Problems setting up qmail / fetchmail / IMAP (primarily .qmail file)

Hi all,

Beware: Linux newbie posting.

[Background]
I've recently installed Redhat 9 at home; server installation, mostly
defaults, added only a few things like qmail, and courier-imap.

Compiled and installed qmail without problem - using Maildir mailbox
format. Tested and able to send emails from within my home network -
qmail selectively relays only -from- my home network -to- any domain.

Compiled and installed courier-imap without problem - I can connect to
my IMAP server via MS Outlook and see all my folders and email that I
-copied- into it.

[Problem]
My email is delivered to the email account provided by my webhost for
my domain. I set up fetchmail to POP new mail from my webhost account
in the hopes it would end up in my IMAP inbox; daemonsed fetchmail to
run every 5 minutes. According to /var/log/messages and
/var/log/maillog the following works:

- Test mail sent from MS Outlook (going through my qmail smtp on my
Linux box) works (verified by logging into remote webmail interface
and email arrives at my webhost email account).

- Fetchmail POPs in to webhost email account and sees 1 new message;
it then tries to contact my smtp to deliver the message (? unsure if
actually -is- what's happening, but it's how I'm reading the
logfiles).

- qmail delivers the remote message to a local user (user@localhost)
"supposedly" successfully.

However, that email doesn't end up in my IMAP. It doesn't seem to end
up -anywhere- that I can find. I don't know how to make it end up in
my IMAP Maildir. I read some stuff on .qmail and as I understood it
(likely not correctly) all I needed to do was create .qmail in my
local user's $HOME with the line:

../Maildir/

and it would deliver. But, this isn't working either. My
..fetchmailrc looks like:

set daemon 300
poll <pop-server-removed>
proto pop3
user "<useraccount>"
pass "<userpassword>"
keep
forcecr

where <pop-server-removed> is my pop server in the form domain.com.
and <useraccount> is my user account and <userpassword> is the
password.

I am at a loss as to:

- Where to look for further information
- What else to try / test to try and discover the root of the problem

Is there anyone able to provide me with any assistance, please? If
you need more information or do not understand parts of what I've
tried to explain, please let me know.

Thanks in advance,
Brett.

nospam-googlegroups@erilaz.com (Brett Williams) writes:

> My email is delivered to the email account provided by my webhost for
> my domain. I set up fetchmail to POP new mail from my webhost account
> in the hopes it would end up in my IMAP inbox;

You might have better luck with Charles Cazabon's getmail.

> daemonsed fetchmail to
> run every 5 minutes. According to /var/log/messages and
> /var/log/maillog the following works:
>
> - Test mail sent from MS Outlook (going through my qmail smtp on my
> Linux box) works (verified by logging into remote webmail interface
> and email arrives at my webhost email account).
>
> - Fetchmail POPs in to webhost email account and sees 1 new message;
> it then tries to contact my smtp to deliver the message (? unsure if
> actually -is- what's happening, but it's how I'm reading the
> logfiles).

If you can't read the log files, post them here (or on a web server,
and post the URL).

BTW, my news reader displays "-is-" with the "is" overstruck with
dashes. The standard Usenet (and e-mail) convention for emphasis is to
use asterisks, not dashes.

> - qmail delivers the remote message to a local user (user@localhost)
> "supposedly" successfully.

Logs?

> However, that email doesn't end up in my IMAP. It doesn't seem to end
> up -anywhere- that I can find. I don't know how to make it end up in
> my IMAP Maildir. I read some stuff on .qmail and as I understood it
> (likely not correctly) all I needed to do was create .qmail in my
> local user's $HOME with the line:
>
> ./Maildir/
>
> and it would deliver.

Does Maildir exist? Is it a maildir? Does mail sent directly to this
user appear in their IMAP mailbox?

> But, this isn't working either.

It's more helpful to explain *how* it fails than to simply assert that
it doesn't work. If it made no difference, say so. If anything
changed, tell us.

--
Dave Sill Oak Ridge National Lab, Workstation Support
Author, The qmail Handbook <http://web.infoave.net/~dsill>
<http://lifewithqmail.org/>: Almost everything you always wanted to know.

Dave Sill <MaxFreedom@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> wrote in message news:<wx01xxah06d.fsf@sws5.ornl.gov>...
> nospam-googlegroups@erilaz.com (Brett Williams) writes:
>
> > - Fetchmail POPs in to webhost email account and sees 1 new message;
> > it then tries to contact my smtp to deliver the message (? unsure if
> > actually -is- what's happening, but it's how I'm reading the
> > logfiles).
>
> If you can't read the log files, post them here (or on a web server,
> and post the URL).

I'll do so in future, if I need to post for assistance with anything.

> BTW, my news reader displays "-is-" with the "is" overstruck with
> dashes. The standard Usenet (and e-mail) convention for emphasis is to
> use asterisks, not dashes.

No probs.

> > However, that email doesn't end up in my IMAP. It doesn't seem to end
> > up -anywhere- that I can find. I don't know how to make it end up in
> > my IMAP Maildir. I read some stuff on .qmail and as I understood it
> > (likely not correctly) all I needed to do was create .qmail in my
> > local user's $HOME with the line:
> >
> > ./Maildir/
> >
> > and it would deliver.
>
> Does Maildir exist? Is it a maildir? Does mail sent directly to this
> user appear in their IMAP mailbox?

I checked all of these things last night with a friend who knows way
more Linux than I do and we (read he) managed to fix the problem for
me. I don't fully understand what wasn't working properly, but he's
going to sit down with me on the weekend and go through it.

> > But, this isn't working either.
>
> It's more helpful to explain *how* it fails than to simply assert that
> it doesn't work. If it made no difference, say so. If anything
> changed, tell us.

Respectfully, I didn't *know* how it was failing - however I do
understand your point and in future will endeavour to be more concise
with relevant logs and the like. Being a newbie when it comes to
Linux it's really difficult for me to try to explain things since I
don't fully understand what's going on - but point taken.

In any regard, the problem is fixed now; I hope to understand how in
the coming days. A bit of a learning experience for me.

Thankyou for your response, though, Dave - my apologies for lack of
clarity and information you could use.

Brett.

nospam-googlegroups@erilaz.com (Brett Williams) writes:
>Dave Sill wrote:
>>
>> It's more helpful to explain *how* it fails than to simply assert that
>> it doesn't work. If it made no difference, say so. If anything
>> changed, tell us.
>
> Respectfully, I didn't *know* how it was failing - however I do
> understand your point and in future will endeavour to be more concise
> with relevant logs and the like.

I don't mean *why* it was failing, I mean *how*. For example, if the
original problem was that the messages were just disappearing, and you
made some changes and tried again, and the result was a bounce, then
what you changed had some effect--which is a valuable debugging
clue. Even if it the result was the same--disappearing
messages--that's valuable information too. But if you just say "it
didn't work", that doesn't indicate if there was any change in the
failure mode.

> Thankyou for your response, though, Dave - my apologies for lack of
> clarity and information you could use.

No problem, glad to help. If I sounded cranky, I didn't mean to.

--
Dave Sill Oak Ridge National Lab, Workstation Support
Author, The qmail Handbook <http://web.infoave.net/~dsill>
<http://lifewithqmail.org/>: Almost everything you always wanted to know.