[CompSoc-News] (no subject)

[compsoc-news-admin at skynet.ie]

Mail Setup
==========
Right, the mail configuration of the Skynet network has changed a lot
since the start of this year (2001, wow). To many of you this should
hopefully be transparent, but I'll give a quick overview of the changes
and then discuss how it effects you.

The Old Setup
=============
In "Ye Olde Times" all mail was stored on skynet itself in the
/var/spool/mail directory. Reading mail was a simple matter of read your
mail file in that directory and this is the "standard" UNIX way to do
things. And all was well in the land.

The New Setup
=============
When we upgraded the Skynet network at the start of this year all mail
storage was moved to holly, one of our new machines. It is no longer
possible to access the /var/spool/mail/ files directly they must be
access using a mail protocol like IMAP or POP3.

Why the Change?
===============
For years skynet has been the main machine on the Skynet network, it
handled everything apart from web and anonymous ftp. To be honest it
wasn't really that big a problem, but when skynet crashed web and ftp
went down, and skynet did crash. To solve this problem we decided to
make skynet less critical by simply making it into a shell (ssh and
telnet) only machine. All the important storage and user information is
moved to the much more secure machine, holly. What this means is that we
could throw skynet into a swimming pool and you still wouldn't lose any
important data, you would still be able to browse your webpage, you
would still be able to read your mail and post news, you just wouldn't
be able to do any of it from skynet (cos its in the swimming pool).
    So, in essence, we have moved critical information and operations to
more secure machines and tried to centralise the network around those
critical machines.

Mail Details
============
Mail is now all stored on holly (or mail.csn.ul.ie). You can access it
int he following ways; IMAP, RIMAP (through ssh) and POP3. So in the
mail software of your choice you set the IMAP or POP3 server to
mail.csn.ul.ie and your SMTP (outgoing) mail server to mail.csn.ul.ie
and everything should work fine.

Pine Setup
==========
By default, pine should work fine. However, most of you no longer work
with default configurations. If you are not worried about losing any
current configuration details then simple delete your pinerc like so:
    $ rm ~/.pinerc
If you are worried about your current pine configuration then here are
the settings that you need to have:

    inbox-path={mail}
    folder-collections={mail}mail/[]
    ssh-open-timeout=5
    ssh-path=/usr/bin/ssh

That should do it. I'm assuming anyone who edits their .pinerc by hand
knows what they are doing.
    A lot of people have problems with pine always asking for a
password, to solve this you must make sure ssh recognises the host key
for mail.csn.ul.ie. At the prompt type:
    $ ssh mail
And you'll yes something like this:
The authenticity of host 'holly' can't be established.
Key fingerprint is 1024 0d:e7:bd:0f:17:f6:3e:33:f3:7a:bf:57:bc:ad:e0:ee.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? 

Type "yes" and hit enter. You'll then be greeted with:
* PREAUTH holly IMAP4rev1 v12.264 server ready

Politely hit CTRL-C and you should never be asked for a password again.


Mutt Setup
==========
Unfortunately, mutts IMAP support isn't as good as pines. I'll assume
the average mutt user knows a bit more about their mail client than the
average pine user. The global muttrc (/etc/Muttrc) sets some safe
defaults.

set folder={mail}mail
set spoolfile={mail}INBOX
set mbox=+read
set record=+sent

By default mutt stores read mail in ~/mbox, this isn't very safe since
the IMAP server assumes that a file named mbox is your inbox. To prevent
mutt asking you for a username and password each time you run it you
could add the following lines to your .muttrc:

set imap_user=your_username
set imap_pass=your_password

However, having your password there in plain text is a big security
risk, so you should set you muttrc user readable only, like this:
    $ chmod 600 ~/.muttrc


Procmail
========
Procmail and other similar mail filters now all run on holly (remember
to set you SHELL variable). No changes should be needed to your procmail
setup and just remember that instead of being ~/mail/SOME_FOLDER its not
{mail}mail/SOME_FOLDER

--akawaka
All spelling mistakes are the responsibility of the reader.