
                          THE ISP CONNECTIVITY HOWTO
                                       
   _Michael Strates, Michael_Strates@apana.org.au
   v1.0, 30 August 1997
   _
   
   This document describes how to integrate your Linux computer, and take
   advantage of your temporary internet connection. If you follow this
   document correctly, you will have Mail and News working well.
   
    1. Introduction
    
   
   
   The main goal of this document is to address some of the problems
   people face when connecting their Linux box up to a temporary Internet
   Connection. Hopefully with the advent of this document, it will
   prevent people's postings about this subject.
   
   This document isn't meant to supersede any other HOWTO, it should be
   used in conjunction with them.
   
    1.1. New versions of this document
    
   
   
   New versions of this document will be periodically posted to
   comp.os.linux.announce, comp.answers, and news.answers. They will also
   be added to various anonymous FTP sites who archive such information,
   including SunSite (sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO).
   
   In addition to these sites, you'll also be able to find this HOWTO on
   the Web at http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/linux.html.
   
    1.2. Feedback
    
   
   
   I welcome any feedback about this HOWTO, either positive or negative
   via electronic mail. Naturally, I'd be happy to hear from you if you
   have found any errors, or omissions.
   
   Flames will go quietly to /dev/null so don't even bother! :-)
   
    1.3. Copyright Information
    
   
   
   The ISP-Connectivity-HOWTO is copyrighted (c)1997 Michael Strates.
   
   A verbatim copy may be reproduced or distributed in any medium
   physical or electronic without permission of the author. Translations
   are similarly permitted without express permission if it includes a
   notice on who translated it.
   
   Short quotes may be used without prior consent by the author.
   Derivative work and partial distributions of the
   ISP-Connectivity-HOWTO must be accompanied with either a verbatim copy
   or a pointer to the verbatim copy.
   
   Commercial redistribution is allowed and encouraged; however, the
   author would appreciate being notified of any such distributions (as a
   courtesy).
   
   In short, we wish to promote dissemination of this information through
   as many channels as possible. However, we do wish to retain copyright
   on the HOWTO documents.
   
   We further want that ALL information provided in the HOWTOS is
   desseminated. If you have any questions, please contact Greg Hankins,
   the Linux HOWTO coordinator, at gregh@sunsite.unc.edu.
   
    1.4. Standard Disclaimer
    
   
   
   Naturally, I disavow any potentional liability resulting of the direct
   or indirect use of any information contained in this document. Use it
   at your own risk only. I present this in a hope to help people, but if
   something seriously goes wrong, then I'm not to blame.
   
    1.5. Other Sources of Information
    
   
   
   * The other Linux HOWTO Documents and LDP Manuals
   * UseNet Groups
   * and some of the very informative O'Riley Books
   
    2. Connecting up to the ISP
    
   
   
   Connecting up hasn't got much to do with this HOWTO. There are a few
   good HOWTOs out there to help you with this, mainly the PPP-HOWTO, and
   the ISP-Hookup HOWTO. With this said, it is assumed you have a working
   PPP or SLIP connection to the Internet.
   
    3. Fetching Your Mail
    
   
   
   One of the most important aspects of the Internet is e-mail. Instead
   of telnetting to your ISP, you can download mail locally. There are a
   number of methods that we'll address here.
   
    3.1 FTPing Your Mail
    
   
   
   If your ISP runs a form of UNIX, you can simply FTP onto the server
   using your login and password, change directory over to
   /var/spool/mail, get your mail, and replace the
   /var/spool/mail/username with a template empty one. Usually you'll
   type:
   
   ftp sitename
   Sitename FTP Server (wakkko-serv wver 1.0)
   username: john
   password: pass
   ftp> cd /var/spool/mail
   ftp> get john
   ftp> cp ~/empty-mail-template john
   ftp> exit
   $ cat john >>/var/spool/mail/john
   $ rm john
   
   and he'll be laughing, but sometimes this inconvenient. Hence the
   Fetchmail method comes into action and is way more reliable.
   
