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Re: Q: Hiding M$ Exchange behind a firewall ?



At 10:00 PM 12/22/00 +0100, Robert Waldner wrote:
On Fri, 22 Dec 2000 16:24:16 +0100, Michael Steiner writes:
<snip>

Well, the quickfix would be a virtusertable containing something like
 user@official.domain       user@internal.name.of.exchange
for each&every user.



Its just another damn thing for the admins to update :-\

My system at work is this

Internet --- Linux Firewall --- Internal network

The world-readable DNS says that the MX for avonside.school.nz is

avonside.school.nz      preference = 10, mail exchanger = smtp-queue.ihug.co.nz
avonside.school.nz preference = 5, mail exchanger = mail.avonside.school.nz
smtp-queue.ihug.co.nz   internet address = 203.29.160.69
mail.avonside.school.nz internet address = 203.173.241.182

That IP is the only world-readable IP we have, so *everything* uses it.

Now, the firewall is configured to use port-forwarding to redirect all connects on port 25 to the internal linux machine 192.168.1.2 (1)

This machine is called gpu and ran sendmail, and now exim as a MTA. The same machine is also the master DNS for the internal network. The gpu dns server knows that the MX for avonside.school.nz is 192.168.1.11 (the exchange server) and so mail gets properly handed off.

In reverse, the exchange server is configured to use gpu as a SmartHost (2) and the firewall knows that 192.168.1.2 is allowed full NATted connections to whatever IP it wants, whereas the exchange server is blocked off completely from direct access to the world. Why? cos its a hunk of shit and I hate it. :) Furthermore I don't trust it.

(OT) If anyone has any suggestions for replacing an exchange server with something nicer I'm listening with full attention.

(1) You could direct it straight to the exchange server if you want to, and it is updated against any known possible exploits.

(2) Cool name for it - exchange knows it needs something smarter to actually do the work....

--
Criggie



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