Re: Exim as a LAN mail server [possibly-OT]
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A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far way, someone said...
> Howdy folks,
>
> I'm setting up a small (2-3 workstations, one server, all debian)
> network at home, and I'm trying to implement an idea that I had
> for the mail system. My apologies if it's too offtopic.
If you want to figure out how to do it with Debian it's not off-topic :)
> The scenario is:
> I have several email addresses, me@isp1.com, user@mailhost.com and
> student929202@university.edu. At the moment, I use fetchmail to pull all
> my email from these three accounts onto my box.
Cool
> This is nice, except that each account has to send messages through a
> different SMTP server.
Are you *sure* they have to? Most ISPs that I've run accross will relay
for you because you're coming from an IP number on their network,
irregardless of the sender in the SMTP envelope. Some even go above and
beyond that and require your email client to "log-in" to their mail server
with a username and password before any sort of relaying will take place.
> My idea is to set up the network server as a smarthost(?).
That is the correct term.
> All the other machines on the network would just send all their
> (non-local) mail to it, and it would send these messages via the
> appropriate SMTP server. Basically, the server would have a little
> table (or whatever) like this:
> #from address smtp server
> me@isp1.com mail.isp1.com
> user@mailhost.com smtp.mailhost.com
> student929202@university.edu smtp.university.edu
>
> and would relay(?) messages to the correct SMTP server depending on
> the From: header in the message.
I think "using the appropriate SMTP server as a smarthost based on the
From: header" would be a better description. There's nothing wrong with a
smarthost using s smarthost :)
> Firstly, is this a good idea?
That's up to you to decide.
> Would it horribly violate some basic RFC and bring a thousand years of
> darkness upon our planet?
I'm not aware of one. If there is the world would have ended long ago.
> Can Exim do it, or do I need to switch MTAs (perhaps even to that
> mythical beast, Sendmail)?
When compared to sendmail, postfix and qmail (*especially* qmail) there is
very little exim *can't* do.
> The server will be on a ppp/dial-on-demand link, so I can't just set
> up my own 'proper' domain and mail system.
You don't even need a "proper" domain to have a "proper" mail system. In
fact, a "proper" mail system is exactly what you seek.
> Secondly, where would I find out about this sort of thing?
If not here then the exim-users mailing list would be a good place to
look. There's subscription information on the exim.org web page.
> Is it an Exim issue, a Debian issue or a generic mail issue?
Generic mail
> I've tried to read through the Exim documentation but it is quite
> dense (for me anyway) and I don't really know all that much about how
> SMTP works.
I'm not surprised - the Exim documentation assumes that you are familiar
with the workings of SMTP.
> I've been using Linux for a couple of years now (Debian for one of
> those) and I am willing to go and RTFM, if only I could find the right
> FM to read. It does sound vaguely related to the re-write features of
> Exim, but I could not find any sort of documentation for the
> not-stupid-yet-quite-clueless user.
Well, since you're willing to read the FM, I think I can give some hints.
* You need a custom "router" (this is what exim calls the stanzas that
define what to do with non-local addresses).
* Read "Chapter 9: String Expansion". Take note of the ${extract...}
operator, the $header_<header name> expansion item, and the ${lookup...}
operator.
* Read "Chapter 28: The domainlist router". Taking note of the route_list
option.
I'm not going to have a chance to play with this until later tonight; I'd
like to hear about it if you get the problem licked before I do.
- --
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Phil Brutsche pbrutsch@tux.creighton.edu
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