I have been called an ignorant!
This brings me much joy.
This brings me much joy.
December 2005 Archives
Merry Christmas.
I hope you're drinking something suitably alcoholic as your read this. Some egg nog, or mulled wine perhaps, to warm the cockles. Or maybe a pint of cheap vodka to ease the pain.
Your call. I'm not fussed.
I hope you're drinking something suitably alcoholic as your read this. Some egg nog, or mulled wine perhaps, to warm the cockles. Or maybe a pint of cheap vodka to ease the pain.
Your call. I'm not fussed.
Those who know me well will know I'm no fan of rollercoasters. Seriously, though, this is insane. Note the last two images - I think that says it all.
I'm in the process of abandoning my MyRealBox email address. It would make my day just spiffing if you could mail me at:
dave at davidstark dot name
instead of the old davidstark at myrealbox dot com address. Turn off HTML if you're mailing me, though. HTML email makes baby Jeebus cry.
I'm doing this for two reasons. One is that MyRealBox keeps having outages, so I can't get my email sometimes, and the other reason is too geekish for the front page. Refer to Linux for more information than you probably wanted.
I've had a bit of an overhaul on the email front.
Previously, I was using Evolution to send and recieve my mail. That works just fine if you're on the local host, or on the local network forwarding X over SSH. My new job's desktop machines are all UNIX, so I can SSH into my home machine from work - this necessitates a text mode MUA, unless I want to wait for X through SSH over a 288kb/s upstream connection to do its thing.
So, what I needed was a system whereby:
Previously, I was using Evolution to send and recieve my mail. That works just fine if you're on the local host, or on the local network forwarding X over SSH. My new job's desktop machines are all UNIX, so I can SSH into my home machine from work - this necessitates a text mode MUA, unless I want to wait for X through SSH over a 288kb/s upstream connection to do its thing.
So, what I needed was a system whereby:
1) I didn't have to leave Evolution open all the time to poll my ISP and MyRealBox POP3 servers (using a GUI app as a daemon is asking for hassle).
2) I could read and send email through Mutt (at work) and Evolution (at home).
3) I wasn't running any services I didn't fully understand.
4) Spam was filtered.
# 1 meant using fetchmail.
# 2 meant finding an SMTP relay (mutt doesn't speak SMTP).
# 3 meant the SMTP relay couldn't be sendmail or postfix (these are very powerful systems, and all I needed was a simple SMTP null mailer).
# 4 meant using spamassassin (as it's already installed, and well trained).
What I eventually came up with was:
ISP POP3 -> fetchmail -> ( procmail <-> spamassassin ) -> UNIX mbox(es) -> ( mutt || Evolution )
and
mutt -> msmtp -> ISP SMTP
Evolution speaks SMTP just fine, so I let it do sending itself.
It works perfectly, I've only had to edit 4 short config files, and I'm not running any potentially 'pwnable' daemons I wasn't running before. Problem solved.
