First a disclaimer, I'm not a mail program guru, but I have struggled with them from time to time.

Nathan,

First the bad news.  As far as I can tell, the most popular email servers don't support running an arbitrary script/program/whatever when a POP3 or IMAP login is detected.  Beyond that, Outlook doesn't login again for every mail check when using the IMAP protocol, it logs in once, and may hold that connection all day.

That said, if you're running an open-source mail server, and your clients are POP3 only, then it's pretty simple to add the functionality you need by coding a configurable call-out at the tail end of the login code in the server.  Around the point where the system logs are written is usually a good choice.  If that's not a reasonable option, then Craig White's suggestion to have a program watch the system logs for the login event is a decent solution, although it is a bit tricky to manage.

==Joseph++

BTW, I understand what you're doing (enabling the service, available on many webmail systems, where the webmail system monitors your POP3 email services and loads that email into your webmail account).  What I don't quite follow is why you don't walk the 15 or so users through having their mail client just check their remote email accounts directly?  Even a fundamentally flawed program like OutlookExpress or Outlook is capable of doing this pretty easily, and if they're open to running a better client, Mozilla Thunderbird handles it like a champ (as do most other open-source mail clients).


Nathan England wrote: 
Unfortunately, I only control my mail server inside the company. What we want 
to accomplish is having our mail server get mail from outside sources. Some 
of the employees want their cybertrails email, others want earthlink...

(don't ask they why's please... I'm as irritated about this as you might be 
just thinking about it, but as the IT guy, I'm forced to do this, and _make_ 
it work!)

I have all the employees who want external mail pulled in setup in a fetchmail 
job that runs about every tens minutes. There's not a whole lot of people 
involved in this, only about 15.  The problem is, some of them get mail to 
the outside account and then can't get it from our systems for apx: 10 
minutes... 
So I'm looking for a way, instead of having a rotating fetchmail that keeps 
running every so many minutes, something that will recognize when they 'pop' 
in and check their external mail.
This has to be automated. When I introduced squirrelmail, most of these people 
panicked! because it didn't say Microsoft or Outlook anywhere. And the 
thought of these guys setting up their own fetchmail lists just scares me...

It doesn't matter how complicated it is on my part, but the end users can't 
notice any difference. 

nathan


On Thursday 31 March 2005 07:31, Patrick Fleming, EA wrote:
  
Nathan England wrote:
    
I need to have a mail server run a script when a user logs in. Anyone
know how to do this? Or any specific pop server that can handle this?
Basically, I have external clients connecting to a machine to check
their mail from that machine. But everyone is complaining about my
using fetchmail. I have it set to fetch the mail every 5 minutes. But
some clients are complaining that that is too long. So I am wondering
if there is a way for the system to fetch their mail when the pop is
accessed. ??
      
Nathan,

What exactly are you trying to accomplish?

Reading this thread it would *seem* as if you might be trying to get
email from a third-party source. But reading your explaination above it
seems like you are operating *both* or all mail servers involved. If you
are managing both and only some email goes to an "outside" server for
clients you could probably set up .forward files for people who need it
on the "second" or "outside" server. That way, as soon as it's processed
by spamassassin and clamavis and whatever other filters you run it can
just be dumped onto the "outside" machine. I would configure the
"outside" machine to only accept email from your mail server and cut
down the hardware requirements for your "outside" machine.

Another way of doing this is to alias incoming email to the "outside"
machine (again assumes you control both) for those users that need it.

Is this what you are trying to accomplish?


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