Net connection Problem

[brad.mugleston at comcast.net]

On Sat, 26 Nov 2005 brad.mugleston at comcast.net wrote:

> Hello All, I hope your Thanksgiving was great.  Having some time
> on my hands I thought I'd set my file server up to also be a mail
> server - why? because it's there.
>
> I use fetchmail to retrieve my email from various accounts and
> it's been running for years on my computers.   Recently I set up
> a FC2 machine to store music, picutres and movies so the house
> could share.  It's working fine.
>
> I moved my .fetchmailrc file to this server and have been trying
> to get fetchmail to grab my mail and save it, then I'll share the
> /var/spool/mail directory and everyone will have access to there
> mail.  At lest thats the idea.
>
> Well, I keep getting an exit code of 2 from fetchmail.  This is
> listed as a socket error.  Doing some experminting I can not ping
> mail.comcast.net from my FC2 file server but I can from my other
> machines.
>
> Looking at the ifconfig output the biggest difference I see is
> bcast on the file server is 192.168.1.255 and 255.255.255.255.  I
> was thinking it may be a gateway issue but I don't see that
> listed under ifconfig and don't remember how to look for that or
> how to set it up if it's wrong.
>
> Right now I have a Linksys switch servinig as a DHCP server but
> the file server has a fixed IP as I couldn't get NFS to find a
> floating IP.  That shouldn't be a problem as my old fetchmail
> server also had a fixed IP but there is the Bcast difference
> which surprised me.
>
> Suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Brad Mugleston, KI0OT
>
> There are 10 types of people in this world.  Those that
> understand binary and those that don't.
>
> _______________________________________________

Well, this is what happens when no one is around....  I started
going through more books and came across the "route" command.  It
showed my gateway as 192.168.1.254 so I added a gateway of
192.168.1.1 and deleted the .254 gateway and now I'm getting
email.  Really cool.

OK, now I've got some questions - one reason for putting
fetchmail on a different machine was it's always on so there is
less chance of mail building up on the internet.  The other
reason was so I could use multiple computers to read my email.
Checking out my new /var/spool/mail directory I see my mail
account grow when fetchmail goes out to get mail then it goes to
zero when Pine goes and picks it up.  i have a feeling it's
moving it to my local machine and this is going to mean I will
not have access to my mail from other comptuers (like my
notebook).  So, how do I set things up to allow that?

One other thing, I'm looking at my new /var/spool/mail directory
and there is a new directory out there called "BOGUS.brad.FXsN"
what the heck is that?

Thanks

Brad