Re: Mail problem - smail
On Thu, 4 Dec 1997, Martin Bialasinski wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Dec 1997, Unga Synskadade Smaland Blekinge / Peter Nilsson wrote:
>
> > Now that I have went over to using PPP over a modem line, I have got some
> > trouble. The problem is that I have no official hostname. Therefore, I
> > call my host peter. I have configured smail for "Internet site"
> > (smailconfig) and I have set a smarthost. When I try to send an e-mail
>
> Use the option "satellite system".
No - DON'T. Satellite is useful if and only if all the usernames of
any account that will ever receive any mail are either mentioned in
/etc/aliases or match the usernames on your smarthost. Among other
things, the satellite setup makes using fetchmail near impossible. I
personally think that a big warning should be issued if you choose this
option, as people seem to think that it's the appropriate choice for
intermittently connect PPP machines. I suppose it can be, if you use
IMAP or POP-capable MUAs exclusively, and don't ever want local mail to go
on. However, it has the potential to set you up to send mail to system
accounts at your ISP about what's happeneing on your box, which with some
ISPs could annoy them greatly. Use the internet host option.
>
> > from my machine, smail says in the logfiles that the hostname peter is not
> > valid. The From: line of the mail ontains "pn@peter", and therefore smail
> > doesn't sem to send the mail.
> >
> I have also observed this behaviour if you say "internet site" in
> smailconfig.
>
Well, I just re-configured my machine's smail a few times checking this
out, and I don't see this behavior - I'm betting that it's your smarthost
which is rejecting the mails, and smail is reporting the reason for
rejection in the logs. Check to see if right before the rejection message
there's a line that says something like "destination supports esmtp
8BITMIME SIZE" - if so, then smail is making the connection to your
smarthost before the rejection message, which would seem to point the
finger at your smarthost.
Actually, I just now checked this by trying to send an email to myself
through student.hv.se from a non-existent address (by telnetting to port
25, etc. - you know, the way people fake messages from
president@whitehouse.gov and stuff like that). student.hv.se gave me an
error message when I entered the bogus from: address (unresolvable host
name foo.foo,check your setup); therefore, I'd now conclude that it's
_definitely_ your smarthost, and that the only reason this shows up when
using the "internet site" smail configuration as opposed to the
"satellite" option is because when people use the satellite option, their
From: lines are different (the hostname used is that of the smarthost, not
the local machine).
So we come back to rewriting the From: line, either through pine as below
or through smail as I mentioned before.
> > Does anyone know how to force smail not to check that the host on the
> > From: address is valid. Another solution would be to get the From: line to
> > be rewritten to "From: pnidv96@student.hv.se". I can't find a way to get
> > Pine do that for me.
> >
> Even if smail doesn't check the hostname, you have to set a from header or
> pine will use your (invalid) local host and username as your emailaddress.
> Or you have to make smail change your header.
>
> In pine you can set the From header in the configoption "customised
> headers".
>
>
> This will insert a line into your .pinerc like
> customized-hdrs=From: Martin Bialasinski <agr30@uni-koeln.de>
>
> Ciao,
> Martin
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