On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 5:51 AM, Mehma Sarja <mehmasarja@???> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> This is an unusual question - how to configure a mail server to ONLY do
> webmail?
>
> I need some help thinking about this - Pop and IMAP handle incoming mail
> for MUA and SMTP handles outgoing mail from a MUA. However, what are the
> parts when all-z you want to do is webmail? So, my users will send and
> receive all mail via web.
>
> Mehma
>
>
Hi Mehma,
POP3/IMAP4 processes are dispensers.
SMTP engine receives mail submitted by MuA and other SMTP servers and
_EITHER_ stores the e-mail into a user's folder (if the recipient is a user
within the local domain, presumably native to _this_ very server) or sends
it out to the intended destination.
A POP3/IMAP4 engine, OTOH, allows a MuA to retrieve the e-mail from where
it was stored. Almost all MuAs are capable of doing this.
Webmail is a only web abstraction of a MuA and depending on the design of
the engine, a webmail app could do both POP3 and IMAP4 or just one of those.
If you only want to do webmail, thereby stopping any Desktop-based MuA from
ever accessing the server, then you have two options, after you install the
webmail app and configure it to be able to authenticate users against the
"mail server":
1. Configure the mail server to only run IMAP4. Disable POP3. Let's say you
use Dovecot as that server engine.
2. Configure it to listen only on loopback interface (127.0.0.1) or let it
run on any interfaces but block any connections from
everywhere except from localhost IPs. You can use firewall rules or
Dovecot's own configuration file to achieve this.
This leaves the SMTP engine untouched and will handle the sending out of
e-mails and receiving what is submitted to it.
Use Exim+Dovecot. Both are very flexible.
--
Best regards,
Odhiambo WASHINGTON,
Nairobi,KE
+254733744121/+254722743223
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
I can't hear you -- I'm using the scrambler.
