On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:04:51 +0000, Aardvark wrote:

> No matter what settings I use, when I try to connect to sendmail

Oops! That should read 'Fetchmail'. Musta bin a brain fart.



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On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:04:51 -0400, Aardvark wrote:

> No matter what settings I use, when I try to connect to sendmail I get
> 'Could not connect to host ' even when in the
> POP account settings and clicking the 'Check What the Server Supports'

You need to install a pop3 server. The easiest one I've found is
in the rpm package imap, which is in the main repository.

Just run "urpmi imap", as root, to install it, and then run
"service ipop3 start" to reload the xinetd configuration.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

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On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:30:04 -0400, David W. Hodgins wrote:

> On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:04:51 -0400, Aardvark
> wrote:
>
>> No matter what settings I use, when I try to connect to sendmail

That should read 'Fetchmail'.

>>I get
>> 'Could not connect to host ' even when in the
>> POP account settings and clicking the 'Check What the Server Supports'
>
> You need to install a pop3 server.

I thought Fetchmail WAS a POP3 server.

> The easiest one I've found is in the
> rpm package imap, which is in the main repository.
>

Do you mean I should install IMAP instead of or in addition to Fetchmail?

> Just run "urpmi imap", as root, to install it, and then run "service
> ipop3 start" to reload the xinetd configuration.
>
> Regards, Dave Hodgins

Thanks Dave, but I'm still puzzled.

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On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:51:51 -0400, Aardvark wrote:

> I thought Fetchmail WAS a POP3 server.

No. It connects to various servers, to get the mail, and then forwards them
on your local computer, via sendmail.

> Do you mean I should install IMAP instead of or in addition to Fetchmail?

In addition to fetchmail.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

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In article , David W. Hodgins wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:51:51 -0400, Aardvark wrote:
>
>> I thought Fetchmail WAS a POP3 server.
>
> No. It connects to various servers, to get the mail, and then forwards them
> on your local computer, via sendmail.
>
>> Do you mean I should install IMAP instead of or in addition to Fetchmail?
>
> In addition to fetchmail.
>
> Regards, Dave Hodgins

Isn't the easier solution just to read your mail from the spool? If your user
name is aadvark on your linux box, then as fetchmail downloads the mail, it is
passing it to sendmail, which then plunks it down in /var/spool/mail/aadvark.
In that case, you need to set up kmail to read mail from your local spool,
which is in mbox format. I don't have it in front of me, but it's a pretty
obvious option when you're setting up an account with kmail. Instead of POP3
or IMAP choose local spool, and that's about it. In my opinion, setting up
either a POP or IMAP server just to read mail you downloaded is overkill.

On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:23:59 -0400, R Wood wrote:

> Isn't the easier solution just to read your mail from the spool? If your user

True. I forgot that kmail supports the local mailbox accounts, as I normally
use opera.

In kmail, select Settings, Configure kmail. Click on the Accounts icon, then
"Add...", then select "Local mailbox", as the account type.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

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On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:31:27 -0400, David W. Hodgins wrote:

> On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:23:59 -0400, R Wood
> wrote:
>
>> Isn't the easier solution just to read your mail from the spool? If
>> your user
>
> True. I forgot that kmail supports the local mailbox accounts, as I
> normally use opera.
>
> In kmail, select Settings, Configure kmail. Click on the Accounts icon,
> then "Add...", then select "Local mailbox", as the account type.
>
> Regards, Dave Hodgins

Cheers Dave. I've set up the account as you instructed, but as I try to
access my mail folder using KMail, I'm informed that 'Transmission
Failed: Could not lock account /var/spool/mail/my_user_name'.

I know this has something to do with the Procmail lockfile but have thus
far been unable to fix this situation by editing either /etc/procmailrc
or /home/my_user_name/.procmailrc (edits suggested from Google search
results).

Any ideas?


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On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:34:59 -0400, Aardvark wrote:

> Cheers Dave. I've set up the account as you instructed, but as I try to
> access my mail folder using KMail, I'm informed that 'Transmission
> Failed: Could not lock account /var/spool/mail/my_user_name'.

From the help contents, selected while in the account modify screen ...

=================
To avoid the risk of losing mail if using a local account it is necessary
to ensure that KMail uses the same type of locking as your mail deliveryagent.

Procmail lockfile will use a small utility that comes with procmail
called lockfile. You can use this if your mail folder is in a folder
where you have write permission. This will not work on your
/var/spool/mail/user file in most cases. It will create .lock files
on your account when KMail is checking for new mail. Please note that
this will only work if procmail is installed on your system.
=================

So, from the above, you would need to have write access to the directory..
Looking at $ ll -d /var/spool/mail
drwxrwsr-x 2 root mail 96 2008-03-12 21:25 /var/spool/mail/
members of the mail group have write access to the directory, with
the sticky bit set.

