Matt Penfold wrote:

I am sure this is a really stupid question but I could do with some advice.

I am setting an old PC as an email/file server using Gentoo Linux. So far I have configured getting emails from a couple of a pop3 accounts I have with ISPs/Mail Service providers using getmail and dovecot. I can access those emails from a variety of clients using IMAP without problem.

The next stage I want to implement is to have a central location available to the clients of sent emails as well as received emails. It is this part I am a bit confused about. I know I will need some kind of agent to transfer the email from the client to the appropriate ISP/Mail provider but I am overwhelmed by the choice. Sendmail seems a bit OTT for me needs! And how do I ensure that I can see what emails I have send using IMAP ?

Matt,

I've used a setup something like you describe since 2001, with exim (www.exim.org) as the MTA. Exim runs as a daemon on the (Gentoo) server, and coexists nicely with Dovecot.

The clients themselves save sent emails in the relevant IMAP folder ("Sent").

In our household, this setup allows all users on all 5 PCs to send and receive emails through a common system and to see (thanks to IMAP) the same set of subscribed folders (197000 messages since 3.1.2004).

You can email me privately if you want more details on my exim configuration.

John

-- John Allen Bofferdange, Luxembourg allen@vo.lu http://www.homepages.lu/allen