Mail on samba shares

[Tomek Jarosinski]

Diego Cimarosa wrote:

> b) It is possible configure Outlook to leave mail on server ? and how ?
>      In my lab I have more 300 students account, 25 PCs, and I don't want
> use roaming profiles so they use
>      telnet and pine to e-mail. Good ... but not enough for all.
Hello,
I advice you netscape instead of outlook. When you install netscape and
you start it for the first time you have to create one mail profile. You
can create one profile and it will be saved on H:\netscape. On
H:\netscape you will find prefs.js, in prefs.js you will find ALL
netscape settings (NO REGISTRY). Important are settings with:

user_pref("mail.identity.useremail", "tomek at is.fh-hamburg.de");
user_pref("mail.identity.username", "tomek");
user_pref("mail.pop_name", "tomek");

user_pref("network.hosts.pop_server", "mailgate.is.fh-hamburg.de");
user_pref("network.hosts.smtp_server", "mailgate.is.fh-hamburg.de");

Than i am doing this:
I have on one samba share netscape folder with basic settings. I deleted
lines with mail settings from prefs.js
1. User logins
2. A script checks if he has already netscape folder in his home
3. If not, netscape folder from samba share will be copied in his home
area, and the lines with user name will be append to prefs.js . Usually
all your samba users use the same mail server, then you only need to
append:

user_pref("mail.identity.useremail", "student at yourmaildomain");
user_pref("mail.identity.username", "student");
user_pref("mail.pop_name", "student");

to the prefs.js

When user starts netscape on the client, netscape is looking for the
mail profile always on H:\netscape.
Later on the unix side you can insert with some scripts for example new
proxy server, or other new settings in the prefs.js. When u want to do
it remember about using dos2unix and unix2dos.

All the best, Tomek Jarosinski