Tim: >> If you're suggesting that the client should accept all mail by default, >> I don't think I'd go along with that. Perhaps if it was easy to >> configure that behaviour. It'd certainly need to be configured to not >> deliver externally, by default, at the same time. Les Mikesell: > The default configuration (after you've made it accept network > connections) will accept email from anywhere _to_ existing users on the > machine, and anyone on the local machine can send outbound mail. If you > want to permit relaying, you must put the network ranges (typically your > own LAN) in the access database with RELAY specified. If you don't > add anything to the access database, mail from the network to non > existent users or to other machines is rejected. And therein lay a problem with providing a simple preconfigured option: Your network addressing. They're not all the same. There's several different private sub-nets in use, and some people have real internet IP addresses on their boxes. >> But, most people are going to need to do a variety of things to be able >> to post mail. They'll need to configure their system securely. They'll >> need to have a real domain name (own one, or have permission to use some >> other one). And if they want to receive mail through it, they'll need >> to configure external services to send to their SMTP server and/or >> organise public DNS MX records. > Yes, those are all normal things to do for internet services. Fixing a > network service that has been obscurely configured not to use the > network isn't a normal thing to have to do. Is it really that obscure? It didn't look that hard to me to get it working. The comments in the configuration file aren't that hard to work. When I configured mine, I had the much harder task of configuring things on a dial-up network that was usually off-line. It's not the only thing pre-configured to only work locally. I don't recall BIND listening to anything but the localhost, by default.
