Sendmail - another newbie question

(Hopefully this is the last one.)

A mail was refused because it appeared to come from my (fake) FQDN. I used
a pretend FQDN to keep Leafnode happy. How do I make mails seem to come
like ordinary SMTP, via an ISP, and using my allocated email address?

TIA,

Doug.
--
ICQ Number 178748389. Registered Linux User No. 277548.
I always suspect an artist who is successful before he is dead.
- John Murray Gibbon.

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 14:20:26 +1000, Doug Laidlaw wrote:
> A mail was refused because it appeared to come from my (fake) FQDN. I used
> a pretend FQDN to keep Leafnode happy. How do I make mails seem to come
> like ordinary SMTP, via an ISP, and using my allocated email address?

Setup your mail agent so that your domain is the ISP domain and your
account is the mail account given to you by your ISP. Then send your
outgoing mail to the smtp mail server at your ISP. They should have given
you the name of the server (might just be mail.<ISP-domain>?). Presumably
you have already setup your mail agent to pickup your mail from the ISP
pop server? It's similar setup, but uses a different server on ISP side.

I don't have time to research the details for you, but RTFM & man pages.

Your mail agent won't care about your leafnode setup.

--
Juhan Leemet
Logicognosis, Inc.

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 04:41:11 -0200,
Juhan Leemet <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 14:20:26 +1000, Doug Laidlaw wrote:
> > A mail was refused because it appeared to come from my (fake) FQDN. I used
> > a pretend FQDN to keep Leafnode happy. How do I make mails seem to come
> > like ordinary SMTP, via an ISP, and using my allocated email address?
>
> Setup your mail agent so that your domain is the ISP domain and your
> account is the mail account given to you by your ISP. Then send your
> outgoing mail to the smtp mail server at your ISP. They should have given
> you the name of the server (might just be mail.<ISP-domain>?). Presumably
> you have already setup your mail agent to pickup your mail from the ISP
> pop server? It's similar setup, but uses a different server on ISP side.
>
> I don't have time to research the details for you, but RTFM & man pages.
>
> Your mail agent won't care about your leafnode setup.
>
I'm out of my league here, but I think "smarthost" is the term to look
for.

HTH,

Michael C.
--
(E-Mail Removed) http://mcsuper5.freeshell.org/


The only people who don't make mistakes are the ones that aren't doing
anything.

Juhan Leemet wrote:

> On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 14:20:26 +1000, Doug Laidlaw wrote:
>> A mail was refused because it appeared to come from my (fake) FQDN. I
>> used
>> a pretend FQDN to keep Leafnode happy. How do I make mails seem to come
>> like ordinary SMTP, via an ISP, and using my allocated email address?
>
> Setup your mail agent so that your domain is the ISP domain and your
> account is the mail account given to you by your ISP. Then send your
> outgoing mail to the smtp mail server at your ISP. They should have given
> you the name of the server (might just be mail.<ISP-domain>?). Presumably
> you have already setup your mail agent to pickup your mail from the ISP
> pop server? It's similar setup, but uses a different server on ISP side.
>
> I don't have time to research the details for you, but RTFM & man pages.
>
> Your mail agent won't care about your leafnode setup.
>

Thanks for the advice. With you most of the way. I was surprised to get
the knockback. Seems that I need to give sendmail the ISP's address. It
is probably defaulting to my hostname. The easy way out is just to use my
mail agent and SMTP. I am on a solo computer.

I couldn't find TFM. I am sure that there is a HOWTO, but there doesn't
seem to be an RPM available for my distro. I have difficulty with man
pages - they seem to be written from the programmer's point of view, not
the user's.

Doug.
--
ICQ Number 178748389. Registered Linux User No. 277548.
He who says that a thing cannot be done is likely to be interrupted by the
person doing it.
- Chinese proverb.

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 07:44:59 +0000, Michael C. wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 04:41:11 -0200,
> Juhan Leemet <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>> On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 14:20:26 +1000, Doug Laidlaw wrote:
>> > A mail was refused because it appeared to come from my (fake) FQDN...
>>
>> Setup your mail agent so that your domain is the ISP domain and your
>> account is the mail account given to you by your ISP. Then send your
>> outgoing mail to the smtp mail server at your ISP...
>
> I'm out of my league here, but I think "smarthost" is the term to look
> for.

Well, sendmail is a life's work (not mine). It's pretty hairy, esp. config.

If you insist on running your own sendmail, maybe because you have a
number of machines and you want to relay traffic through one, then yes.
Your other machines can refer to a smart relay host in their sendmail.cf
This is sometimes done through a host name "alias" like "mailhost", or
more properly the FQDN: mailhost.<your-domain>. Mail macros can be used.

I actually do this, relaying my mail via dialup (backup line). This gives
me an outgoing queue, for a second chance to delete, etc.

If you just have one (or a few?) machines and you just want to get mail up
and running, then it's probably easier to have the mail agent(s) talk
directly to your ISP mail servers (pop for incoming, smtp for outgoing).

BTW, viz. TFM, O'Reilly did put out a comprehensive book on sendmail. A
bit heavy reading, but you get a good idea of how/why things work. Looks
like the man pages are a bit sparse (assume you already know how sendmail
works). The howto on my SuSE 8.2 only talks about address rewrites. Hmm. I
guess (if you really want to know) buy the O'Reilly book, or Google away.

Some people wonder: why so complicated? I think that's because sendmail
has been around for a long time, and it has been made to work on virtually
every platform (hardware, and O/S) out there, and _reliably_. No wonder
it's complicated. It does its job well. Like an "apache" of mail transport.

--
Juhan Leemet
Logicognosis, Inc.