First of all, ensure that "sendmail" is installed. Sendmail sorts internal and out-bound mail, and will buffer out-bound mail until such time it is possible to forward it.
Sendmail is based on a configuration found in "/etc/sendmail.cf". An example suitable for ISP users can be found in:
ftp://ftp.sn.no/user/egilk/sendmail.cf
It is if course required to have an official domain address for out-bound mail, something which is specified in "/etc/sendmail.cf":
# who I masquerade as (null for no masquerading)
DMacme.com
Sendmail is now configured for sending directly to the
recipient. To avoid long and repeated connections in those cases
where the connection to the receiving end is slow and irregular,
is is usually nice to use ones ISP as a buffer store. This can
be specified by the DS specification:
# "Smart" relay host (may be null)
DSmail.acme.com
Beware that sendmail is somewhat sensitive to handling of tab
stop characters in "sendmail.cf". You might want to use the "vi"
editor to ensure that these tab characters are retained
unchanged.
Email reception can often be performed via the POP3 protocol, which can be initiated every time the connection is brought up. A script for testing this is:
sendmail -q
popclient -3 -v mail.acme.com -u dirk -p "PrettySecret" \
-k -o /usr/spool/mail/dirk 2> $HOME/pop.log
This script may be started after PPP connection has been
established. Beware that this script is just for testing, so
ensure that the local mailbox is left untouched while it runs.
The "-k" option means that the mail is kept in the ISP
mailbox, and you are simply given a copy of the mail. You would
of course want to remove this option once you are confident that
your setup is working.
Beware that the password will show on the command line. This really should be fixed ASAP.
A safe and better version of this script may be found at:
ftp://ftp.sn.no/user/egilk/pop-script.tar.gz
This version of the script requires that "procmail" is installed, but that is something you'll never regret anyway:
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/Mail/mailhandlers/procmail-3.10-2.tar.gz
Procmail is a simple and flexible tool that can sort incoming email based on a large range of criteria. In addition to being able to handle automated tasks like vacation messages and such.
The user interface for reading and sending of email can be found in programs like Pine or Elm.
ALT For an ordinary dial-up ISP user it is not really necessary to have the sendmail daemon active. To reduce the resource usage, one may thus comment out any startup of sendmail, as is usually found in "/etc/rc.d/rc.M".
ALT In place of sendmail one might use the simpler "smail". You'll find a good description of it (as well as most other things mentioned here) in the "Linux Network Administrator's Guide".
ALT There is also an m4 macro package for making a fresh "sendmail.cf". For a simple installation it might be just as well to modify an existing configuration.
ALT There are also simpler although less flexible alternatives. Pine may run stand-alone as long as it is configured properly, for instance. It might even be possible to use newer versions of some web-browsers.
ALT Many are very enthusiastic regarding the Emacs companion Gnus as an email and news handler. Further information can be found at:
ALT An alternative to popclient is "pop-perl5". It is available from:
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/System/Mail/pop-perl5-1.1.tar.gz