[linux-help] Re: Communicating with Exchange server

[Steven Saner <ssaner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Feb 12, 2001 at 01:18:45AM -0600, John Reinke wrote:
> 
> The University of Kansas in their infinite wisdom has recently decided to
> force all general student accounts to be moved from UNIX servers to
> Exchange servers. While many students already use a web interface or
> Outlook to check their mail, many other students prefer to telnet/ssh to
> the UNIX servers from anywhere to check email. No server-side clients such
> as pine/elm/mutt can obviously be used on an Exchange server, creating many
> unhappy campers.
> 
> (The policy is apparently campus-wise, although the CS-related departments
> are resisting. What do you bet M$ made a generous offer?)

Geez, that does suck. You are probably right about the offer...


> I have no knowledge of Exchange other than it appears to use IMAP and SMTP
> protocols to allow the checking and sending of email. Since I'm looking for
> a project to work on in a class, I thought it might be fun and useful to
> set up a UNIX/Linux system with pine/elm/mutt that would mirror the
> contents of the Exchange mailbox locally when the mail client is started,
> and allow pine/elm/mutt to access the copy. Any changes made to the local
> mailbox such as deletion of messages could then be mirrored back to the
> Exchange mailbox.
> 
> Does anyone have experience working between Exchange and Linux? Is my
> solution overkill? I couldn't find that pine can talk to IMAP servers,
> which is why I considered making the copy of the mailbox to the Linux.
> 
> Thanks,
> John


Pine, at least in some versions, can access an IMAP server. Other UNIX
mail clients can to, such as mutt. The interaction that Exchange has
with clients like Outlook is a closed protocol, called MAPI I
believe. Your mirroring idea sounds like an interesting problem, but
probably would not gain you much over IMAP. Probably you best bet
would be to be ready with a UNIX solution to offer when the Exchange
servers crater...

Steve


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