Getmail with Kolab2

From Kolab wiki

This can be used to download mail from ISP-POP3 mailboxes and to deliver them to their respective Kolab users by using the getmail of your host distribution.

Installation

Step1: OpenPGK does not provide getmail4 so we have to install getmail from our host distribution or download the sources at http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/.

Step2: Create a log directory for getmail within kolab and grant priviledges to user kolab

 mkdir /kolab/var/getmail
 chmod 755 /kolab/var/getmail
 chown kolab:kolab /kolab/var/getmail

Step3: Normally we would create one .getmailrc for the user that contains the instructions to download the mails. For kolab downloads mails from different account (e.g. users) we have to create one getmail-file for each user that we place in a folder within kolab again.

 mkdir /kolab/etc/getmail
 chmod 755 /kolab/etc/getmail
 chown kolab:kolab /kolab/etc/getmail

Step4: the configuration file we place into that folder as f.e. username1.conf could look like this:

Note
The options may differ depending on your ISP-POP-Account, please read the getmail documentation for more details. http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/

 [options]
 message_log = /kolab/var/getmail/getmail.log  ## one could give here a name to the logfile for each user to prevent flooding eg. getmail_user1.log
 verbose = 2
 delete = true                                 ## if all mails should be deleted after getting, else set this to false
 
 [retriever]
 type=SimplePOP3Retriever
 server=<pop.our_server.tld>
 username=<our_pop_username>
 password=<our_pop_passwd>
 
 [destination]
 type=MDA_external
 path=/kolab/sbin/sendmail                     ## this will delegate the emails to kolab's-postfix
 arguments=("-i","-bm","user@localmaildomain") 

Step5: Creation of a script that reads all .conf files in /kolab/etc/getmail and download the mails from the ISP

 touch getmail-all.sh          ## I placed this one in siply in folder /kolab
 chmod 755 /kolab/getmail-all.sh
 chown kolab:kolab /kolab/getmail-all.sh

Open the file and write:

 #!/bin/bash
 GM="/usr/bin/getmail -q"
 
 for ii in /kolab/etc/getmail/*.conf
 do
   $GM -g/kolab/var/getmail -r$ii
 
 done

Step6: create a cronjob that runs as user kolab on the getmail-all.sh.

Adds

• If you have many users, you could create a second or third /kolab/etc/getmailx folder, each with equal numbers of user.conf files and write different getmail-allx.sh files to split the load on your network and your ISP.
• You could add

 delete_after=x
 read_all = false
 
 instead of
 
 delete = true

in the [options]-section of your .conf-file where x ist the number of days the messages shall stay on the ISP-POP-Server, to read mails from @home with your ISP's webmailer. Problem: all internal message is not send to the ISP so not seen from outside your network.