Les Mikesell wrote: > Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: > >>> >> Not what I said at all. But no configuration is going to be "right" >> for people with commercial accounts. > > I suppose there are people who don't want user@server to go to that > user's mailbox. There are also probably people who want their ssh login > to do something other than log in as the specified user - but I'm not > sure why either of those would be the case. > Could be, but what has that to do with this discussion? On the other hand, I can see when you might want the local mail server to send all mail to a central mail server, and all users on the network to get their mail from that server. This is a fairly common setup. >> The stock >> configuration will work for stand-alone machines, and is fairly safe >> to run on a network machine. > > Work? How can something that doesn't accept mail work? > But it does accept mail. Granted, it only accepts mail generated on the local machine, or using another program to transport them to the local machine. But this works for a lot of users. Just because it does not work for you and I, does not mean it does not work. >> To fully integrate the mail server into the network, you are going >> to have to do some network specific modifications in just about >> every case. The days when a mail server could send mail to any other >> mail server without specific configuration are gone. If you are a >> non-commercial user, chances are you have to relay though your ISP's >> mail server. You may have to do the same with a small commercial >> network. With just about any network, you have to set up who can >> send mail through the server. You may also need to change how your >> mail server announces itself over the Internet. You may also need to >> route all outgoing mail through one server, and you may need to >> route internal mail to another server. > > Yes, it is reasonable to expect a machine to be a mail hub, a mail > relay, or a mail client. So 3 working copies of sendmail.mc would be a > good start instead of one broken one, along with some documentation for > those specific common tweaks you mention. > I don't think that 3 examples of sendmail.mc would be enough. But maybe it is that I have been away from configuring Sendmail for a few years. Maybe you could provide examples for this? I remember that there used to be several example configuration files in the Sendmail configuration package, but I have not looked lately. I tend to run Postfix as a mail server now days. It is also reasonable for a machine to only need to deliver locally generated mail. My laptop is a perfect example of this. The mail server on it is only there to handle messages generated on the machine. It never needs to accept messages from the outside world, and it also doesn't need to send then. It just needs to do local delivery. So the "broken" configuration works fine. I use Thunderbird to handle all mail to/from the Internet. It is configured so that I can use it from different networks. >> What about the people that have their primary mail server at their >> hosting service? Are they relaying their outgoing mail through the >> same server? If so, you have to change the configuration to use that >> host as a relay. If you are not relaying through the hosting server, >> do you have to relay through your ISP's mail server? Or does the >> server have to masquerade as another host when sending mail over the >> Internet? > > Those things wouldn't have to be any harder than, say, configuring > authentication against a windows domain controller which is a > fill-in-the-form option in the RH tools. > I am sure it could be done - after all, webmin has a Sendmail module. It isn't something I would use. I leave it to the people that would use it to push for a design that does what they want. Chances are, I will still edit the files myself, instead of using the GUI. The fact that I have that choice is one of the great things about Linux. The big thing we disagree on is that you say the configuration is broken because it doesn't default to the way you think it should, and I do not think it is broken because it does the job for a stand alone system that is not a domain mail server. Yes, some configurations require that Sendmail be able to receive mail from the Internet, or the local network, but there are plenty of other configurations that do not require this. I like the fact that it is locked down by default. Then again, I can remember when most mail servers were open relays. You could spoof a message by telnetting to port 25 on the mail server you wanted the message to come from, and feeding it your message. The server would then happily relay the message to the destination, and it would have all the correct headers... Mikkel -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
