Ifmail - Fidonet to Internet mail and news gateway program

Ifmail is a set of FidoNet® compatible transport and gateway programs, running on multiple U*IX platforms (Linux, FreeBSD, SCO, SVR4, SunOS and others). In cooperation with typical U*IX e-mail and netnews packages, it allows to make a FidoNet node (or point) on a machine running U*IX.

The source of the program can be downloaded from the sourceforge project page:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ifmail/

There was a mailing list for ifmail related discussions and fresh updates, that was archieved from 29 Aug 1996 to 22 Jun 2000: 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000. New users should rather subscribe to the maillist at SourceForge (see project page for subscription information. (All postings to the old maiilist automatically go to the new one as well.)

On this server, there is a contributor's area, that was previously maintained by registered developers and containing modifications/patches/improvements unapproved by the author if Ifmail.

Brian Sammon has written a document on installation and configuration of ifmail, IFMAIL HOWTO.

Ifmail v.3 development tree (probably *not* usable in real environment) is accessible (read-only) by CVS from the project page. Thanks to apparent lack of interest, this project is practically dead by now.

Ifmail is Open Source software, developed and copyrighted by Eugene G. Crosser.

There is another well-known Fidonet-related package for U*IX, written by Martin Junius, FIDOGATE, also on FTP at ftp.fido.de: /pub/fidogate. It is a gateway only and can interoperate with ifmail's ifcico as a transport agent.

There is a list of resources regarding Fidonet under UNIX at http://husky.phiscip.uni-stuttgart.de/.

Pablo Saratxaga maintains a derivate version if ifmail, ifmail-tx. It has some features (and some bugs) missing in the official version.

Ifmail package consists of two parts: transport agent program called ifcico and gateway programs ifmail (alias ifnews) and iftoss. There also are several supplementory and front-end programs.

Ifcico program is capable of making outgoing calls over dialup serial lines and over TCP/IP connections, as well as accept incoming FidoNet calls, acting as an alternative to the login program (special getty program needed) and as an Internet daemon started by inetd.

Ifmail(ifnews) program convers RFC-0822 compatible mail messages and RFC-1036 compatible news articles into FTS-0001 compatible FidoNet packets, that later may be (optionally) compressed and sent by ifcico or any other BinkleyTerm compatible transport agent.

Iftoss program converts received FTS-0001 compatible packets into RFC-0822 compatible mail messages and RFC-1036 compatible news batches and passes them to appropriate mail and news agent programs (typically sendmail and rnews).

In cooperation with appropriately set up MTA and netnews packages, ifmail can feature an echo- and netmail distributing FidoNet hub.

In 1998, the author was planning a speak about ifmail at a USENIX'98 conference. He did not make his way to New Orleans, but anyway here is the paper published in the proceedings of the conference, in PostScript® format.