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Offline Mail Queues w/ Mac OS X?
Zorton asks: "After switching to Mac OS X (10.2) for my primary work/play environment I started to customize the system as I would a Linux or BSD system. One of the first things I wanted to tackle was getting mail into the machine and enabling offline mail queuing (as this is a laptop that roams quite a bit). After installing Fink I was happy to see some of my favorite MTAs available. However I was disappointed to discover there seems to be no mechanism similar to /etc/network/if-up.d (or similar). I spent a bit of time poking and prodding the system but the best I could come up with where some library functions listed on Apple's Developer Connection website. Has anyone tried to configure offline mail queues under Mac OS X 10.2? If you have how did you handle telling the MTA to transfer the mail you have queued up?"
I knew there was something else I wanted to ask these people. *grumbles*
I've been nagged to try and setup something like this. No, I've not given it much thought. Yes, I am interested in everyones ideas. Cool! Thanks for reminding me of this one. I hope it's fruitful.
Informatus Technologicus
I'm not sure what you're needing to do but the Mail app which comes bundled with OSX does all that out of the box. The mail spools for each user are under their respective /user/joeblow/Library/Mail/Mailboxes They're even in standard 'nix spool format!
If you need to use a different app just point it to the right folder and let OSX do the rest...
like you normally do....
Though I don't have a specific answer to your problem, my guess is that a library such as this might be accessible through the Cocoa or Carbon API's. I know that Adium (which is open source) will reconnect to it's server if it loses it's connection. My experience is that the network utilities work differently in some cases than they do under linux, probably due to their BSD heritage. Ifconfig will list all the interfaces that are up with the command 'ifconfig -u.'
offline = spam;
online = mail;
Mail.app will queue your outbound mail in a standard way... throws them in to the 'Out' box and will send them first opportunity. You could also try out eudora which has all kinds of nifty extras.
Don't forget to set up rules in Mail.app for cc to yourself or whatever. Finally there are lots of 'hidden' features to Mail... that are standard on other mail progs... like bcc, that you just have to turn on via one of the menus.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I do know that pppd calls a script every time its connection goes up or goes down. You may be able to write a script to do your mail transfers with this script.
/private/etc/ppp/ip-up
/private/etc/ppp/ip-down
When the connection is made it calls the shell script at:
When the connection is broken it calls the shell script at:
If you don't use ppp or pppoe (or anything else that uses pppd) then maybe there are similar scripts in other places. Hope this helps.
Sapere aude!
I think you could easily develop something with similar functionality you want to have if you use the SystemConfiguration Framework - provided that you have some C/C++/Objective-C knowledge.
More informations about the framework mentioned above can be found here (http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Networ king/SysConfigOverview926/index.html
).
Read the "Dynamic Agents" chapter...
Shell scripting was invented for a reason. Don't copy this script and expect it to work. But do copy the idea.
/somepath/checkping.zsh
/somepath/checkping.zsh: /tmp/connected.txt ]) /tmp/connected.txt /somepath/wentdown.sh /tmp/connected.txt /somepath/wentup.sh
crontab:
* * * * *
#!/bin/zsh
if ([ test -e
then
if (ping -c 1 www.apple.com)
then
# we are already up
else
# we went down
rm
fi
else
if (ping -c 1 www.apple.com)
then
date >
else
# we were already down
fi
fi
I'm pretty sure that apple script has the ability to interface with your MTA.
- Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do.
thanks for everyones input
I think the underlying problem i'm having is the lack of any ip-d up script or anything like that. It seems to be obvious now after reading some of the comments posted, that the short term solution would be to use Mail app or point something else towards Mail.app's mail dir. I still would like to find out how the location manager does it's thing (Under the apple menu -> location). The API for it seems to be very well documented and perhaps I will end up coding something similar to a interface up script. In the meantime all I will do is install postfix and have it default upon startup to offline mode. Then i'll run a cron job about every minute or to check for up interfaces that have come up (ifconfig -u, and check the routing tables). Not quite as elegant as i've done in the past on a debian system using qmail but should get the job done. I think with a system like that I could grab e-mail from my pop box using another cron job (fetchmail?), and have a offline mail queue ready to go.
