[hosers-announce] switching to maildirs, POP3 over SSL

[Joel Uckelman <uckelman@xxxxxxxxx>]

>From quoting:

You may have noticed that at points in the past you've received messages 
that have lines starting with ">From ", but the > is not from a bit of 
quoted text. This is due to the way that mail is stored on the spool. 
Messages on the spool are separated by "From" lines, so lines within 
messages that start with "From" must be escaped somehow. Unfortunately, 
many mail readers do not undo this escaping (called From mangling), or do 
not undo it properly. If this bothers you, you can switch from having your 
un-inc'd mail sitting on the spool to storing it in a Maildir. Maildirs are 
not subject to the From unqouting problem.

APOP -> POP3 over SSL:

If you currently use APOP, however, you *must* switch to maildirs. (I think 
this applies only to Tom, since both Jeff and I have already switched.) 
Later this week I will be removing the APOP client. There is already a POP3 
client that is maildir-aware listening through an SSL tunnel on port 995 
(the one you'd expect POP3s to be on, if you had expectations w/r/t POP3s). 
POP3 over SSL is much more secure than APOP; shutting off APOP allows me to 
throw away qpopper and close another port.

Note that if you don't care about proper From unquoting and you don't use 
APOP, you need do nothing.

Instructions:

If you want to/need to use a maildir:

1. Make yourself a Maildir in your home directory. (It must be in your home 
directory and called 'Maildir' if you want to use POP3s, otherwise 
qmail-pop3d won't be able to find it.)

cd ~
maildirmake Maildir

2. If you have no .procmailrc, skip this step. If you have a .procmailrc, 
add the following recipe to the end:

:0:
Maildir/

Without this, ALL of your mail not handled by a previous recipe will still 
go to the spool.

3. If you use procmail, do this to create a .qmail file in your home 
directory:

echo |preline /usr/bin/procmail -t >.qmail

If you don't use procmail:

echo ./Maildir/ >.qmail

4. From now on, use qinc instead of inc to incorporate mail into your 
inbox. I wrote qinc, so if you find that it's behavior doesn't perfectly 
replicate that of inc, or it isn't working properly, please tell me. You 
will probably want to inc one last time after you make these changes to be 
sure that there is no more mail for you on the spool.

5. If you want to use POP3 over SSL:

If your POP client is fetchmail, change the proto to POP3 and add an 'ssl' 
in the query string somewhere. This probably applies to Tom only, and I'm 
sure he already knows how to do it.

If you POP client is something else, e.g., Eudora or <shudder> Outlook, you 
can find instructions for what to do here:

http://www.doit.wisc.edu/wiscmail/configuring/index.asp

I don't know if there is anyone who will be doing this, but if there is and 
you get stuck, ask me about it.

6. After making these changes, test them by sending yourself some mail. If 
you find that you've broken your mail setup, I'll be glad to look at it for 
you.

I think these instructions are fairly complete. If you run into any 
complications, let me know.

Thanks.

-- 
J.


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