Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Well I cant really comment in this area other than to say DONT USE POP. IMAP just kicks POPs butt.

The reason I say I cant comment is that I use a web based email program, SquirrelMail. SquirrelMail kicks butt too. It has tons of features that I love. It has anti Spam hooks to about 50 blacklists (of various types), it has spell check, search, standard imap folders, calendaring, whitelists, blacklists, message filters based on all fields including headers, etc, etc, etc.

I keep trying to convince myself that I need a local mail client, but I just browse to the url where I have squirrelmail installed and use it and there has yet to be something it cant do.

While it could be installed locally, web based is kind of a pain unless you have a full time server to put it on and the mail server is local. Thats one of the reasons I like it, the only thing that comes across the wire to me is the web based stuff, all the actual mail traffic is between web server and mail server locally, makes it faster.

(I cant help with local mail proggys, but if you want to try squirrelmail let me know and I will create you a penguin account for playing with).

Just as an FYI, the latest Mozilla nightlies have filtering and spam blocking built in. There's currently a bug where the filters will not run automatically, but they can still be run manually. Otherwise, I like it better than some others that I've tried. Personally, I'd like to see the stand-alone version of Mozilla Mail (minotaur or thunderbird?) come out soon. That would definatly be a better solution as long as they don't change how it works too much.

I've been using Eudora 4.2 since it was released. The filtering capability is pretty decent but I don't know about the control over deleting mail off the server as I have no need for it.

Like most, I've tried a bunch of others but found them all lacking. I've also tried the later versions of Eudora but don't like them.

Currently, I have a machine running at my house that grabs my mail from several different servers using fetchmail and lets me access it through IMAP. I like this because I can use just about any client (or the webmail interface to courier) to get at all my mail...

But here is a question. Does anyone know a mail client that properly supports the IMAP_CHECK_ALL_FOLDERS extension to Courier IMAPD? The server will notify the client when folders other than INBOX recieve new mail, but most of the clients I have used don't recognize this (or maybe I am just not configuring it right). This is pretty crucial since I have procmail filters moving mail all over the place when it arrives.

I have many multiple email accounts going to one place also but dont use anything special to forward them.

I use Sendmail as MTA and then just use the virtusertable to make all the mail go to one account. Now of course this means I have control over the MX records for all the domains and all the mail goes to the same mail server.

I have also done this in the past with different mail servers simply using .forward files in the home dir. And, to add to that, most email services now from ISPs have a "forward to" feature in your account prefs (that creates the .forward file or similar). Using this is pretty easy to get all your mail from multiple accounts in one place and not have to check multiple IMAP or POP places. The key is to have the MTA send the mail to one single place where you want it, rather than have it sit in multiple places. Then once its in your final place just grab it as you wish with whatever filters or such.

Also, Andy mentioned SMTP_AUTH (with SASL in sendmail) to me a while back and I do use that now (much better when roaming to auth rather than to allow-relay for an entire subnet or something in a flat file.) Auth is another discussion, but props to Andy for getting me started down the path.

And one more thing for the mail discussion. Now I have finally gotten MimeDefang with SpamAssasin working with my Sendmail. This in combination with the AUTH makes a FANTASTIC mail server. The damn thing scans for viruses (if connected to a scanner, I dont use that but it still scans for potential problems in attachments for windows users), parses for spam based on "bayesian" filtering (works great, see SpamAssassin for that) and doesnt drop ANY mail. It simply adds headers that I have configured to warn of SPAM or VIRUSES. Its all confuigurable as to what is and is not spam and it can "learn" from mail folders what is and is not. It can also automatically submit spam to SpamCop or Razor, etc. This open source stuff kicks ass.

If you want the best possible mail server, whatever MTA you use, get MimeDefang and SpamAssassin. Future penguin story once I get it all documented.