Gathering POP3 and distributing via IMAP

Hi there - I have about five or six different POP3 e-mail accounts - Yahoo, my local ISP, etc. - and it's easy enough to download from multiple accounts in a mail reader on a single machine.

I'm about to try and set up a Linux server on my home network, and what I need to know is this : can I set up a server to gather all the mail from my various POP3 accounts across the web, and store it so that I can access it from any of the machines on my network? Setting up an IMAP server seems easy enough, but can I use it in this way?

Any ideas on where to look and how to do it would be appreciated.
Many thanks!

-=Matte=-

Try Fetchmail i think its exactly what you want.

Yes. fetchmail is what you need.

You will also then need some kind of server to send mail out.

Why not aim a bit higher and set up something like squirrel mail. Its a web based mail system (like hotmail) that will run on apache. you will still need to set up most of the otherstuff. but its a nice solution and you don't have to worry about users getting mail virused.

Hi!

I also have this problem, but be a more detailed, I need the mails collected by POP3 stored to get accessed via IMAP, because I want to use a webmailer, just working with IMAP, but I just have POP3 mailboxes and will stay with POP3. So I need sth. like a IMAP to POP3-gateway, -emulation or however you want to call that. It should like this:

POP3 Accounts <-> collect e.g. via Fetchmail <-> Access via IMAP <-> WM

WM = Webmailer

on my distro - fedora.

install IMAP server from the install CDs (Was already on by default)
install and configure sendmail
add linux users through the User Manager GUI for all email users
install and configure fetchmail

then set up the email clients to use IMAP and connect to your server.

Oh, you might also want a caching name server - basic BIND install would do the trick.

check out the linux documentation project for specific howtos. http://tldap.org

After fetchmail downloads the email from POP3 to your system it hands it your SMTP server such as sendmail to deliver it locally. IMAP will expect mail to be delivered by SMTP to it so fetchmail is exactly what you are looking for.

Fetchmail can also fetch from IMAP servers so you may find that confusing in the documentation.


Mike