On Tue, 23 Nov 1999, Edward Dekkers said:
ED>I'm not being sarcastic here. I honestly don't get the arguments going on
ED>about Linux/MS Outlook Express etc.
ED>
ED>Please explain.
ED>
ED>I have purchased a sub-domain as you can see in my address. It costs me
ED>AU$40 a year. I can have mail for any Tom, Dick or Harry on my network. I
ED>use sendmail to get it over to my ISP's mail system, and fetchmail to grab
ED>it. I never get rejected by any lists or whatever.
This is, all at once, both a simple and a complex problem. He uses a connection
which does not have a static ip address. The ip addresses used by his ISP are
listed in the MAPS Dialup User List (see http://www.mail-abuse.org/dul/) as
they should be. He also uses a dynamic DNS service (see http://www.dhis.org) to
handle at least one of his subdomains. When he sends mail directly from his
dial-up without using his ISP's SMTP host to relay (which is one of the keys to
proper implementation of envelope masquerading) the mail is blocked by any MTA
which is configured to use the DUL, in spite of the fact that he's using the
dhis service... and if dhis happens to be flaky at the moment he's sending just
forget about it, only a completely open relay would/will accept his traffic.
>From what I have gathered his ISP rejects mail routed through their MTA which
does not have a Reply-To: address in their domain (I do not know this for a
fact but it may be a part of the issue). I don't think this configuration is
correct on his ISP's part but it's not my call, it's their service and they can
do as they wish. I know that in the case of the vast majority of the ISP's I've
worked with the access file for sendmail is set to allow relay for their entire
dial-up ip space and they don't care if the mail is sent from an MTA or a piece
of client software. Now there are some other ISP's who are truly beginning to
throw the baby out with tha bath water as they've begun to use routing rules to
block any traffic from or to port 25 either in or out of their ip space which
does not use their MTA. Regardless, what he is trying to do is run a full-blown
MTA without "real" DNS, without a dedicated connection or static ip, without
the support or knowledge of his ISP, without a correctly configured MTA, and
simultaneously wants to achieve all of this for multiple domains and,
apparently considers himself a "service" provider. Now that comment could be
interpreted as derisive but it's not... all I'm trying to say is that to
accomplish this task would be a brilliant hack and quite difficult for the best
of us, much less someone who has only a few months experience with Linux!
ED>What is the original poster trying to do? I'd like to know how to help but
ED>wouldn't organising a (sub)domain fix all his worries?
He already has... but his implementation is not so good (most definitely since
it doesn't work properly for him, yet others who are similarly situated have
made it work).
ED>Or is it ridiculously expensive where he is?
I doubt that it would be prohibitively expensive as he lives in the US.
If I were in his shoes what I would do is switch to a small, local ISP which
might be more willing to provide a static ip for his dial-up and get an
off-site host convinced to pull secondary MX for his domains.... but, you have
to make friends with folks to get that kind of support! I have seen local isp's
charge as little as $5.00 extra per month for an analog dial-up with a static
IP address. Net cost could be as little as $24.95 per month. If he has a cable
modem or a xDSL connection one of two things occurs to me. He has an ISP which
has some rather odd restrictions placed on their IP space or he has not
correctly set up his MTA. I am inclined to believe it's the latter.
In the interim he could simply relay through his provider's SMTP host and use
fetchmail to get the mail while he tinkers at discovering what works and what
doesn't work using properly configured masquerading... sadly it appears that he
would rather make accusations which, once again, prove Godwin's Law than deal
reasonably with the technical issues which, as I have said, are not simple!
Imagine, if you will, that vger (the home of the Linux Kernel mailing list and
the place where Linus Torvalds holds court) is singling out Linux users on
dial-ups for exclusion and is deliberately doing so with malice aforethought!
C'mon... I don't think so. It's a technical issue, not a political one.
--
Chuck Mead, CTO, MoonGroup Consulting, Inc. <http://moongroup.com>
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