Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 19:30:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Chris BeHanna <behanna@zbzoom.net> To: David DeTinne <david@allunix.com> Cc: freebsd-sparc@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: was Competition now mail-lists Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0008221911140.1914-100000@topperwein.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: <200008221232290300.011C52D9@web4.allunix.com>
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(Warning: off-topic, yet informative, reply follows.)
On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, David DeTinne wrote:
> > It appears that someone simply doesn't
> >know how to configure DNS properly and freebsd.org is hardly the
> only
> >site which will reject mail from them on that basis; it's a very
> >common spam-prevention technique.
>
> Some of us have no choice, I am using comcast@home cable service and
> my email to the lists bounce back to me on a regular basis.
Unless Comcast is *massively* braindead, they should have some
effed-up DNS entry for the dynamic address they assign to you (e.g.,
"comcast-24-154-2-196.home.com" or somesuch), and *that* address
would, by default, be the address used in the helo dialogue. *That*
guy will resolve, and if you point your MUA to comcast@home's
designated SMTP box for outgoing mail, you're good to go.
If you use your local sendmail, and/or use an MUA that doesn't
provide for using an external SMTP server (e.g., mailx or
sendmail -t), and have a hostname more to your liking, then that's
where you're going to run into trouble, because "davidshost.home.com"
isn't going to resolve.
A solution, I've found, is to register with a dynamic DNS
service, then set your fully-resolved hostname to that, and update it
whenever you get DHCP'd to a new IP address. You can do this with
ddup in your dhclient exit hook script, for example, or you can check
and update by hand.
For example, I set up <myhost>.dyndns.org for my box with the
kind folks at dyndns.org, and I use my fully-resolved hostname in my
helo dialogue. Because I keep that DNS entry up-to-date, freebsd.org
can resolve <myhost>.dyndns.org, and then I'm good to go. On the
few occasions when it burps, I do a sendmail -q and try again, and it
usually gets through. If I wished, I could also enter an MX there,
but instead I just set my From:, Sender:, and Reply-To: fields to
point back to my mailbox at my ISP. There are even some dynamic DNS
services that will, for a fee, handle a subdomain or even a domain for
you. Usually, they give you a dynamic host for free.
(Yes, I'm also a cable-modem user who gets a dynamic IP address.)
If you have to (and I don't think you do--my experiments were
mixed), you can edit sendmail.cf and crowbar the localhost to use the
canonical hostname of your choice.
It would of course be better to get a static IP address and then
update the DNS entries for my domain to point to it, but my cable
modem provider was braindead in setting the pricing structure for
that, and if I don't pay them their monthly "hosting" fee, plus an
exhorbitant surcharge, they leave ports 1-1024 blocked, and I *still*
can't get my mail delivered without outside help (re: either a mail
drop somewhere or someone who will forward my mail traffic to me on a
high port).
This stuff is of course way off-topic for this list. If you have
problems, feel free to contact me off-list and I'll do what I can to
help you.
--
Chris BeHanna
Software Engineer (at yourfit.com)
behanna@zbzoom.net
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