This document assumes that:
you have only one machine.
you can use a remote server which receives e-mails sent to you.
you have installed fetchmail. To install fetchmail, do as root:
# apt-get install fetchmail |
you have a running Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server on your machine. You must have it if you want to read e-mails on your machine. fetchmail doesn't Depends: on mail-transport-agent (a virtual package for a SMTP server) only because you can use fetchmail to move e-mails from one remote machine to another remote machine.
If you don't have a SMTP server, try Exim.
# apt-get install exim |