Configuring Email Clients
Now we look at setting up email clients. In general, the process is
straight forward, but some programs running locally may need configuring
because our mail boxes are not stored in /var/spool/mail.
- Unix Mail Clients
- Windows Email Clients
and IMAP
The two mail clients on my box are mailx and Pine. Here I will
discuss the configuration issues of each:
Mailx
The mailx package does not require any extra modifications. It
looks at the MAIL environment variable to determine where your
messages are stored, so as long as that is set up correctly (see Chapter
2: Configuring Qmail) it will work.
Pine
Pine needs a tiny bit of attention because by default it tries to
look for your mail somewhere else (in /var/spool/mail I suppose).
Add this line to one of the pine configuration files, I changed /usr/lib/pine.conf.fixed:
inbox-path=~/mail/inbox
This tells Pine that your inbox is in $HOME/mail/inbox.
If you use other email clients, the only thing you have to watch out
for is where they look for the inbox.
I use Outlook Express and Netscape Communicator's email client. They
both support IMAP and that's what I will discuss in this section. The
setup is very straight forward, so I will talk about them briefly.
Setup mail accounts as you normally do. When you are asked whether
you want to use POP3 or IMAP, choose IMAP. Complete the setup as your
normally would.
Outlook Express Notes
By default, Outlook Express will only show the IMAP folders that
are subscribed. When you first setup IMAP, the only subscribed
folder is your inbox. Assuming that your IMAP mail folders are
stored in ~/mail/, it is safe to have Outlook Express show you all
your mail folders. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see Chapter
3: Setting up IMAP and POP.
To have Outlook Express show all your folders:
- go the the Account Properties and click on the Advance tab
- under Folders, un-check Only show subscribed
folders
The other thing to note is that when you delete messages from an
IMAP folder, the message is not moved to the Deleted-Items folder.
The messages are instead marked for deletion and will stay that way
until they are purged.
To purge deleted messages, go to the Edit menu and choose Purge
Deleted Messages.
Netscape Communicator Notes
With Netscape Communicator's email client, it defaults to seeing
all the folders in your IMAP mail directory. If you did not modify
your IMAP source files as described in Chapter
3: Setting up IMAP and POP Netscape will treat all the files in
your home directory as mail folders. This is a very good reason to
put your IMAP folders in ~/mail/ or some other location!
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