What do you think? Has anyone taken a closer look into the location manager's inner workings? I find it difficult to believe apple didn't provide any provision for advanced configuration of the interfaces (changing the MAC address or perhaps the MTU based on diffrent locations and options).
Thanks
have one for you: I would like to use my old dos apps but without using Virtual PC or bochs because I don't like them.
Then don't run a Macintosh if you don't want to run virtualizations of some kind. First off, your running a Unix-like system, and second off your running a completely different architecture. Those two things combined make it impossible to do without either Virtual PC or Bochs. Maybe VMWare if they come out with a OS/X version, but those are your choices.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Check out Mac OS X for Unix Geeks from O'Reillys /0 /22/mac forunix.html
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mosxgeek
and
Top Ten Mac OS X Tips for Unix Geeks
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2002/1
I change locations a lot. I use entourage and although I use the location manager which handles the network changes fine , I have to change smtp servers manually to send mail depending on where I am. I haven't found a way around this with switching locations. Does this suggestion help solve my problem?
UUCP and PPP meant spool up mail, send it periodially.
UUCP ran periodically (cron), when PPP started up, a startup script would run a sendmail queue runner.
The only difference here is (1) determining when you are "on the net" via ethernet or wireless and (perhaps) (2) using TLS and SMTP AUTH to allow you to send ANY TIME you are on ANY net - you authenticate yourself to a machine on the net and use TLS to encrypt the transaction. Or setup an IPSec connection to your server. Or use UUCP over SSH (scary, but I've done it).
Configure sendmail in "queue only mode" and treat it like an occasionally connected machine. This is basic (for mail).
If so, that would be the ideal method. All my accounts use localhost:2525 as the smtp server, and I have an ssh command something like ssh user@sshhost -C -v -L 2525:smtphost:25 -L 1101:pophost:110 to tunnel everything. If your ssh host does SSH2 (protocol version two, not version two of the software) you can use the -f -N options to background it, which makes it easy to start and stop from a location-triggered shell script. (and naturally, you'll want to use localhost:1101 as your pop server now, so that too will be encrypted)
Doing unencrypted pop and smtp from a laptop is never a good idea. Even if you're careful, eventually you'll probably leave your mail client open while you use your machine within range of some random wireless network, and then you'll be sending your cleartext password over not just the internet but also the public airwaves...
In addition to the security, another benefit to using ssh tunnels for pop and smtp is that your mail client can only get packets out to the internet when the ssh tunnel is up. It doesn't know the name of the actual internet servers, and if you killall ssh, connections to localhost2525 and localhost:1101 are simply refused and you've made no noise at all on the network. And another benefit is that you can have a local port open from behind any firewall (ie, use -R 8080:localhost:80 in your ssh command and http://sshhost.yourisp.net:8080/ will have your local webserver on it). I often use this for testing websites from behind the firewall at work.
Ok, I could go on more, but the point here is that ssh is damn cool.
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
Set up a different Mail.app account for each location. Each account will have their own SMTP server configured accordingly. So when you come to a new place, just switch "Location", open the Mail.app, switch to the appropriate account and start sending and receiving your mails.
I assume that you know how to set up a new account in Mail.app.
Why has nothing been posted to apple.slashdot.org in over two days? Is there simply no apple news?
Powerbook G4/1.5GHz 12", Toshiba Satellite 1135-S1554
Why do people really believe that Postfix is easier?
/etc/mail on OS X>10.1.5, and sendmail will provide all the functionality 90% of ibook users would ever want.
Follow the five step readme in
For the other 10%, RTFM, it's still quicker than installing postfix, and current versions of sendmail are just as secure, and unless you're using your ibook to send >10000 spams an hour, sendmail is plenty fast.
The ssh solution is much more elegant (and secure), but out-of-the-box, things work pretty well.
if you want to get your hands "dirty" (meaning programming) you might want to look at the system configuration framework. You can hook up for notifications of the configd whenever an entry changes (e.g. an interface goes down). This is coded in C, but if you know how to write a daemon, it should be pretty easy to get those notifications and execute shell scripts.
His well tuned Postfix was much faster than his untuned unix running an untuned Sendmail.
We tuned Sendmail. It smoked Postfix (200k+/hour/machine) before using better hardware (faster disks, not more CPUs).
So if Sendmail is too hard for you, then perhaps Unix (therefore Linux) is too hard and you should go back to Windows.