[ale] Sendmail

[Joseph A Knapka]

Adrin wrote:
>  I have been looking at configuring my Linux box as a mail server.  And would love to do
> it with sendmail. I have some Linux docs and a coffee pot, only does 12 cups at a time
> though. Is it really that hard to do?

It's not that hard. I think there are some tools that will do a lot
of configuration for you now. If you only want to use sendmail
for outgoing mail (eg you have POP or IMAP for incoming mail),
it's almost trivial; in fact, the default Slack config of
sendmail works out-of-the-box for this.

>  Something that is just blowing my mind is that mindspring doesn't allow relaying.

They shouldn't, it's a giant loophole through which spam can be
shoved en masse.

> Does
> that only block client software like Netscape, outlook... etc.  I actually have sendmail
> running on my system I can email myself and probably anyone else that uses mindspring for
> that matter from my Linux box. But if I try to email to another domain forget it.

Oh, they don't even allow relaying from their customers? Well,
DUH for them -- but my ISP (TimeWarner) does the same thing,
which is why I installed sendmail in the first place. It took
me an hour or so to get it going.


>  My biggest question is and most confusing part is:
> 
>  Why do I have to put mail.mindspring.com as the outgoing smtp mail server?  if I am using
> another server for email and even still use the account name for the other remote email?
> Just seems odd.

Your mail client will only deliver to a single server, so it
has to be a server that knows how to deliver your mail
wherever it needs to go - a "smart host", in the parlance.
If you set up a sendmail on your local system, *that* will
be your smart host and you can ignore Mindspring completely
as far as outgoing mail goes.

-- Joe



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