[SOLVED] POP3 mail collection by the server

[gerdpeter]

Can Zimbra collect mail from my hosting provider using POP3 protocol ? I would like to have Zimbra collect all my email adresses that I maintain at my hostingand make them available centrally (for backup, local access and consolidation reasons). I do not want to create my own SMTP server.

Can this be done either with Zimbra directly or by integrating a tool like fetchmail ?

[phoenix]

Can Zimbra collect mail from my hosting provider using POP3 protocol ? I would like to have Zimbra collect all my email adresses that I maintain at my hostingand make them available centrally (for backup, local access and consolidation reasons).

Yes, it can. I'd like some more details on what exactly you want.

I do not want to create my own SMTP server.

You've posted this message in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite/Administrators forum, did you mean to post in this forum? ZImbra is a Collaboration Suite and one of the components is an MTA, Postfix to be exact. If you don't want an SMTP server then what are you trying to do?

[gerdpeter]

Well, I would like to have all my email accounts on my local server, so that I can back them up (because my hosting provider may or may not...., and allow web access to all accounts in a single view.
I do not want my own SMTP server because my hosting provider has better availability than I can achieve with my local server and a consumer ISP. If my local server is unavailable my hosting provider will still collect the incoming email (as per MX settings), but those I would need to pick up via POP after the fact anyways. To avoid that I would like to have my hosting provider collect all email - and I will pick them up and bring them to my server for above reasons. Another benefit is that I get to factor virus and spam scanning since - first at my hosting provider's email servers and then at my own with Zimbra. I will pick my ISP's (Comcast) outgoing smpt server as my smart server so I ru less risk of ever being blacklist for some strange reason.

Let me know your thoughts on this. If there is a better way, I will jump on it.

Gerd

[phoenix]

OK, if you install Zimbra you will have an SMTP server installed by default and there's no way to alter that. I guess you mean that you don't want mail delivered directly to your server.

Does your ISP get all the mail into one mailbox and does it all have one email address? Do you wnt all this mail to go into one mailbox on your Zimbra server or multiple mailboxes?

[gerdpeter]

No and No....I have a number of domains hosted by them with a number of email addresses each and I want them all to stay separate, meaning each email account needs to go into its own mailbox in Zimbra.

I do this today with SBS2003 and POP3 connector (on a 6 months trial) - and I made up my mind to ditch MS for cost reasons....

[gerdpeter]

If the SMPT server is enabled by default then I'll just close port 25 and let it sit. BTW - if I have to, I will run Zimbra as a direct SMPT server, but I prefer to let my hosting provider do that and I just go and pull it down to my Zimbra server.

[phoenix]

No and No....I have a number of domains hosted by them with a number of email addresses each and I want them all to stay separate, meaning each email account needs to go into its own mailbox in Zimbra.

In that case, it's fairly straightforward. Create a mailbox (user) for the mail you want to collect, go to the Preferences/Accounts tab and add an external account. Put the details you require into the boxes and away it should go. Make sure that when you are testing this, and if your using POP3, do not set it to delete the message from the server until you are sure it's working correctly. You'll obviously need to do that for every external account you need to get mail for.

Using this feature you can either create a mailbox for every external account or download the mail into one users account and have it in it's own folder (check the options on the Accounts page). To reply to messages in the single account, you may also want to investigate the Persona feature that allows you to reply with the correct details for 'reply to' etc.

[gerdpeter]

Thank you for spending time with me on this - I will give this a thourough try during the first week of July (hw is on it's way now).

On another topic - I know I should post this separately..... - can a good backup client like (in my case) EMC Retrospect create a consistent backup of all mail on my server or do I need to do some special scripts to eable this ?

Gerd

[phoenix]

If this is the open source version then I don't believe it's likely to get the mail in a consistent state. You'd need to look at the scripts in the wiki (there's also some in the forums) for a backup strategy and choose one which suits you. There will always be some downtime of the server involved. Obviously, if it's NE then we have our own backup/restore facility.

[gerdpeter]

I can live with some nightly downtime since I plan on doing POP3 only....

I will check out what the community says.

Thanks again !