# Receive external mail



## newuser (May 3, 2020)

Hello, 
I can see (using alpine) mail sent from root to root locally, but cannot see anything I send to root from outside.
Been searching for hours, but only found a lot about sending mail (which works fine btw) but nothing about receiving.
Any help greatly appreciated!


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## scottro (May 3, 2020)

If alpine is at all like mutt (I haven't used pine since before it was alpine), you might need a third party program such getmail or fetchmail to get mail.  
For example, I use mutt and fetch from gmail and my ISP account with getmail.  (Haven't used fetchmail in years, so I don't know about it).
Anyway, with getmail you usually set up a cronjob for it to fetch mail every 10 minutes or whatever interval you want. I cover it in a somewhat dated page on mutt, at http://srobb.net/mutt.html (there's a getmail section). I would the setup would be similar for alpine.


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## hruodr (May 3, 2020)

For sending to root from outside, you need to configure an MTA, and for that a static IP and a domain.

But you can get to root mails sent to somewhere else, if there is an imap or pop server, for example with fetchmail.

Or you can get only headers and only emails you want to read, that is imap for. For that you may configure alpine.

By the way, better you do not work as root.


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## newuser (May 3, 2020)

hruodr said:


> For sending to root from outside, you need to configure an MTA, and for that a static IP and a domain.
> 
> But you can get to root mails sent to somewhere else, if there is an imap or pop server, for example with fetchmail.
> 
> ...



Thank you very much. Actually I just thought root would be easiest to check if it works at all, but that seems to be wrong. In the end I want use something like info@...
In /etc/mail/aliases I tried with and without the line                                                                               
info:<------>root                         
but don't receive any mails to info either.
I created the user info. Does sendmail need to be running for this user? I get some permission denied errors when I try to start it.


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## hruodr (May 4, 2020)

newuser said:


> Does sendmail need to be running for this user?



Of course you need `sendmail`to be running and configured to receive mail from the internet. But probably that is not what you want. Probably you want to get the mail sent to somewhere else, let us say [...]@gmail.com, in your computer. For that you need either `fetchmail` or good configured `alpine` with imap.

Sendmail must also run in order that your user info can send mail to root, local mail, but that is easier to configure and configured by default.


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## hruodr (May 4, 2020)

hruodr said:


> let us say [...]@gmail.com



Forget google. It worked with imap and alpine for years, but always with interruptions, because google makes it always more "secure". Today again I could not read my email with alpine, and to read it with the browser is an insult. Google is gettimg only usable with an android smartphone, and not everyone has one, wants to have one, and wants to read and write email with the phone.


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## scottro (May 4, 2020)

It seems as if all companies want to embrace, engulf and extinguish. Gmail is still highly usable for me, using mutt, but, for example, my latest pet peeve is slack. When they started, you could use irssi or weechat with almost no work. Then they changed it in 2016, irssi became a bit of a pain, you had to use bitlbee and, as I remember, it was always a bit of work--such as you had to get a legacy token each time. Fortunately, there is a weechat_slack.py plugin and weechat is still easy. But as of tomorrow, i think, they're removing legacy tokens. (I think you can still use old ones that you've set up with weechat, I guess I'll find out this week)

Anyway, aside from "old guy ranting" the point here is that it seems so many companies start off saying how they're just here to work with you, and as they get more popular, make it so that one has to use their bloated GUI app.

But, back on topic, right now at least, gmail, using getmail to fetch mail and msmtp to send it, works without issue for me with neomutt on either FreeBSD-12.1 or CentOS-8.


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## hruodr (May 4, 2020)

scottro said:


> Gmail is still highly usable for me, using mutt



Today morning, worked with alpine, but now not anymore, and if I login with the browser, it does not offer any more "less secure apps".

They make changes without announcement. You are "surprised" with their changes, perhaps at the worst moment. It is not a serious behaviour.

I wonder how CMU and UW abandoned their development of their imap servers to move everything to google.

It is a question of time, also for you, see here:






						Google tightens the screw on 'less secure apps', will block most access from June 2020
					

Anything less than the latest version of Outlook to be blocked soon




					www.theregister.co.uk


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## hruodr (May 4, 2020)

I will have to try this:





						Authenticating using XOAUTH2 in IMAP and SMTP
					

Information about XOAUTH2 configuration



					alpine.x10host.com


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## scottro (May 4, 2020)

Good luck. (I am not being sarcastic. That thing you posted about google commercial mail is as, or more disturbing than what I mentioned about slack. They're all trying to turn things into GUI web apps).


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## newuser (May 4, 2020)

Thank you all! 

At least for me all works fine now. Can receive mail from outside. To root also works fine, don't even need a user 'info'.

Think the ONLY thing I had to do was uncomment the 'CONNECT/TO/FROM: sendmail.org' lines in /etc/mail/access.    

What surprises me a bit is in /etc/mail/aliases I commented 'info : root' and 'support : root', but mails to e.g. support@... still arrive (at root). On the other hand mails to e.g. suppooooooort@... make Gmail say 'address not found'.


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## SirDice (May 4, 2020)

newuser said:


> What surprises me a bit is in /etc/mail/aliases I commented 'info : root' and 'support : root', but mails to e.g. support@... still arrive (at root).


Run newaliases(8).


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