[lug] Fetchmail, smtp, procmail, and port 110

[D. Stimits]

"J. Wayde Allen" wrote:
> 
> On a different note, I've recently been setting up a home network, and
> have managed to cause problems with my wife's fetchmail
> installation.  This is also a KRUD system and seemed to be able to pop
> mail from her dialup account without any problems.  Since installing the
> ethernet card I've developed a number of questions:
> 
>    - How does one configure the ppp dialup to coexist with the ethernet
>      link?  Actually, they both work, but in order to get a ppp connection
>      I have to shutdown the eth0 network.  I'm fairly certain that this is
>      due to the need for the dialup server to set the local IP address
>      whereas my eth0 interface assumes that the network uses a fixed
>      IP.  Ultimately the plan is to migrate off of the dialup service, so
>      having to drop the eth0 interface to talk isn't a big problem, but I
>      was curious is there is a way to fix this?

I am guessing that the machine with ppp has the ethernet card set as a
default route, and that ppp is not overriding it. Unless the ethernet IS
the default route, remove that, and let the netmask select it when
needed; the ppp scripts should add a route to the ppp0 if another route
default is not overriding it (I haven't done this enough to know it will
always behave this way, but I have semi-recently run into the same
problem, and corrected it by telling to not consider the eth0 as default
route).

> 
>    - The more serious issue is that my wife's fetchmail service has gotten
>      to be very slow.  It works, but after connecting to the server and
>      determining that there is mail available it sits for about 1 minute
>      before issuing a "Can't raise smtp listener, switching to procmail"
>      or something similar.  After that things work OK.  Her .fetchmailrc
>      file also has a "port 110" line.  Not sure why that would be since I
>      think smtp traffic should normally be on port 25.

<grain of salt, not positive, could be foolish>
Port 25 local is for incoming email being pushed to you. Port 110 is
pop3 being pulled from a site. If the other side has pop3, you would
"pull" via that port, or the other end could be set to voluntarily
"push" mail to your 25...it depends on who is requesting the transfer,
and whether it is sending its own data, or requesting data from the
other side. Perhaps authentication settings are causing the delay.
</grain of salt>

D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com

> 
> - Wayde
>   (wallen at lug.boulder.co.us)
> 
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