>am wondering if ifmail acts like a mail frontend such as frontdoor?
Yes and no. Within the package of ifmail there is a frontend called
ifcico which acts like a ftn mailer. ifcico has two modes, master and
slave.
When ifcico is activated in master mode it will dialout using the device
defined in your ~/ifmail/config file and attempt to establish a session
with
another fido type mailer using either EMSI, TCP, ZedZap etc.
To activate ifcico in slave mode you need a getty to monitor the serial
line, so when a FIDO type caller is detected, getty will pass the caller
off to ifcico.
Only after ifcico has successfully established a session, weather in
master
or slave mode, will it attempt to exchange pkts.
I'm using mgetty-sendfax to monitor my serial device but others prefer getty_ps. Either one can do the job...
>Does it get the fidonet packages in and convert the packets
>to a type of mail that can be read by a internet type news reader?
Yes and no, after ifcico finishes d/l the pkts, iftoss is called to
convert the
echomail into newsgroup type and netmail into e-mail type, but you need both
a MTA (Mail Transfer Agent like sendmail, smail) and a NTA (News
Transport Agent like INN, C-news) to actually store the messages into a
format that can be read by a mail reader (pine, elm) and a news reader
(tin,
trn, nn).
>Do I have to setup C-news or I-news to use it?
Yes, or you can use INN, I use INN and so do most, but you should weigh
your choice on what best suits your systems needs. For just ftn, and no
usenet than C-news will probably do, but for both ftn and usenet than
your
going to need something that's industrial and INN suits that bill nicely.
>Do I have to have a UUCP account or can I feed the fidonet packets into
No, not to receive ftn pkts, but if you have your own domain name and
want to receive e-mail than a UUCP link is one way to achieve it.
However, most prefer to use SMTP for e-mail because sendmail can filter
out unwanted spam and mail before it reaches your system, where as with
UUCP you don't have much choice, because the mail bundles are usually
spooled on your host's system and you can't filter them out until you've
actually d/l the bundles onto your system. :(
>a spooler and read them with an NNTP Spool reader such as SLRN?
I'm using a compiled version of tin 1.3 color and I'm not familiar with
SLRN, so maybe someone else here can comment on this.
>How do I connect to my hub to get the fidonet packets? Is that a part of
the
>ifmail package?
Yes, as I stated earlier.
>In file included from nlindex.h:9,
> from nlindex.c:19:
As with most linux distributions, some files never get updated, look for
the file /include/ndbm.h and add these two lines to the top of it.
#ifndef _NDBM_H_
#define _NDBM_H_ 1
and at the very last line add this.
#endif
-Greg-