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Retrieving e-mail from HTTPMail accounts with hotway

Using hotway with Ximian Evolution to make the most of your e-mail accounts

Customizing Evolution to bring you information fast

Most e-mail service providers use three standardized protocols to send and retrieve e-mail. SMTP is used to send e-mail, and POP and IMAP are used to retrieve e-mail. Some of the larger Web

portals — such as Microsoft’s Hotmail, MSN, and Lycos — have developed their own e-mail protocols based on HTTP, which is the underlying transport mechanism used by Web browsers.

E-mail accounts from portals using HTTPMail servers often come with a catch: Because of the strange protocol, you must access their services with a Web browser, logging in to their servers and stopping to view all the advertisements along the way. You can use an open-source tool called hotway to retrieve your e-mail with an e-mail client, avoiding the hassles and slowdowns of ads, pop-ups, and online logins.

Check with your e-mail provider and make sure that its user service agreement doesn’t include any legalese that requires you to use a browser to view your e-mail.

In this technique, we introduce you to an open-source project called hotway. hotway can retrieve your mail from an HTTPMail server and deliver it your to e-mail client. hotway can also forward e-mail that you send from a mail client to an HTTPMail server. We also take you on a quick tour of Ximian Evolution — a great tool to use in combination with hotway. You’ll save time by accessing your HTTPMail accounts without stopping to view the ads along the way, and get to know a great e-mail client in the process.

Introducing hotway

The hotway (hotmail gateway) project at hotwayd.sourceforge.net provides an open-source gateway that retrieves e-mail from an HTTPMail server and delivers it to your Linux mailbox. You can also send e-mail from your Linux client (Ximian Evolution, KMail, Mozilla mail, and so on) to an HTTPMail server.

hotway works with the following accounts:

Accounts at hotmail.com

Accounts at msn.com

Lycos accounts with the suffixes .co.uk, .ch,

.de, .es, .it, or .at

Accounts at spray.se

Getting Started with hotway

You typically interact with an HTTPMail server by pointing your Web browser to the portal, typing in your user name and password, and navigating through tons of advertisements before you can read your e-mail. If you’re using Windows, you can avoid the portal Web site by reading your e-mail with Microsoft Outlook (or Outlook Express) mail clients. If you’re using Linux, you haven’t been so lucky — until now.

Read your e-mail provider’s end-user agreement to be sure that dodging its advertising is okay.

hotway is quick and easy to set up, and after it’s in place, you’ll never even know it’s there. When you install hotway, you’re running a daemon (background process) named hotwayd that listens for e-mail requests. hotwayd is controlled by xinetd — xinetd lurks in the background, waiting for activity on TCP port 2500. When an e-mail request comes in, it fires up hotway to handle the request.

To install hotway on your Linux machine, follow these steps:

1. Open a Web browser and surf to

hotwayd.sourceforge.net

2. Click the Download link.

3. Click the link for

You’re directed to a download page listing available mirrors.

4. Click a download link to a mirror site near you.

5. Save the RPM package to your home directory.

6. Close the browser window and the Download

Manager. Open a terminal window and give yourself superuser privileges with the

su command.

7. Install the RPM package with the following command:

# rpm -Uhv hotwayd-0.8-1.i386.rpm

That’s all there is to it — you’re ready to use hotway.

xinetd automatically starts the hotway daemon when it’s needed — no extra work is required.

Setting Up Evolution to Read HTTPMail Accounts with hotway

hotway works with any e-mail client, but we’re particularly fond of Ximian Evolution. Evolution is a quick, slick e-mail client bundled with most Linux distributions. If you’ve already installed Evolution (it should appear in the Internet menu or Internet Mail menu), you’re ready to go. If not, install Evolution before proceeding.

To set up an e-mail account using Evolution and hotway, follow these steps:

1. Open the Main Menu and choose Internet Evolution E-Mail.

The first time you use the Evolution e-mail client, it greets you with the Evolution Setup Assistant.

2. Click the Forward button to continue with setup.

• Figure 46-1: Enter your Identity information.

If you want all e-mail responses to be sent to a single account, enter the e-mail address that you want to use in the Reply-To field. In most cases, you can leave the Reply-To and Organization fields blank.

4. Click the Forward button to continue.

The Receiving Email window opens.

5. From the Server Type drop-down list box, choose either the IMAP or POP server type to display a more complete Receiving Email form, as shown in Figure 46-2.

Unless there is a compelling reason to use IMAP, we usually use POP. It’s just a bit more reliable than IMAP.

6. Click the Check for Supported Types button and Evolution will connect to the server to ask it what Authentication Types it supports. The results are copied into the Authentication Type list box. Alternatively, use the list box to choose the authentication type you prefer.

• Figure 46-2: The complete Receiving Email form for a POP server.

7. Enter 127.0.0.1 in the Host field and then click the Forward button.

The Receiving Mail Options window opens.

8. Check the Automatically Check for New Mail

Every box, and customize the time options to determine how often Evolution checks your e-mail account.

9. Use the options listed in Message Storage to control whether the messages are deleted after download. Be sure to disable support for POP3 extensions when you’re creating an account serviced by hotway. Click the Forward button to continue.

The Sending Mail window opens, as shown in Figure 46-3.

10. Enter 127.0.0.1:2500 in the Host field, check the Server Requires Authentication box, and make sure that the Username field contains a complete e-mail address. Click Forward to continue.

The Account Management window opens, as shown in Figure 46-4.

• Figure 46-3: The Sending Mail window.

11. Enter a user-friendly name in the Name field and click the Forward button. Click Forward to continue.

The Timezone window opens, as shown in Figure 46-5.

• Figure 46-5: Choose your time zone.

12. Click the map to choose your time zone and then click Forward to continue.

A window opens, indicating you’ve successfully entered the information needed.

13. Click Apply to continue.

Evolution opens, ready to retrieve your e-mail.

14. Click the Inbox button in the Shortcuts panel on the left, and then click the Send/Receive mail button on the toolbar.

The Send & Receive Mail and Enter Password dialogs open, as shown in Figure 46-6.

15. Enter your password and click OK.

Your e-mail should arrive in the inbox any second now!