pop3 daemon on Mac OS X

G

gatorparrots

~departed~
I may be interested in using imap in the future, but I would like to start off with a pop3 daemon to use in conjunction with the postfix smtp server. Does anyone have any insight into installing qpopper (or another pop3 daemon)? References on the 'net are scarce... and I don't want to pay Tenon or Stalker hundreds of dollars for what can be done via a little blood, sweat and CLI editing...

There's an older binary here:
v3 -- http://www.geeklair.net/downloads/
but the newer source code is available direct from Qualcomm that seems to compile fine for OS X:
v4.0.4 -- ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/eudora/servers/unix/popper/

And this site seems to have some measure of setup insight:
http://www.textlab.de/itw/features/Settingupacompleteemailacc.html

But nowhere have I found complete, step-by-step directions.
Does anyone care to tackle this one as a service to your fellow OS X philes?
 
Eric Belsley from the MacResource site provides info on setting up a POP3 server. It is a very easy procedure. Eudora provides free POP software at their qpopper site. Download and compile. I found that the "make install" command did not work, so I became root and manually moved the executable "popper" to the /usr/libexec directory and the man pages to /usr/share/man/man8/. You also have to edit /etc/inetd.conf to uncomment the pop3 line, and change /usr/local/libexec/popper to /usr/libexec/popper qpopper -s. Finally, all that is left is to "kill -HUP" the inetd process. The guide that comes with qpopper is very detailed. It contains one error in that it mentions mail being in /usr/mail, but instead, it locates at /var/mail. The guide also implies that that it is important that one should make a symbolic link, /var/spool/mail, that points to /var/mail. I did that, but did not verify if it was really necessary.

------->http://www.kung-foo.tv/xtips.php#16
this worked for me, just follow it step by step (make install fails with bot version 3 and 4)

I'm running v. 4.0.3
 
Originally posted by FireFly-NL
The guide also implies that that it is important that one should make a symbolic link, /var/spool/mail, that points to /var/mail. I did that, but did not verify if it was really necessary.

------->http://www.kung-foo.tv/xtips.php#16
this worked for me, just follow it step by step (make install fails with both version 3 and 4)
Click to expand...

Yes, I saw those directions and those were taken into consideration when I was installing qpopper, as they seem to be one of the few on the 'net. But the link I posted is actually more complete in its directions (although his configuration differs in that he is using sendmail instead of postfix): http://www.textlab.de/itw/features/Settingupacompleteemailacc.html

Please note that the symolic link directions in the qpopper guide are incorrect. It is unnecessary on Mac OS X (as explained by a UNIX hacker friend of mine):

4.2BSD stored mail in /usr/spool/mail . That must be the standard by which they are going.
Linux systems store mail in /var/spool/mail . /var did not exist in 4.2BSD. I haven't seen a definitive standard about this (there is one from POSIX, I believe), but /var/spool/mail seems to be the de facto standard.
/var/spool/mail (as well as /usr/spool/mail) does not exist on Mac OS X, so linking to it, although possible (symlinks can point anywhere, existent or not), would not be constructive. /var/mail already does exist, so you can't use that for the link name. In fact, /var/mail is a directory, just waiting to have mail deposited into it (at least, I suppose that that is what it is for, given that /var/mail
is commonly a symbolic link to /var/spool/mail , as on this system where I am).
It may not be necessary to have a symbolic link at all. If it is necessary, the common association of having /var/mail and /var/spool/mail be synonyms for the mail directory, can be accomplished by

cd /var/spool
ln -s ../mail mail

But if they really need /usr/spool/mail or /usr/mail to refer to the postoffice, these can be done by (respectively)

cd /usr ; ln -s ../var/spool spool ; cd spool ; ln -s ../mail mail
cd /usr ; ln -s ../var/mail mail

None of this should be necessary. If there is any configuration possible, we should be able to tell it the right place to put the mail, which, on your system, is /var/mail . If other apps also need access to the same place, and one or more of these cannot be configured, then you should make a symbolic link.
 
Thanks guys!

My problem was, QPopper didn't want to run from /usr/local/lib/popper for some reason, so I moved it to /usr/libexec/popper and it started to work :D

Before, inetd was listening to pop3 requests, but it would imediatly close the connection because it couldn't start qpopper for some reason. Now it's working, and my pop3 server is up :D

Thanks for the help testuser, G. Peretz, and FireFly-NL
 
Well, apparently testuser disappeared and took all his posts with him. So here is a summary of the installation procedure for qpopper on Mac OS X 10.1.5. This will net you a working pop3 daemon that runs under inetd.

Code: 
# download and decompress the source
wget [url]ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/eudora/servers/unix/popper/qpopper4.0.4.tar.gz[/url]
tar -zxf qpopper4.0.4.tar.gz
cd qpopper4.0.4
# build the executable
./configure
make
sudo make install
# manually move the binary executable
sudo mv popper/popper /usr/libexec/popper
# 'man'ually move the man pages
sudo mv man/* /usr/share/man/man8/
# rebuild the man index
sudo /usr/libexec/makewhatis /usr/local/man
# configure and restart inetd
sudo -s
echo "pop3 stream tcp nowait root /usr/libexec/popper qpopper -s" \
>> /etc/inetd.conf
kill -HUP `cat /var/run/inetd.pid`
exit
 
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