email client not download mails using Dovecot (POP3 & IMAP)

zaiwen

很喜欢这个论坛， one of the best Linux Forum I have ever seen...相见恨晚....虽然斑竹有点凶阿

为了不被斑竹骂， I have spent two weeks browsing all the postings in the 36 pages and learned a lot from those great postings.  

Here comes my Question One:

I am setting up Dovecot (POP3 and IMAP) with Postfix on RHEL 4.0. The mail server has no problem sending and receiving emails, but on the email client side (Evolution and Outlook), although the connection testing to mail server is successful, I can't view any emails in the INBOX folder on the client machine. I can view all the emails in the local linux machine under /var/spool/mail, but it seems they can't be downloaded to the email client side. What could be the prolem?

1. Eedited /etc/dovecot.conf:
   protocols = imap pop3

   auth_passwd = pam *
       
   default_mail_env =  mbox:~/mail/:INBOX=/var/mail/%u

2. In /etc/pam.d, created pop3 and imap file
   
   auth required pam_unix.so
   account required pam_unix.so

测试： telnet host 110
然后输入： user username
pass password

LOGIN成功.

Any help will be highly appreciated.

yongjian

Have you tried fetchmail? On your client, try using fetchmail with different options against your pop3 and imap server see how it goes...

zaiwen

Thank you for the quick response...thought everyone is celebrating 10.1 and nobody would answer my calls...

fetchmail? run it on linux mail server or email client machine? How about if my email client is on windows?

Anyway I will try your suggestion tomorrow...

yongjian

Post by zaiwen
Thank you for the quick response...thought everyone is celebrating 10.1 and nobody would answer my calls...

fetchmail? run it on linux mail server or email client machine? How about if my email client is on windows?

Anyway I will try your suggestion tomorrow...

Using fetchmail can easily test if your pop3/imap server is working or not. BTW, imap server wouldn't download the emails to client, it will save them on the server.

zaiwen

I haven't had chance to try fetchmail, but my testing today shows something interesting:

Before I always used root user and it doesn't work: I can't see any email in the inbox on the email client side.

Today I tried to use a non-root user and surprisedly it works! I can see emails in this non-root user's inbox on the email client side.

Now I found a workaround for root user: in /etc/aliases, edit the last line to point root user to a non-root user, which will only be used to view root's email.

However, I still want to know if this is the design or limitation? Or I need to configure something to make it work for root without such a workaround?

Thanks a thousand time!!!!!!

yongjian

root and system users underneath 500 uid are not allowed.