Re: Gnus Access mail spool by ssh

[Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org>]

Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:

> Now I want to have a laptop running FreeBSD 4.0 networked to desktop
> running Redhat linux, be able to  view/manipulate mail on the parent machine
> but don't want to  setup pop, imap or  special sendmail stuff.  I
> don't want more daemons running that can be exploited from the internet.
> And haven't really looked into firewall technique.

Well, first, you should _really_ look into the firewall technique.
Otherwise, you'll be jumping through hoops that nobody else has
considered, because they've all set up a firewall and forgotten about
it.

If you don't want to do that... well, you could use the ssh to set up
a ppp tunnel between your computers, and run NFS, imap, or whatever
over that.  In some cases, that makes sense (ie, laptop halfway across
the continent, over very untrusted ethernet).  But not in a home
network.  Unless you have a very untrusted home network (ie, both
machines are just connected via a hub to a cable modem) it's much more
convenient to set up some firewall rules on the host connected to the
internet, and trust the internal network.  ssh was _not_ designed to
be a mail protocol, and as Kai pointed out, locking issues will be a
bitch.

I'm not sure precisely how you are expecting ssh to access
/var/spool/mail on the other host, as it doesn't set up any file
access from this side... you could send over ssh parent "cat
/var/spool/mail/ats", but editing the file will not be easy.  You
could do some weird use of files to lock on the other side, and scp
the file over... but it would be a mess.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
125 days, 13 hours, 37 minutes, 6 seconds till we run away.
A PC is for manipulation of data, not the manipulation of thought.