Using Zimbra with Fetchmail - Problems!

[marcmac]

I've set-up crontab to do fetchmail every 5 minutes (crons.cron file in the root directory with 5 * * * * fetchmail -k on it and start with crontab crons.cron

Somewhat offtopic, but I think that crontab entry will run 5 minutes after every hour, not every 5 minutes (which would be */5 * * * * ...)

[Linsys]

Thanks you all for your help. It turned out that my /etc/fetchmailrc file had errors. It was originally generated by SuSE YaST. I created a new one from scratch and disabled DNS lookup in Zimbra and everything works fine.

[ljfrench]

Here's what I had to do in my fetchmailrc file to make it work:

# .fetchmailrc file
defaults proto pop3

user "mailuser" is ssl user here

poll mail.domain.com

username user@domain.com password ******** is ssl user here

smtpname user@localdomain

;

I also have to execute "fetchmail -d time" as the user.

[wkearney99]

I've used fetchmail for ages to pull mail from external pop and imap accounts. I'm using a uw-imap server and it's dmail program to push the message directly into a local user's folder. I call it from cron using a fetchmail config that contains:

poll external.imap.server proto imap port 143
user 'imapuser' with password 'somepass' is localuser here
folders INBOX
mda '/usr/local/bin/dmail %T+mail/Inbox-external'

This logs in to the external server as a user named 'imapuser' and then pulls mail from a folder named INBOX on that server. It then pushes it into a folder called "Inbox-external" for the local user named 'localuser'. Works great. But it depends on the deliver tool and the c-client library to handle it.

The destination folder is manually created ahead of time, so I'm not expecting fetchmail to create them automagically (but that'd sure be handy in a few cases...)

I specifically DO NOT want to just dump all these messages into the local user's base-level "Inbox". I like having them each in their own folder, it makes it easier to keep tabs on where the message came from, independently of the other services.

Is there an equivalent way to accomplish this with zimbra?

[marcmac]

You could, perhaps, fetch the mail locally, run it through a script to add a header (X-FETCHMAIL-MIGRATE, or whatever) then feed it into zimbra, with a filter rule to look for your custome header and file the mail away.

[wkearney99]

You could, perhaps, fetch the mail locally, run it through a script to add a header (X-FETCHMAIL-MIGRATE, or whatever) then feed it into zimbra, with a filter rule to look for your custome header and file the mail away.

Ugh, that's waaaay too much hassle. Having to write the fetchmail config and then also have to use the web interface to manually create the filter? As opposed to just using fetchmail to put it right where it belongs?

It's not just the inbox on the remote servers either. There are a number of other folders on the remote server that I'm pulling from as well. Some of the remote accounts have their own filtering running and will have already moved messages out of the inbox into other destinations. If they're already in a desired place then it'd be a bit of a waste to have to set that up all over again in zimbra.

[marcmac]

Ugh, that's waaaay too much hassle. Having to write the fetchmail config and then also have to use the web interface to manually create the filter? As opposed to just using fetchmail to put it right where it belongs?

It's not just the inbox on the remote servers either. There are a number of other folders on the remote server that I'm pulling from as well. Some of the remote accounts have their own filtering running and will have already moved messages out of the inbox into other destinations. If they're already in a desired place then it'd be a bit of a waste to have to set that up all over again in zimbra.

You could deliver them with an IMAP client, but I have no idea how you'd integrate that with fetchmail.

[wkearney99]

You could deliver them with an IMAP client, but I have no idea how you'd integrate that with fetchmail.

There's the possibility of using something like imapsync to pull them instead of fetchmail. The downside being loss of other fetchmail features and a separation out from how POP is handled.

I'm still left wondering, is there no utility for zimbra that parallels tools like dmail from uw-imap, or deliver from cyrus-imapd?

[KevinH]

There's the possibility of using something like imapsync to pull them instead of fetchmail. The downside being loss of other fetchmail features and a separation out from how POP is handled.

I'm still left wondering, is there no utility for zimbra that parallels tools like dmail from uw-imap, or deliver from cyrus-imapd?

Yes imapsync would work. Your correct that we don't have dmail or deliver like tools. Zimbra's focus has been on enterprise email, and thus email aggregation which your after is not our current primary goal, since that in most cases is a personal or home user need. That said if someone gets dmail or deliver to work with Zimbra or creates a similar tool we'd take a look at integrating it.

[wkearney99]

Zimbra's focus has been on enterprise email, and thus email aggregation which your after is not our current primary goal, since that in most cases is a personal or home user need.

It seems a bit of a dodge to go claiming the situation is outside the realm of enterprise mail. Zimbra doesn't have the functionality, that's fine. But leave the marketing double-speak out of it.