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Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 10:32:20 -0500
From: James <j@evilcode.com>
To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Cc: webmaster@wmptl.com
Subject: Re: secondary MX host
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> Is it possible to have a secondary MX host that will just queue incoming
> messsages and relay them back to the main mailserver when it becomes
> available? 
<snip>

Sendmail makes this very easy. Make sure that you have the following
line in your sendmail.cf file:
FR-o /etc/mail/relay-domains

Then, open up /etc/mail/relay-domains (unless you changed the name
of this file), and put it in a list of domains that this server
will queue mail for (one domain per line). send a HUP signal to the main sendmail process,
and you're setup (for sendmail).

Next, for each domain that you want to use the backup MX, make sure
that you have your primary MX record set to a higher priority than
the secondaries (by giving it a lower number), i.e.:

yourdomain.com	IN	MX	10	your.primary.mx.host.
yourdomain.com	IN	MX	20	your.secondary.mx.host.

This causes MTAs to attempt delivery for yourdomain.com to
your.primary.mx.host first, and then your.secondary.mx.host if the
other couldn't be reached. then as per the secondary server's queue
time (-q<X> switch to sendmail when starting), it will attempt
delivery to your.primary.mx.host until it succeeds, or until a
certain period of time goes by. 

Also, you can have the primary server ask the secondaries to process
a domain's queue by running the etrn.pl script that comes with
sendmail (in contrib/), or by running ``sendmail -q'' on the
secondary MX host.


Hope this helps.


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