User account specific settings like filters, sending identities etc are accessed and configured using the web interface. Other lower-level and instance wide settings are on the other hand configured using the INSTANCE/conf/posterity.ini configuration file.
Posterity sends mail by connecting to a SMTP server. The default setting is to connect to localhost but this can be changed by changing the [smtp] section of posterity.ini. A more advanced configuration can look like this:
[smtp] server = mail.example.com username = something password = secret use_tls = true
The default port number for SMTP is 25 but a non-standard port number can be used by setting the server option to HOSTNAME:PORTNUMBER.
Note: It's generally considered to be a good idea to use a local SMTP server to avoid delays and connection failures that can occur when using an external server.
There are a number of different ways of getting messages into Posterity email accounts. This section describes couple of common setups.
POP3 is a mail downloading protocol supported by most email servers and setups. Posterity users can download messages from multiple external POP3 mail accounts by configuring them on the "Settings -> POP3 Accounts" web page.
For any downloading of mail to actually take place a long-running process is required for each Posterity instance:
posterity-admin --instance=/path/to/instance fetch
Note: Some free mail services like yahoo and hotmail require their users to upgrade to a "paid" account before being allowed to use their POP3 server.
UNIX systems with working local mail delivery can be configured to inject incoming messages into a Posterity users mail account by adding the following to the users ~/.forward file:
|"posterity-admin --instance=/path/to/instance inject username"
Messages from exising mail folders in MBOX format can be imported into an account using the following command:
posterity-admin --instance=/path/to/instance inject username \
--mbox -f Mail.mbox