Add your id to the mail group using userdrake.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

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On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:34:06 -0400, David W. Hodgins wrote:

> To avoid the risk of losing mail if using a local account it is
> necessary to ensure that KMail uses the same type of locking as your
> mail delivery agent. Procmail
> lockfile will use a small utility that comes with procmail called
> lockfile. You can use this if your mail folder is in a folder where you
> have write permission. This will not work on your /var/spool/mail/user
> file in most cases. It will create .lock files on your account when
> KMail is checking for new mail. Please note that this will only work if
> procmail is installed on your system. =================
>

I had come across that information a few times while googling but had no
real idea how to make use of it.

> So, from the above, you would need to have write access to the
> directory. Looking at $ ll -d /var/spool/mail
> drwxrwsr-x 2 root mail 96 2008-03-12 21:25 /var/spool/mail/ members of
> the mail group have write access to the directory, with the sticky bit
> set.

I had also come across this 'sticky bit' information, again had trouble
grasping it's relevance. Hey, it was late and I was tired :-)

>
> Add your id to the mail group using userdrake.

I've done that now. Still no luck with accessing my emails from KMail.
The same lock error appears.

Any ideas? Do I have to restart anything after making my username a
member of group 'mail'?

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On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:03:21 GMT, Aardvark wrote:
>
> Any ideas? Do I have to restart anything after making my username a
> member of group 'mail'?

Click up a terminal an enter the command
groups

If the result does not show mail, log out/in.
2

On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:45:58 +0000, Bit Twister wrote:

> On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:03:21 GMT, Aardvark wrote:
>>
>> Any ideas? Do I have to restart anything after making my username a
>> member of group 'mail'?
>
> Click up a terminal an enter the command groups
>
> If the result does not show mail, log out/in. 2

BT to the rescue yet again! :-)

Cheers, mate. That did the trick. All my emails are in KMail now.



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Aardvark wrote:

> I've installed and configured Fetchmail to download and aggregate my
> emails from a number of mailservers. It's quite happily downloading
> emails every ten minutes as per the instructions I gave it through Webmin.
>
> The only problem I'm having is getting my email client, KMail, to connect
> to Fetchmail to download these emails. I've tried a few different
> combinations of settings for my account within KMail. My Mandriva login
> name with the corresponding password along with 'localhost', '127.0.0.1'
> and the local network IP number of the machine on which Fetchmail is
> installed, '192.168.123.14' in the 'Host' setting. This is also the
> machine on which I have KMail installed, for the purposes of testing the
> setup (if they're both installed on the same system then there won't be
> any firewall-related problems).
>
> No matter what settings I use, when I try to connect to sendmail I get
> 'Could not connect to host ' even when in the
> POP account settings and clicking the 'Check What the Server Supports'
> button. Can anyone suggest where I might possibly be going wrong here?
> Fetchmail is running fine, I just can't find a way to connect and
> download my emails.
>
> If it's of any use in the solution of this problem, my Fetchmail version
> is 6.3.8 and my KMail version is 1.9.7. I'm running Mandriva 2008.0 with
> KDE 3.5.7.
>
I'm doing the same thing, except that I now use getmail:

(a) I used getmail to download my emails to my local mailbox
in /var/spool/mail/doug;

(b) I then used Kmail to move the emails to kmail's own mailboxes.

It sounds as though you are assuming that you need to "daisy-chain" the two.
It is fetchmail that initiates the download from your ISP. The downloaded
emails are stored in/var/spool/mail/username, and kmail collects them from
there.

HTH,

Doug.

R Wood wrote:

> In article , David W. Hodgins wrote:
>> On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:51:51 -0400, Aardvark
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I thought Fetchmail WAS a POP3 server.
>>
>> No. It connects to various servers, to get the mail, and then forwards
>> them on your local computer, via sendmail.
>>
>>> Do you mean I should install IMAP instead of or in addition to
>>> Fetchmail?
>>
>> In addition to fetchmail.
>>
>> Regards, Dave Hodgins
>
> Isn't the easier solution just to read your mail from the spool? If your
> user name is aadvark on your linux box, then as fetchmail downloads the
> mail, it is passing it to sendmail, which then plunks it down in
> /var/spool/mail/aadvark. In that case, you need to set up kmail to read
> mail from your local spool,
> which is in mbox format. I don't have it in front of me, but it's a
> pretty
> obvious option when you're setting up an account with kmail. Instead of
> POP3
> or IMAP choose local spool, and that's about it. In my opinion, setting
> up either a POP or IMAP server just to read mail you downloaded is
> overkill.

That is what I am doing;see my reply now to aardvark.

Doug.