Hi Paul, You've been given some pretty good suggestions -- get fetchmail set up and it will drag you messages down from the ISP to the local computer. The explanations seemed a bit on the short side, so I'm expanding... You'll have set up five "accounts" (one for each mail recipient.) Fetchmail sits on your local machine and every once and a while (3 minutes?, 5? ...you configure) it will log onto the ISP's mail server, get the for each user mail, and deliver it to (something like) /var/spool/mail/(account name). When it delivers the mail, it will actually use "procmail" as the Local Delivery Agent (LDA) -- this means it will hand the mail over to the procmail program to put into the /var/spool/mail/(account name) file. The "beauty" of this is that while procmail is holding the mail on the way to the inbox, we can look at it and make some changes...this is where you'd scan for viruses and spam, for instance...or lots of other things (see http://pm-doc.sourceforge.net/pm-tips.html for some more stuff on what procmail can do...) To scan for viruses and for spam, you'll need two packages (spamassassin and clamav) -- I'm sure there are many other options, but it seems these two are the general favorites. Get those installed (and make sure you have the most up-to-date versions by going to their home pages and checking.) Set up spamassassin's "spamd" daemon to run in the background (see the man page, but basically you just need to tell Fedora to run the "spamassassin" daemon during startup.) Then go to the user's home on you "mail server." This is probably in /home/(account name). Make a mail directory (mkdir mail). Back in the home directory (/home/(account name) ) edit a file called ".procmailrc" . This file will be blank, but can have instructions that tell procmail what to do with your mail while it is getting ready to deliver it. The tips page I referenced above will give you more info, but the part that is important for your purposes will need to look something like this: (watch out that procmail.log doesn't grow too big, because it can...) #---------BEGIN------------- MAILDIR=/home/(account name)/mail LOGABSTRACT=yes LOGFILE=/home/(account name)/procmail.log # If this is not a "big" message (bigger than 256K), then... # Lets run it through spamassassin for a quick idea of content # We use spamc to client <-> server it through the spamd # spamassassin daemon :0 fw * !> 256000 | /usr/bin/spamc # This says, "Here's a recipe (:0), it's a filter (f), wait for it to complete (w) # Check (*) and see how big the message is. If it is not (!) bigger (>) than 256000 bytes # run it through (|) spamc # If it is spam, then chuck it onto the floor :0 * ^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*\*\*\*\* { HOST = this.is.deleted } # This says, "Here's a recipe (:0) (and, since that's all it says, it means that this could be a # final delivery option for the message...) Check (*) if there is a header (by default) that # was added by SpamAssassin that indicates spam (^, means "line begins with") (5 stars means # "Most likely spam", for this recipe we check for 7 or more -- ) then change the "HOST" (the # name of the system that will handle the message) to "this.is.deleted" -- which very quickly # just makes the message disappear... :0c: * ^X-Spam-Status: Yes passedspam # This says, "Here's a recipe (:0), please use a copy of the message (C), and lock the destination # file is we deliver (:). If (*) the messages has a header that says SpamAssassin think this is SPAM # then drop the copy into the passedspam file (this, combined with the previous message throws away # obvious spam (more than 7 *'s) while saving a copy of 5-star or 6-star spam so the administrator can # continue to educate himself and train SpamAssassin by looking at the contents of passedspam. # Okay...not spam (or not *bad* spam), so lets check for virii :0 HB : * !? clamscan --mbox -r --quiet - viruses # This says, "Here's a recipe (:0), please work on both the headers (H) and the body (B), please # lock the destination file (:) if we deliver. If (*), not (!) a return value from calling (?) # clamscan on a mbox style file, recursively (-r), and without lots of text output (--quiet) on # a data stream (-), then there is a virus in the file -- deliver it to the viruses file (and # not to the recipient... # And then, assuming we haven't thrown it away as spam, filed it as a virus, or otherwise gotten rid # of it, we're done with instructions -- procmail can go ahead and deliver the message.... #----------END-------------- I hope this helps... Bob -----Original Message----- From: fedora-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:fedora-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of paul Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 5:06 PM To: For users of Fedora Core releases Subject: setting up a mail server. Hi I'm a newbie and need some help in setting up a mail server for my local network. i have 5 machines on local network all linked together by a hardwire router and connected to the Internet by cable modem (telewest). i would like to download all messages to one machine scan for virus and spam then forward to others on my network, the messages are currently stored by telewest in 5 pop3 mailboxes. can someone please help or point me in the right direction. i've tried googling but got confused. p.s. 3 of the machines are windows the others are linux fedora. Registered Linux user #349975 Cheap Inkjet Cartridges www.webstersinks.co.uk -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
