Re: exim problem?
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On Sunday 15 December 2002 4:53 pm, Eric Cheney wrote:
> On Sunday, 15 December 2002 at 21:15:29 +0000, Alan Chandler wrote:
> > On Sunday 15 December 2002 5:58 pm, Eric R Cheney wrote:
> > > Any ideas what is wrong?
> >
> > It would help if there were some details - like the relevent parts of
> > /etc/exim/exim.conf
>
> Someone already mentioned (replied off-list, and thanks) that exim is
> for sending mail; so my problem isn't with exim.
Now I re-read your original query - I understand a bit more of what you are
trying to do.
I don't think its exim, but also I think you may be confusing several things.
A brief explanation about how mail works. When someone sends mail to
you@yourdomain.com they have an MTA (like exim - but at their end) which
attempts to find who is dealing with mail for yourdomain.com. It does this
via a nameserver (dns) lookup for yourdomain.com and ask the nameserver for
the MX record. This tells which of (possibly several - they have priorities)
ip addresses to contact (via port 25). In your case, I it appears this is
soc.umass.edu. In which case they get told is either ponzi.oit.umass.edu
(128.119.166.18) or supai.oit.umass.edu (128.119.175.6) - but I assume these
actually work - so are you setting up a domain name for yourself?
In my case, doing an MX lookup on chandlerfamily.org.uk will point you at
someone who is hosting the domain name servers for my domain and mail goes
via them, to another name I have asked for mail to be forwarded - my isp.
I get the mail from my ISP using fetchmail (using pop3), which sends it to my
local copy of exim (via port 25) which then puts it onto a disk on my local
server (I could deliver it directly to my local box if I wanted to). I then
use courier-imap to provide pop3 and imap services to my whole family who use
various mail programs to read the mail.
The return journey for mail is similar. My mail program (kmail) sends it to
my local copy of exim via port 25. It could (but doesn't) deliver it
directly, doing MX lookups etc, but instead sends it on to my isp which then
queues it there and then does MX lookups on the address it is trying to send
the mail to.
>So I guess
> my problem is with a imapd server.... I have a uw-imapd running,
? Which imapd server, I don't think that comes it to it.
> and that works internally (i.e. inside the home I can use
> mozilla to read mail from the mail server via another internal
> box). But again, sending mail directly to the mail "box" from an
> external host won't work (though other tcp stuff works like ftp,
> http, etc). Eventually get an e-mail from the external sending
> host "failed MX lookup".
This sounds like a nameserver problem - can you understand the issues from the
text I have written above
>
> So what do I need to setup so that mail is received directly? Again,
> fetchmail will work, but I can't get it directly sent (I have a domain
> name, etc.). And, what tcp/ip port should I have my dsl/router
> set up for forwarding to the mail server?
You need to get your domain hosting company to point the MX records at the
address of your "mail box". However, beware - if you have a network behind
the dsl/router it probably has private addresses and the router is doing
address translation (I half assumed that is what you meand when you say you
forwared port25) - in which case you want to set the MX records to point to
the ip address of the address translation box, and then tell that where to
forward port25.
Whether this is a good idea is debatably. The rest of the internet expects MX
machines to be available all the time - if you power your box down it may be
better to do what I do and forward through your isp, and use fetchmail to get
the mail before sending via exim. Of course of your ip address varies
because your dsl provided allocates ip addresses dynamically then you will
have problems.
>
> Thank you for your thoughts.
I hope this helps
- --
Alan Chandler
alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk
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