Hi, I'm looking for some help to set up a server at home, which will be collecting all my emails from the different email accounts. The server will be accessible via web interface (maybe even IMAP). That way I don't have to deal with synchronizing emails across different OS / computers. I figured already out, on how to get to my server from outside, apache and php are running. The missing link is, a program that collects the mails and a program that allows me to access the mails on my server. I'm almost certain one of your tutorials would work for me, but I'm lost, I don't what to search for. Any help is appreciated. Thanks, Thomas
You can use 'fetchmail' to collect email from different servers/providers and collect/store it in one mailbox. It supports both IMAP as well as POP. To access the central mailbox on your home server, either use a email client like Thunderbird (POP or IMAP) or use a webbased tool, like eg. Squirrelmail. Stick to one protocol, as mixing POP and IMAP access to the same box might give you a surprise or two.
So what I should do then, is getting fetchmail and squirrelmail installed on my linux server. With fetchmail I collect the emails from the different accounts. Now where do I store these emails, local email box, local email server? With squirrelmail I have a nice front end to see my emails, I used that in the past. But I think, I'm missing something here. Do I need a full email server running on my computer to be able to use the both programs? Thanks, Thomas
You need a local MTA, also called local mail server. Postfix does this for you and it can work with CourierIMAP server to handle this all. You'll find quite a nice amount of perfect howto's on this site. Pick the distribution you like and install a server according to the associated guidelines.
