Re: [OT] Sane envelope sender

[Richard Cobbe <cobbe@airmail.net>]

Lo, on Friday, October 5, Damon Muller did write:

> I have numerous email accounts, but am permanently behind a firewall.
> The firewall only allows me access to the one smtp server, which I use
> as a smart-host to forward my outgoing mail. Yet I don't have an account
> on that server to receive mail to, and my home box, also behind the
> firewall, can't receive outside mail (or any sort of outside connection).
> 
> I'm using qmail on my local machine, which makes it easy to set the
> envelope sender ($QMAILHOST and $QMAILUSER), yet I'm not exactly sure
> what it should be set as.
> 
> At the moment, it's set as one of my email accounts (using the FQDN as
> the domain name, as some mail servers complain if the envelope domain is
> not resolvable, so you can't just use the MX name). Is that the best
> solution, or is there something more `correct'.

If I understand you correctly, that's more or less the situation I'm in at
work.  Incoming mail lands on the same machine that I use as a smarthost,
and I have to use fetchmail (or whatever other POP client) to pull it down
to my desktop.

I have exim set the return address and envelope to the company's domain,
rather than the FQDN.  With a couple of minor exceptions like www.foo.com,
all of our hostnames are on a DNS server that's accessible only inside the
company's network (and they map to something in the 172.16.x.x block of
private addresses anyway).  Setting the envelope to foo.com works just fine
for me.

Richard