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Something to sort mail and send to a remote server

 
Nicolas_17
Frequent Advisor

Something to sort mail and send to a remote server

Hey you all!

I have to find an alternative to a mail processing setup we have that we've never really been happy about. It goes like this:

1- Emails sent from the world go to Exchange server mailboxes.
2- Exchange sends to "Some other server".
3- Sendail for NT (yeah, I know...) installed on that server, intercepts, puts into a directory structure for each user.
4- Users poll what's in "Some other server"'s folders to their local machine, and their mail client opens these messages.

Complicated, but necessary (for reasons I don't really want to go into right now).

The problem: Sendmail for NT. Completely unreliable. Must find other solution.

I wan't to put a machine (hp-ux, linux) in the middle that receives the messages from Exchange, then sends them to "Some other server" placing them in the proper folders. (Useless, yet fun to look at drawing in attachement)

Any thoughts? Sendmail? Qmail? Is it even possible?
8 REPLIES 8
Bejoy C Alias
Respected Contributor

Re: Something to sort mail and send to a remote server

What about replacing the 'some other server' ( win nt ) with a linux / unix one with sendmail and the exchange server forwarding the mails to this sendmail server and the users connecting to the linux server to access the mails ?
Be Always Joy ......
Nicolas_17
Frequent Advisor

Re: Something to sort mail and send to a remote server

Sadly, that's impossible. The "Some other server" runs software that's not available to us in the *nix world. I have to deal with that server as an invariable element.
Florian Heigl (new acc)
Honored Contributor

Re: Something to sort mail and send to a remote server

Even though the problem by itself makes my brain hide in some corner, the attachment definitely shouts 'procmail'.

Have a look at it, I think it's the best tool for this, but I don't have much experience mail-wise.
yesterday I stood at the edge. Today I'm one step ahead.
Nicolas_17
Frequent Advisor

Re: Something to sort mail and send to a remote server

Yeah, Procmail does sound like something to try. But the sorting part, I think, isn't the hardest issue to fix.

It's the fact that the destination mail folders are remote to the server that will be doing the sorting that bothers me.

I though of something though: I will mount "Some other server"'s drive where the mail folders reside on the machine running * (procmail, sendmail, whatever) so that it sees it as a local directory.

What do you think?
Florian Heigl (new acc)
Honored Contributor

Re: Something to sort mail and send to a remote server

Are these folders as in `maildir` or accessible via IMAP?

in any case on could of course mount these folders and fill them with content as long as there is not any database that indexes them for the clients. also, the file names and uniqueness trouble me a bit - the solution should be able to handle CC'ed messages arriving via all ways at the same time.
yesterday I stood at the edge. Today I'm one step ahead.
Nicolas_17
Frequent Advisor

Re: Something to sort mail and send to a remote server

Ok, lets tackle one thing at a time, cause i'm getting lost here...

The most important thing for me right now is this: can sendmail be used to distribute mail received from an Exchange server in user folders?

In other words, couls Exchange forward mail to a *nix machine running sendmail for distribution?

Thanks.
Bejoy C Alias
Respected Contributor

Re: Something to sort mail and send to a remote server

Yes , u can.
U can configure exchange server to forward the mails to the sendmail server , and the sendmail server can be configured to accept connections from the users and to send out the outgoing mails to the exchange server . So ur windows server will be free of this email load .
Be Always Joy ......
Nicolas_17
Frequent Advisor

Re: Something to sort mail and send to a remote server

Alright then, I'll dig in the sendmail manuals online. Thanks for your help guys!