[Info-vax] SMTP and POP/IMAP through SSH

[Crni Gorac]

Now when Eisner is hopefully on its way back (many thanks to everyone
involved in starting resolving this issue!):

In the meantime, I used an account on a Linux server as my main mail
account.  My desktop machine is also Linux, and am using mutt to
handle e-mail.  Previously, I was forwarding my e-mail to Eisner, and
was fetching it to my desktop machine through POP3; I was also sending
my e-mail through Eisner, using SMTP - in both cases, SSL extensions
were employed, to avoid sending my Eisner password in plain text
around.  Now, while working with the Linux server in the meantime, I
learned about rather nice ways to simplify these: in mutt, it is
possible to specify remote sendmail program to be launched through SSH
for mail delivering, and in fetchmail (that I'm using for getting mail
from the server to my desktop machine) it is also possible to use so-
called SSH plugin to start talking directly with remote IMAP server
(and to practically get authenticated this way).  The advantages of
this approach are that there is no need to mess with SSL certificates
(which is nice simplification, if one already setup password-less SSH
authentication), and that at least one external program less is needed
(mutt has to use external programs for sending/fetching mail, so while
I have to keep fetchmail, at least I could get read of auxiliary SMTP
program on the desktop machine).  So, my question is then: is it
possible to employ VMS server to work with e-mail this way (to talk
with SMTP server on remote machine through SSH, and to fetch mail
through SSH too)?

Thanks.