Chapter 7. E-Mail as a System Console

Chapter 7. E-Mail as a System Console

Difficult-o-Meter: 4 ( fairly high Linux knowledge required)

Covers:

Fetchmail	http://www. tuxedo .org/~esr/fetchmail/
Procmail	http://www.procmail.org/
GnuPG	http://www.gnupg.org/

Question: How can I get access to my home Linux system when I'm either at work behind a firewall that only allows me to send e-mail from my workstation or when away on a business trip and the hotel firewall only allows me to surf the Web?

Answer: Create an e-mail-based console application that lets you execute commands and return results via e-mail. If you're stuck with only Web access, get a Web e-mail account and use that to send commands over e-mail to your system at home. The e-mail console is a nice way to communicate with your system when normal communications (Telnet, SSH, FTP, what have you) are unavailable.