    3.2 Enter Fetchmail
    
   
   
   Fetchmail is a program that fetches your e-mail using POP, deletes
   your mail from the server, and places the new mail into your local
   mail spool. It's quite easy to use, and is the perferred option for
   most people. To automate Fetchmail, you use an rc file in your home
   directory, ` .fetchmailrc '.
   
   The basic format of the .fetchmailrc file is outlined below...
   
   ### basic .fetchmailrc
   poll mail.yourisp.com proto pop3 user login_name password your_passwd
   user login_name with pass your_passwd is your_local_login here
   ### end
   
   Replace the tokens with real information, and place the file in your
   home directory. You should now be able to start fetchmail.
   
   There are two main ways to start fetchmail, one is in its normal form,
   and the second is daemon. Daemon works in the background as a job and
   polls for mail at your user defined interval. The other option is if
   you wish to fetch only unread messages, or the whole lot of them.
   We'll explain how to implement these options below...
   
   fetchmail -a -d
   
   -a is the fetch all mail option, default is off
   -d is the daemon option, after the -d is the seconds between polls
   
   for example, I might want to setup Fetchmail in daemon mode, to poll
   for mail every minute, and fetch all mail.
   
   fetchmail -a -d60
   
   For more information on Fetchmail, read it's manual page.
   
    4.0 Pine
    
   
   
   The rest of the file will be dedicated to Pine, an interactive mail
   and newsreader for UNIX. For more information, and to download Pine,
   go to http://cac.washington.edu/pine.
   
   
   
    4.1 Sending Mail
    
   
   
   Open up Pine, and choose Setup - Configuration. Setup your userdomain
   as the domain in your e-mail address. For example, a fictional e-mail
   address would be `johnston@slownnet.com'. So, I setup the User Domain
   as slownet.com. Then we move down to smtp-server. This is the server
   which you use when sending mail outwards. Fetchmail will handle all
   inbound mail, but today we'll use Pine to handle outbound stuffs. So,
   I enter my POP server's name into that box, which in my case would be
   mail.slownet.com.
   
   You should now have working mail and news on your system. The only
   catch here is that your local login name must corospond to the name
   you use on your e-mail address. So, johnston's login will have to be
   johnston on his local machine as well. To many, this shouldn't pose
   much of a problem.
   
    4.2 Posting/Reading News
    
   
   
   Usually, while you're online you'll want to browse and post news. If
   you wish to download news for later browsing, you might be better off
   going to read the Tiny-News mini-howto. It describes howto setup a
   small news spool containing only the newsgroups you need.
   
   Remember, if you follow these instructions you'll only be able to
   browse news whilst online.
   
   Open up Setup, Configuration in Pine. Move down to nntp-server. Change
   the default setting over to the name of your ISP's news server. In my
   case, it was news.slownet.com.
   
   News should now be working.
   
    5. Customizing Things
    
   
   
   Now that we have everything working, it's time to customize your
   newsgroup layout and the likes. So, let's begin by taking up your
   Internet connection by whatever means you use, and ping your ISP and
   ensure that it's working. Now, open up Pine. Go to Folder List (L),
   then down to News Collection. Press enter to see the expanded list,
   and type A to subscribe. Control-T to see all groups, and after a few
   minutes (took me 5 minutes), you'll have a listing of all the
   newsgroups you can subscribe to. Subscribe to the ones that you need,
   and exit out of Pine.
   
    6. Everything Should be Working
    
   
   
   Now, whenever you login and you're on the 'net, type in:
   
   $ fetchmail -a -d60
   $
   
   and you'll soon start receiving mail. And when your finished on the
   'net, just before you bring your connection down, type in:
   
   $ fetchmail -q
   
   So there you have it folks, a perfectly working Internet Mail/News for
   the temporary people.
