On 16 Mar 02, at 11:16, Harry Putnam wrote: > Now what about the harder part of getting sendmail to be the outgoing smtp > host? > > In my setup I have a static IP address but I relay my outgoing mail > thru my isps smtp machine. I do this by giving that host name as > answer to Smart relay host: in Sendmail.cf > > Now I'll still be doing that but other feeder machines on the home lan > will be sending to my linux box as there smtp smart_host. And it will then > be channeled on to the isp smtp machine. > > Somehow I need to tell sendmail about all this, but really haven't a > clue as to how. I looked over the sendmail faq on line, but didn't > see a section that looks like it covers that particular usage. > > I don't really have an idea where to even start looking. Most of the > ducumentaion on sendmail assumes the user is a real ip with internet > machines and domains. Lots of lookups of various kinds flying around. > > I start reading things like MX reverse lookups, A records C records > etc etc, and go all numb in the extremities (including head). > > I need to tell sendmail to relay mail from 192.168.0.0/24 or something > like that, and m4 it into a sendmail.cf. But lack the voodoo > incantations.
I felt the same way about sendmail, which is why I use courier and postfix - postfix is the best smtp transport going, and courier has modules for smtp, pop, imap, webmail, and filtering. I started out running all my mail services on an ip-masq gateway (DSL with static IP) using postfix for smtp, vm-pop3d, and the standard (cheesy) redhat imap package. My internal machines all used the local mail client's smtp and pop functions (and imap was more-or-less useless). In this setup, I also ran bind on the same machine (internal only) with a local bogus DNS domain on my private LAN. The external interface on the firewall/gateway has the static (public) IP address from my ISP, which resolves to a hostname provided by dhs.org (a free domain provider - there are a few of these still out there, and they also support users with dynamic IP address). With this setup, I just bypass my ISP's mail server completely. So my external email addresses and URLs look like this: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://my_hostname.dhs.org The http stuff (and other services) can be running on the gateway host itself, or port-forwarded through the firewall to another machine in a DMZ or on the internal network. I just switched recently to an internal mail server using the courier imap, smtp, and webmail stuff, and postfix is now my smtp gateway on the firwall. Postfix translates my incoming and outgoing email addresses between the dhs stuff and my internal bogus domain: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <=> [EMAIL PROTECTED] This is relatively easy to do with postfix (but not so easy with sendmail). mail.domain.bogus is an MX record in my private DNS domain, and points to my internal machine running the courier mail stuff. The courier smtp module then forwards all outgoing mail to my smtp gateway (running postfix) and the private internal addresses get mapped to valid external addresses. The simplest setup for you would be to relay through your ISP's smtp server (as you already do) and configure your clients to use your ISP's DNS servers (but hard-code your own smtp server's private local IP address into the mail client's configuration settings, and use your ISP email address in the Reply-to, etc). Without some magic on your own smtp gateway though, you still only get the one email address from your ISP (unless they give you more addresses, probably for a fee). The downside is that your incoming mail goes to your local mail box on one computer (via pop), unless you use imap on your mailserver/gateway. Courier imap even has SSL support, so you could conceivably access your mail from the outside via imap as well. However, the courier webmail module works better for outside access, via SSL of course (but it's a cgi thing, so you need a webserver for that). Whatever setup you choose, I'd recommend using postfix instead of sendmail. It's much easier to configure, and has excellent security and configurability (IMHO, the best you can get). Courier smtp has some nice features too, and is well integrated with the other courier modules (of course) but it can't do nearly all the cool things postfix can do. Plus, the postfix mailing list is very active, and has several gurus (including the author) who read and post every day. http://www.postfix.org/ http://www.courier-mta.org/ Check out the postfix example setups in the docs. I can't call myself an expert, but I've setup postfix a few times for different configs, and courier once. I've caused a few mail-loops and other glitches during my initial configuration attempts, but they're not fatal ;-) And postfix is designed not to lose any mail if there's an invalid config. The most that's happened to me is that I had to fix the config and manually flush the queue. Have fun, Steve ************************************************************* Steve Arnold http://arnolds.dhs.org:8080 Java is for staying up late while you program in Python... _______________________________________________ Redhat-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
