Setting Up Email Server to Use Thunderbird

You can install sendmail using apt-get or Synaptic.

But why not just install pine (or mutt) and direct it at your ISP?

I don't want to send internal email out to an external ISP if the information is generally system related. It's not a bad idea to send some info out to notify me about security breaches if I'm not there, but I don't want to MAKE a security breach. Plus, no reason to send out boring cron job stats and other stuff to the rest of the world

"However, what is the email system used _within Mepis_? Is is sendmail, postfix, something else?"

Mailx
and
Exim are installed on my system, exim came later when I put on some apache or similar.
so i guess
mailx.

Hello drlizau,

Over the last couple weeks of putting different Mepis systems together and tuning my personal system (as well as helping others), I have made many discoveries. I found that, for whatever reason I had NO email system on my computer. Perhaps I deleted it during some other upgrade. In any case, I was able to install mailx and from that installed postfix.

I have been successful in answering my original question. Now I just need to get the time to properly DOCUMENT each of the steps. Once I have done that I shall present them to the forum for everyone (who wants them) to use.

Jon

Since I have been able to solve this issue, I want to pass on what I have learned. Eventually I will put this whole thing into a "howto", but for now I want to document the individual steps.

For whatever reason I lost the ability to see any mail from the command line. The default package for doing this in Mepis is "mailx" and it is used by typing in "mail" at the command line of a terminal (konsole) window. Mailx is a simple, text-based mail system. In addition to normal email functions it also allows some processes such as cron to communicate results to users such as root.

To see whether you need to install this package, open up a terminal session and type in "mail".

username@1[~]$ mail
bash: mail: command not found

If you see the results above, then you need to install mailx. I will show the instructions for installation, both for apt-get as well as synaptic.

Installing mailx with apt-get:
Since you are probably in a terminal session, this is the easiest way to install mailx. You must be logged in as root so "su" to it.

logname@1[~]$ su
Password: (entersecretpassword)
root@1[logname]#

Update the apt-get repositories and install mailx
root@1[logname]# apt-get update ; apt-get install mailx

Exit out of root shell
root@1[logname]# exit
logname@1[~]$

Installing mailx with synaptic:
Start synaptic with the small icon at the bottom left of the "K" menu.
Make sure that the repositories are up-to-date by choosing the Reload button at the top.
Next, choose the Search button at the top.
Enter "mailx" in the Search box.
Click the Search button.
Right-click on the mailx package on the right. Choose "Mark for installation".
Click on the Apply button above.
In the Summary window, click on the Apply button. The installation will now begin.

If you choose, you may check the box "Close this dialog after the changes have been successfully applied", or wait for it to finish and click on the Close button.

For both procedures, you may have to change directory permissions for mail to work. As root do the following from a terminal session:

root@1[logname]# chmod -R 01777 /var/mail

I will explain in a separate post on how to set up postfix and how to link this whole thing into Thunderbird and Kmail.

Jon

Thanks

I've been wanting to do this, but didn't know where to start.

I installed mailx using synaptic. That also installed exim4, exim4-base, exim4-config, exim4-daemon-light and liblockfile1.

During the installation, it asked me for a number of config settings, and I had to guess at the appropriate choices.

I also did the chmod you suggested.

mail doesn't seem to work, though. Mails I send, using the "mail" command, cause files to be created in /var/spool/exim4/input and /var/spool/exim4/msglog, but if I try to use the "mail" command to read them, I get "No mail for USER", where USER is my username.

The files in /var/spool/exim4/msglog look like this:

2005-05-31 19:37:56 Received from root@mepis1 U=root P=local S=273
2005-05-31 19:37:56 USER@mepis1 R=local_user T=mail_spool defer (-6): mailbox /var/mail/USER has wrong uid (0 != 1000)

I've tried sending and receiving both as root and USER.

I guess I either misconfigured something, or else there's something remaining to be configured.

Before trying a reinstall, if I do a *complete* removal of the above six packages (to get rid of all the config files as well as the packages), would that mess up anything else?

Hello Dave_L,

Yes, there's more to come. I noticed that exim was loaded, but I don't know how to use it. Instead I loaded postfix which allows redirection of email via "aliases". I'll try to make some "semi-official" documentation on this tomorrow.

Postfix is extremely powerful, and the use that I'm making of it is in some ways ridiculous and trivial. However, once I get that functionality working consistently, then I shall research more powerful uses of it on a small system both for work as well as personal use.

Stay tuned

Jon