Help required for using FetchmailMailRetrieval for multiple users

[bhwong]

I want to use my ISP email server to receive all emails into 1 single account and use Fetchmail to retrieve the emails and redistribute to individual Zimbra email accounts.

I have read the excellence tutorial on using Fetchmail at FetchmailMailRetrieval < Webmin < TWiki. Unfortunately it only mentioned about this "most useful feature" (retrieve from 1 account for multiple local users) but failed to explain how to do it. It only said this:

"Even though its ability to extract mail for multiple users from a single mailbox is one of Fetchmail's most useful features, it is not 100% reliable. There is no way that the program can accurately determine what address an email was sent to in all cases. Normally, the To: or Cc: header will contain the destination address, but for messages received from mailing lists this is not the case - instead, the To: header contains the list's address. There are other mail headers that Fetchmail attempts to check to find the real destination address of a message, but they are not always available."

When I check server, it shows this error message:

fetchmail: SMTP< 504 5.5.2 : Recipient address rejected: need fully-qualified address

So how do I add multiple users to the Local user(s) field? Do I separate multiple email addresses with space or , or ;? What else is required?

please help, Thanks.

Boon Hong.

[phoenix]

Is there any reason you can't have mail delivered directly to your Zimbra server? It would be the most simple and effective solution. The use of fetchmail with a multi-drop mailbox (most of them aren't) is fraught with problems and may not work in your environment. Have a look at the documentation for fetchmail Multidrop-mode problems: on this page.

[bhwong]

Although we have unlimited ADSL connection, this connection is often unreliable (get disconnected etc). Moreover, our office has experienced a few hours of power trip before a few times, which is beyond what our UPS can handle. Thus we hope to have a backup system by making use of our ISP email server.

So in these situations whereby Zimbra Server is down or unavailable for few hours, will the emails send during this period still get delivered when Zimbra Server is up again? Or they will simply get bounced back?

Let us know if you have any alterative solutions.

btw, is there any email archive or backup system that goes well with Zimbra?

Thanks,
Boon Hong.

[uxbod]

Have the email delivered directly to your server as Phoenix has said, and then setup a service like DynDNS :: Backup MX so that if your server cannot be reached it will queue the email for you until your server is back online.

Wiki :: Community Edition Backup Procedures

[phoenix]

If you're only down for a few hours then the email will get delivered, most mail server will (normally) keep trying for up-to five days before returning it to the sender as undeliverable. My suggestion would be to use an external server for backup (ISP mail servers aren't the most reliable), I use easyDNS to host my DNS records (it does cost money but it's relative inexpensive) and they also provide a mail backup service, if my server can't be contacted they will try to deliver for up to five days, when my server is online it will deliver the mail. You will find other service providers that have this feature if you search the web. IMO, that's a far better solution than using fetchmail.

You'll find a list of Backup articles in the wiki. If you want an arching solution for the Open Source version then check a product called mailArchiva - there's a paid and free version of the product.

[bhwong]

Hi,

Thanks for all the great advice and suggestions. DynDNS's Backup MX and EasyDNS are good to ensure that emails won't get lost when Zimbra is down but it also mean users will not be able to use email in the meantime while Zimbra is down as well, right?

Whereby with ISP as primary server, if ISP is down, the email should divert to our Zimbra server. And if our Zimbra is down, users can still access ISP's webmail directly. This assure us of 100% email services uptime with minimum cost.

The backup article has one interesting solution of using 2 Zimbra Servers with IMAP Sync: Scripts to sync to a remote Zimbra backup machine - Zimbra :: Wiki. But I have a few questions regarding this solution:

1. Will the 2nd Zimbra Server automatically take over when the primary Zimbra Server went down?

2. And will the IMAP sync do reverse sync when the primary Zimbra Server is up again?

As for backup, since I'm not a hardcore linux user, so I prefer having a GUI-base rather than script-base backup solution. For this reason, I will try out MailArchiva. It allows users to search their archive as well, which is very useful. Thanks for all your wonderful help!

[dwmtractor]

I don't believe you mentioned how many users you have. I used to have all my users at "mydomain.com" which is an ISP-hosted account with separate POP addresses. When I set up my Zimbra server I registered "mydomain.net" for it, and then set up Fetchmail to retrieve each user's old ".com" mail and send it to his/her ".net" address. This works flawlessly.

In the same way, if you set up your external POP server with separate accounts for users, Fetchmail wouldn't have to try and break them apart, but would take each account's mail and route it to whatever Zimbra account you specify.

[bhwong]

Hi Dan,

I have over a hundred users, so I was hoping not to enter their account (and getting their passwords) individually, but to create a single account at the ISP to collect all their emails and use Fetchmail to distribute to them. How can this be done? The tutorials mentioned about this "most useful feature" but failed to explain how to get it done except that it's not reliable.

Thanks,
Boon Hong.

[dwmtractor]

Can't help you there, bwhong. I have no idea how it's done, or even if it can be done. I'll have to defer to people a whole lot more expert in fetchmail than I. Sorry. . .