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installing qpopper (a POP server) 31 August 1998

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Note: several people have contacted me to say qpopper is subject to some exploits. The information I have says that these problems have been corrected in recent versions.

31 August 1998

I'm installing a POP server so I can access the mail on my FreeBSD machine from my NT1 machine (see topology for details). As part of the normal running of the system, daily, weekly, and monthly reports are sent to the root mailbox. I want to read these without logging onto the main server. I already have a POP3 compatible mail client installed on my NT1 box. Now all I need is a POP3 server on my FreeBSD box.

The rest of this page outlines how to install a POP3 server, namely qpopper.

Compiling the port

To compile the port, I followed the instructions for Compiling ports from CDROM as found in the FreeBSD Handbook.

Adding the aliases

You cannot read the root mailbox from over the net. It can only be read locally. This is a security feature. An alternative is to forward mail from the root account to another account which can be ready via the network. I'd already done this once, so I just consulted the original notes I made.

Modifying /etc/inetd.conf

/etc/inetd.conf must be modified in order to run the POP server. Again, I've already done this, so I used my original notes.

Close, but not quite

After this, the POP server was up and running. But I had a slight problem, which I'd once encountered before. Whenever I retrieved mail using the POP server, the following message appeared on the console:

unable to get canonical name of client

But I knew what the problem was. It was my name resolution, or DNS. The cause of my problem was the contents of /etc/resolv.conf. Again, I used my original notes on resolv.conf is being modified, and not by me in order to fix my /etc/dhclient.conf file. Here's what I finally used:

prepend domain-name "www.example.org";
prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1

This gave me:

search www.example.org myisp.com
nameserver 10.0.0.1
nameserver 11.22.33.44
nameserver 11.22.33.45

Not quite what I want. But close. The goal is to not have myisp.com appearing in the search line. That's for another day.

16 October 1998

A recent email prompted me to add my /etc/dhclient.conf file to the website. It might help. But remember to try an empty file first. See also http://home.san.rr.com/freebsd/dhcp.html.

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