Steve,
Before doing this you need to sit down and see just how you want to use
your Linux box at home. Because of past problems with spammers who used
Linux/Unix op systems the Internet community today is forcing Linux users
into a Windows based mail configuration but with stricter limits. Let me
explain:
With OutLook Express you can configure your PC to show a From: address of
any email address you have. This will work well if you need to do work at
home and send out email showing your work email address, or if you have a
preferred email address which is not your dial-up account address you can
use it instead.
You can't do this with a Linux dial-up account. (Technically you can set
up this configuration on your machine as I have now. My ISP account is
[EMAIL PROTECTED], but I own and administer several domains. As you can
see from my return email address on this letter I'm showing a different
address than my ISP account.). The Linux community today is forcing Linux
home Linux users out of this configuration.
If you check the header of the copy of this letter I sent directly to
you, there is an IDENT section that shows my mail is coming from a dial-up
account, which in computer lingo means that I'm using my Linux home
machine as it's own MTA from a dial-up Internet account (my preferred
configuration). Several Linux lists use a spam blocking service,
http://mail-abuse.org/dul, which searches the headers of incoming mail to
see if the dial-up IDENT exists. This is automatically appended to your
header if you use your Linux box as the MTA from a dial-up account instead
of using your ISP as your MTA. If you are identified as a dial-up account
your mail is automatically rejected as a potential spammer - you can't
post to several Linux lists and domains that exist today.
To fix this, the configuration they're demanding you use requires two
things:
1) You have to use envelope masquerading. This forces all the mail on
your outgoing letters to read as From: your dial-up ISP account. Meaning
every letter you send out from your home Linux box HAS to read from your
dial-up ISP account. You can't change the From: field to read from your
business or any other email account you may have (remember, you CAN change
this using Windows and OutLook Express).
2) You have to forward your mail directly to your ISP, you can't send it
from your machine directly to the recipient machine. Forwarding the mail
to your ISP keeps your IDENT field from being modified to read that the
mail is from a dial-up account, thus the letter isn't blocked by the
mail-abuse.org/dul filter.
This will allow you to send mail to anyone using mail-abuse.org/dul as
their incoming spam filter, but again you are forced to limit your
outgoing mail to read as coming from your dial-up email account only.
Meaning that you can't set your wife and kids up with their own user
accounts on your local Linux box, nor can you use any other legitimate
email addresses you may have, nor can you use your dial-up Linux box for
business use.
For example: assuming your ISP account is [EMAIL PROTECTED] (your
email address), if your wife's name is Dawn (made up name), and your kids
are Billy, Cindy, and Shawn, you can't set up separate accounts for
them to send outgoing email from on your Linux box. If Billy sends out a
letter from billy@<yourbox>, using the above configuration all his
letters well be appended to read as From: [EMAIL PROTECTED], your
email address. The same is true for the rest of your family. Even if they
have separate email account on Mindspring, all mail from your box will be
forced to read From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In this case Windows using OutLook Express is more versatile because you
can modify the From: field to read any return email address you or your
family members have.
Please note that the reverse isn't true. If your work configuration is a
dedicated line you can freely modify your Linux From: field to read any
return email address without being blocked by the spam filters. It's only
if you're using a dial-up account with a Linux box that you're forced to
use the above mentioned configuration.
If you don't need the versatility OutLook Express offers, then by all
means use Linux. It's a good operating system. But if you need the same
versatility offered by the OutLook Express emailer, setting it up this way
on Linux is going to severely limit your accessibility to many Linux lists
and any domains which use the mail-abuse.org/dul filter because they'll
block all email you send to them.
Glen
On Mon, 22 Nov 1999, Steve Gebbia wrote:
>Hi all,
> while I use Linux at work, I am new to this list ... and have yet to
>install it at home ... thus the reason for this message :
>- am checking compatibility with my home PC ... Inserspec brand (store
>brand) using Cyrix Gx86 processor (MediaGX ?) ... is there a patch that
>will allow this to work with Redhat 6.1 ?
>
>we are so pleased with how well Redhat 5.2 is working on our server that
>I'm sold on Linux and want to toss all my MS software off the top of a tall
>building.
>
>thanks
>Steve
>
>
>
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