TC or what architecture your machine is.

If 32 bit is OK, maybe this is of some interest:
http://tinycorelinux.net/10.x/x86/tcz/sendEmail.tcz.info

[reg]

Sending email is easy.  Getting it seems to be the more sticky piece of the equation.  In fact I really don't need a means to send email at all from the machine in question as google will do that for me I think.  I may be mistaken but I think the last time I hooked gmail up to a cpanel account where it could get the mail via pop or imap, I seem to recall that once it let me retrieve mail, it let me send mail with that return address via it's smtp gateway.  So no need to actually deal with outgoing mail on the TEC end at all.  Just receiving it and allowing google to retrieve it via pop or imap.

Or, so I think....

[Rich]

Hi reg
I guess I misunderstood what you wrote. I use  claws-mail  to retrieve/send gmail:
http://tinycorelinux.net/10.x/x86/tcz/claws-mail.tcz.info

[Rich]

Hi reg
There's also this:
http://tinycorelinux.net/10.x/x86/tcz/mailutils.tcz.info
You'll have to ask Google for documentation on that one.
 

[reg]

mailutils may be the ticket.  I think claws-mail is a news and mail reader.  Does it actually listen on port 25 for incoming SMTP requests.  There no longer seems to be a pre built mailutils package.

[Rich]

Hi reg

...   I think claws-mail is a news and mail reader.  Does it actually listen on port 25 for incoming SMTP requests.  ...

Claws-mail is an email client, like Thunderbird, but less bloated. I have claws setup to download new mail from my gmail
account every 30 minutes. I use SMTP port 465 and POP port 995. I think some ISPs block port 25.

... There no longer seems to be a pre built mailutils package.

I take it you are referring to TC11 32 bit? I see most of the dependencies are present. You can try saving the following
in your  tce/optional  directory:
http://tinycorelinux.net/10.x/x86/tcz/mailutils.tcz
http://tinycorelinux.net/10.x/x86/tcz/mailutils.tcz.dep
http://tinycorelinux.net/10.x/x86/tcz/gnutls.tcz
http://tinycorelinux.net/10.x/x86/tcz/gnutls.tcz.dep

Then to fetch any remaining dependencies and install mailutils.tcz:

Code: [Select]

tce-load -iw mailutilsSee if it works.

[reg]

Claws-mail goes the wrong way for me.  I want SMTP for my domain enter the linux machine and google to retrieve it from my linux machine via pop or imap so I can use gmail to check it via the web.  It sounds like you go the other way.  It sounds like you have a gmail account and you get mail out of that with claws-mail.

As an aside, why would you wanna use a local client with gmail?  To me that sounds like going majorly backwards.  The main reason I want to go the way I want to go is so I can have my own mail domain, but not have to deal with keeping a potentially substantial mail spool or mailbox.  Let google keep all of that for me.  Plus I can access it from anywhere on anything.  I have a friend who is a die hard thunderbird fan and he pops his mail from his hosted domain to thunderbird.  He has lost all his mail more than one time when disks have died.  If he had grabbed it with google, they will keep it safe forever.  But I do understand some people don't like google.

I think google pops in about every 5 minutes or so.  The mail spool on my machine only needs to hold what comes in over that span.  I need a SPT receiving client and a pop or imap server to do what I am after.

Does that clarify things?  I know it gets a bit murky.  BTW, thank you for your assistance. I just built mailtools on a demo system.  I may need to move that to the DMZ and make a firewall rule to rout port 25 to it for testing.  I need to think about that.

[Rich]

Hi reg

... It sounds like you have a gmail account and you get mail out of that with claws-mail.

As an aside, why would you wanna use a local client with gmail?  To me that sounds like going majorly backwards.  ...

I have a couple of gmail accounts. Clawsmail can download any new emails in less time than it takes to login to just one
of those accounts. The client is always open so if a new email arrives I'll see it.

... Let google keep all of that for me.  Plus I can access it from anywhere on anything. ...

I can login in to gmail from other locations too. Even though I use a client, copies of what I received and sent are still
on the gmail server.

[curaga]

I think there are SMTP forwarding servers simpler to set up than the usual mail servers, but mail servers in general are very iffy to set up. Lots of rules and spam checks.

IIRC if you buy google's business plan you can bind your own domain to gmail (replace with any other big mail host if you prefer). The domain is still yours and you can switch providers later if needed.

[reg]

Thank you for the info Re: google, but I am trying to avoid spending any money.

I am really surprised that there is not a simple SMTP daemon to accept incoming mail and stick it in a spool file.

After that have a pop or imap daemon running and point gmail at that account.

I prefer to do it this way and not SMTP forward to gmail as it is easier to sort into it's own folder on the gmail side.

[CNK]

I think FDM does what you want, it's designed for fetching mail in various ways and can deliver to an IMAP server. As I understand it, your server gets email sent to it and you then want that mail uploaded to your Gmail account. The FDM manual suggests that it can read locally stored mail in various formats, and then "store mail in an IMAP folder".

I don't think there's an existing TC extension for FDM. I may make one some day, as I've got plans for it myself, but who knows how long until I get to that.