[TheForge] Re: Off topic - LAN e-mail

[Mike Spencer]

Chris> Can an e-mail program be used over a LAN that is not connected
Chris> to the Internet for e-mail within members of the LAN?

Trister> Very expensive to do with Microsoft products, you should look
Trister> into opensource solutions, maybe set up a Linux box

Dan> Look for a program called "send mail" it comes with most
Dan> distributions of Linux. http://www.sendmail.org/

Trister's advice is good: get an old computer -- a PII is fine or even
a 1st generation Pentium.  Stick a newer HD in it, 5 Gig or 20 Gig or
whatever you can get on the cheap.  Then load up a basic installation
of Linux (skipping all the powerful toys but including all the
networking and mail stuff.)  Assuming you Lan is using IP and not
some proprietary protocol, you should be able to configure it to
receive mail from all the other computers on your LAN and store it
where other users can access it over the LAN.  It probably won't
be a 15 minute quickie to configure it if you're a novice with
IP-based networking and Linux.  It will be one them, what you call,
learning experiences.

But...I'm kinda dubious about Dan's advice.  Just "Go get
sendmail...", eh?  Sendmail is a whole hardware store, a NASA machine
shop, the Gnomes of Zurich and the Battleship Potemkin all poured into
one handy Swiss Army knife.  It's so complicated that there is a whole
other program used to configure it.  The manual is 1100 pages long and
costs US$60.

That said, it works fine and comes as part of some (all?) Linux
distributions.  But many ISP's admins use the much simpler Exim or
some other program as their MTA [Mail Transport Agent] and you might
want to do the same.

I use sendmail, have the manual and have tweaked the config to do a
few simple but non-default things.  But I would have to spend some
time with the Great Fat Book again to figure out how to make it send
network mail to my ISP (as it does now) but local mail to my local
mailbox on my LAN.

Or maybe I'm just a wimp.

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^