Re: Exim as a LAN mail server [possibly-OT]

[mdevin@ozemail.com.au]

On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 06:00:13PM -0500, Phil Brutsche wrote:
> 
> 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.
>
Now I am confused too.

I have two different computers running exim.  One is set up to use a
smarthost to send mail and the other sends it directly.  Both connect
via a ppp connection - the one that sends directly is on ADSL though.

Looking through both the exim.conf files:
Computer using smarthost has the following in the ROUTERS CONFIGURATION
section:
------------------------------------
smarthost:
  driver = domainlist
  transport = remote_smtp
  route_list = "* smtp.ozemail.com.au bydns_a"

end
------------------------------------


The other which sends directly has the following in the same section:
------------------------------------
lookuphost:
  driver = lookuphost
  transport = remote_smtp

literal:
  driver = ipliteral
  transport = remote_smtp

end
------------------------------------

So I don't understand why you can't just send mail directly.  From what
I can see, when you send an email, exim attempts to connect to the mail
server which the message is intended for.  By using a smarthost, it just
adds an extra step and then your ISP does the connection to the server
the message is ultimately for.  The main benefit of this I thought was
so that when you send mail and there is difficulty establishing the
connection to the "ultimate destination" mail server then the ISP will
continue to try for you later.

However, I think that exim by default will continue to send the message
for 4 days before giving up.  So long as you connect several times
within these 4 days and flush exims que each time then there is a very
good chance the mail will get sent.  I have a script in the
/etc/ppp/ip-up.d directory which flushes exims que each time I connect.

I haven't experienced any problems with sending mail except on one
occasion when my message was blocked because my ipaddress was black
listed in the RBL of someones SMTP server - or something like that?  I
think this was because I am on a dynamic IP address and some other user
may have previously attempted to abuse the server or send some spam?

Anyway, please let me know if it is a bad idea to send mail directly
rather than through a smarthost when you are on an intermittent PPP
link.

Thanks.
mdevin.