Automatic mail processing
Software
To setup the processing chain described in the previous part, the following software is used:
Required Software
- Getmail
- Getmail is a mail-retriever designed to download mail - from one or more mail accounts - to your local machine. Getmail is designed to replace other mail retrievers such as fetchmail.
- Maildrop
- Maildrop is a mail-delivery-agent which can be used to develiver mail messages in a local folder. Maildrop also reads instructions from a filter file, before attempting to deliver a message. It is a replacement for procmail, which is more difficult to set up.
- Courier IMAP Server
- Courier-IMAP is a server that provides IMAP access to Maildirs. The IMAP protocol enables e-mail clients to store their messages on the server, instead of removing them from the server like POP3 does.
Optional Software
- SpamAssassin
- SpamAssasin can be used in combination with Maildrop to filter spam. It also has a learning filter to identify new spam, and is used in a lot of commercial anti-spam products as well.
- Postfix SMTP Server
- Postfix is a fast and secure SMTP server, designed to replace Sendmail (and it can replace your QMail installation too). Postfix can also be configured to deliver locally addressed messages with Maildrop. The Postfix website also contains binary packages and documentation making it easy to install.