Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 05:56:56 -0500 (EST) From: Brian Clapper <bmc@WillsCreek.COM> To: rknebel@csrlink.net Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: hostname Message-ID: <199712201056.FAA00373@current.willscreek.com> In-Reply-To: <19971220084828.26231@net> References: <199712200622.GAA36350@out2.ibm.net> <19971220084828.26231@net>
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rknebel@csrlink.net wrote:
> Hi,
> A while back I read a post that to be able to post on this group you would
> have to have a real domain name or something like that. I use my computer at
> home with freebsd 2.2.5 on it.
> I use fetchmail to download my mail from my ISP and mutt to mail and read
> it. I have sendmail masquarading as my ISP so my from name comes out right
> on my headers.
> I still get mail kicked back from this group with error messages.
> My hostname of my machine was left at myname.my.domain.
> Do I need to change this and if so to what.
> Do I just pick a name?
> THanks Alot
If you simply set up your local sendmail to relay through your ISP's SMTP
server, instead of having your sendmail try to deliver the mail directly,
you'll have no trouble at all. Your system will hand all its mail off to
your ISP for delivery; your ISP's SMTP server will connect to the FreeBSD
mail server, and all will be well.
Judging from the "Received" headers in your mail, you're connecting
directly to FreeBSD from your machine:
Received: from csrlink.net (pm3bl1-23.csrlink.net [207.44.9.24])
by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id FAA17241
for <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>; Sat, 20 Dec 1997 05:50:14 -0800 (PST)
(envelope-from rknebel@csrlink.net)
Received: (from rknebel@localhost)
by csrlink.net (8.8.7/8.8.5) id IAA07176;
Sat, 20 Dec 1997 08:48:29 -0500 (EST)
I suspect this last message of yours got through because, when you
connected to your ISP, you happened to get an IP address that's in the
ISP's DNS. If you connect to your ISP and happen to get an IP address that
*isn't* in the DNS, and you attempt to deliver mail directly from your
machine to a FreeBSD mailing list, your attempt will fail. (You can verify
that scenario by checking with your ISP, to ascertain whether there are, in
fact, dial-up IP addresses that don't happen to be in their DNS.)
In any case, you can safely avoid all those worries by *not* delivering
mail directly yourself; instead, have your sendmail program hand mail off
to your ISP's mailer host. `mail.csrlink.net' appears to be the correct
host for you.
Assuming you're using sendmail's m4 macros to generate your sendmail.cf
file, simply adding this line to the the appropriate m4 input file should
do the trick:
define(`SMART_HOST', `mail.csrlink.net')
There are other advantages to this approach. A big one: Once you've handed
mail off to your ISP's server, that server is responsible for delivering
them. If the destination site is down for any reason, your ISP's machine
will continue to attempt to deliver the mail even if you disconnect from
your ISP.
Trust me, you really want to shove the burden of mail delivery off to your
ISP. That's what you pay them for.
-----
Brian Clapper, bmc@WillsCreek.COM, http://WWW.WillsCreek.COM/
Thou shalt not omit adultery.
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