Send and Receive Your Hotmail messages through Evolution

If you want to use you Evolution mail client to send and receive your hotmail messages use the following procedure.

First, make sure your system is up to date. Open up a terminal and type

sudo apt-get update

First You need to install the inet daemon

sudo apt-get install inetutils-inetd

This takes care of all of our dependencies.

Next You need to install pop3 server and hotsmtp

sudo apt-get install hotway hotsmtp

This will install hotway, which allows you to read hotmail e-mails by simulating a POP3 server, and hotsmtp, which allows you to send e-mail through hotmail using SMTP.

By default, however, only hotway gets installed properly to your inet daemon, so let's fix this.

sudo gedit /etc/inetd.conf

Look for the following line

pop3 stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/bin/hotwayd

By default, hotway leaves a copy of each message it downloads on the server but if you don't feel like filling up your hotmail box, change the line to add "-r" to the end, complete line looks like below

pop3 stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/bin/hotwayd -r

And we also need to add a line to get hotsmtpd working, just paste the following line at the bottom of the file

2500 stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/bin/hotsmtpd

This will set the inet daemon to listen to incoming calls on port 2500, and forward the connection to the hotsmtp daemon. Now, save your file, exit gedit, and restart your inetd server using the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/inetutils-inetd restart

If everything is working properly, you'll see the following pop up on your screen

* Restarting internet superserver inetd [ ok ]

Now, close out of your terminal and start up Evolution. It may pop up the first-time use wizard, you can use that if you like. Or, you may have to go to Edit->Preferences and hit the Mail Accounts button on the left. However you choose to do it, here's your information:

Email Address: xxx@hotmail.com (fill in your normal e-mail address that you use to login to hotmail)

Receive Server type: POP
Server: 127.0.0.1
Username: xxx@hotmail.com (same as above)
Security: No encryption
Authentication type: Password
(Remember password checkbox is up to you)

Send Server type: SMTP
Server: 127.0.0.1:2500
[X] Server requires authentication (check this box)
Use Secure Connection: No encryption
Authentication Type: PLAIN
Username: xxx@hotmail.com (same as above)
(Optional Remember password checkbox)