Mutt and Microsoft Exchange

[Ryan Curtin]

Hi,

I find myself in a tough situation. The mailserver at my work is
running Microsoft Exchange. "For security reasons", the sysadmin says,
IMAP and POP are disabled. From what I understand, Exchange uses some
different proprietary protocol (I want to say NTLM, but I couldn't dig
up enough information to be sure if that's right) to transfer mail. My
problem, then, is that I want to configure mutt to be able to read mail
through this server but I don't know how to do that. Is there a way?

Looking through the mutt archives, I found some very old posts (circa
1999) of people who appeared to have the same problem but there was no
decisive solution. I'm hoping things have changed in eight years.

Thanks,

Ryan

[Ray Van Dolson]

Post by Ryan Curtin
Hi,
I find myself in a tough situation. The mailserver at my work is
running Microsoft Exchange. "For security reasons", the sysadmin says,
IMAP and POP are disabled. From what I understand, Exchange uses some
different proprietary protocol (I want to say NTLM, but I couldn't dig
up enough information to be sure if that's right) to transfer mail. My
problem, then, is that I want to configure mutt to be able to read mail
through this server but I don't know how to do that. Is there a way?
Looking through the mutt archives, I found some very old posts (circa
1999) of people who appeared to have the same problem but there was no
decisive solution. I'm hoping things have changed in eight years.
Thanks,
Ryan

I don't know of any native solution for mutt using the Exchange
protocol or operating via the Exchange web interface... maybe someone
else does. Obviously Evolution has a connector that doesn't use
IMAP/POP, so there's probably hope. :)

Maybe your Windows admin could be convinced to open up IMAP/POP
internally on your network? You could the VPN in to access it without
it being exposed to the wilds of the Internet if he's worried about
that...

I'm running mutt in an Exchange environment here. Always looking for
ways to better integrate... fortunately I have IMAP access though :)

Ray

[Steve Kennedy]

Post by Ray Van Dolson

Post by Ryan Curtin
I find myself in a tough situation. The mailserver at my work is
running Microsoft Exchange. "For security reasons", the sysadmin says,
IMAP and POP are disabled. From what I understand, Exchange uses some
different proprietary protocol (I want to say NTLM, but I couldn't dig
up enough information to be sure if that's right) to transfer mail. My
problem, then, is that I want to configure mutt to be able to read mail
through this server but I don't know how to do that. Is there a way?

[snip]

Post by Ray Van Dolson
I don't know of any native solution for mutt using the Exchange
protocol or operating via the Exchange web interface... maybe someone
else does. Obviously Evolution has a connector that doesn't use
IMAP/POP, so there's probably hope. :)

Exchange uses MAPI, MS's proprietry protocol. Evolution uses MS's web
access protocol, which is a hack.


Steve

[Ray Van Dolson]

Post by Steve Kennedy

Post by Ray Van Dolson
I don't know of any native solution for mutt using the Exchange
protocol or operating via the Exchange web interface... maybe someone
else does. Obviously Evolution has a connector that doesn't use
IMAP/POP, so there's probably hope. :)

Exchange uses MAPI, MS's proprietry protocol. Evolution uses MS's web
access protocol, which is a hack.

That would explain why it's so slow. :-)

Sounds like you may have to fight for IMAP access...

Ray

[Joel Esler]

This is what i did at a job I used to have. If the protocol is
internal only, then you should be good to go.

j

Post by Ray Van Dolson
Maybe your Windows admin could be convinced to open up IMAP/POP
internally on your network?

[Patrick Ben Koetter]

Post by Ryan Curtin
Hi,
I find myself in a tough situation. The mailserver at my work is
running Microsoft Exchange. "For security reasons", the sysadmin says,
IMAP and POP are disabled. From what I understand, Exchange uses some
different proprietary protocol (I want to say NTLM, but I couldn't dig
up enough information to be sure if that's right) to transfer mail. My
problem, then, is that I want to configure mutt to be able to read mail
through this server but I don't know how to do that. Is there a way?

The native Exchange way would be MAPI, but this isn't available within mutt.
The only mail protocols you could use are POP or IMAP.

NTLM is an authentication mechanism (and more...). Read into
<http://davenport.sourceforge.net/ntlm.html> if you want to dig deeper on
that.

You might want to use NTLM as SASL mechanism when you use mutt to authenticate
your user identity to an Exchange Server. Before that you would have to
persuade the Exchange admin to have you use IMAP.

Post by Ryan Curtin
Looking through the mutt archives, I found some very old posts (circa
1999) of people who appeared to have the same problem but there was no
decisive solution. I'm hoping things have changed in eight years.
Thanks,
Ryan
--
<www.igglybob.com>