[pups] Totally off topic question

[iking@killthewabbit.org (Ian King)]

Yup.  I used to do that, but had an older version of sendmail and got
'co-opted' as a relay host for a spammer.  :-(  But the Linux distribution
included a pop3 server out of the box, and my Windows machines were able to
connect to it just fine.

FWIW: rather than update sendmail and hack another .cf, I bought a
Windows-based mail server from a company called True North Software
(www.tnsoft.com), and I'm running it on Windows 2000.  It also provides a
POP3 server that the other machines access (so my family can have email,
too), and is a complete no-brainer to administer.  Once upon a time I
thought it was fun to administer a mail server; now I really appreciate this
'hands-off' solution.  :-)  OK, I paid $150 for a piece of software, but
when I consider the value (to me) of my free time, that's chump change....

Instead, I use my free time to hack 2.11BSD and UNIX v6!  :-)  Cheers -- Ian

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Turnbull" <pete@dunnington.u-net.com>
To: "Robin Birch" <robinb at ruffnready.co.uk>; <pups at minnie.tuhs.org>
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 4:31 PM
Subject: Re: [pups] Totally off topic question


> On Mar 21, 23:04, Robin Birch wrote:
>
> > I am probably going to get a broadband connection to wherever I end
> up.
> > I will then network all of the various boxes together and connect
> > everything (including the PDP) to the Internet.  I intend having one
> box
> > set up as a server
> [...]
> > In case the above seems stupid the idea is to take all email through
> a
> > server, weed out all incoming rubbish, and route it to various
> > individual's (partner, daughter etc.) PCs.
>
> This is exactly what I do, though I have the sending and receiving
> sides of the email equation separate.  I have one machine that acts as
> a mail hub.  It runs sendmail with a custom sendmail.cf which is
> capable of delivering internal mail either to /var/mail, which is then
> exported to other machines, or via UUCP or SMTP to other machines.  It
> also batches up outgoing mail and sends it to my ISP's mail server
> ("Smart Host") at specific times of the day (mine's not an always-on
> connection).
>
> All the other machines either use UUCP, or use sendmail with the
> "nullclient" .cf file, to send mail to my hub machine.  No reason why
> the hub couldn't run a POP3 server for the benefit of Windoze PCs as
> well, but I've never felt the need :-)  If you go that route, I'd
> suggest you think about IMAP rather than POP, though.  As far as
> getting mail from my ISP, I use fetchmail -- but if you do this, be
> sure that your ISP puts something in the headers that makes it easy for
> fetchmail to tell which user it's really for (don't forget about
> mailing lists), and that you have a catchall rule to handle mail you
> didn't think of.
>
> If you have an always-on connection, you could have your DNS MX
> record(s) set to point to your hub machine, and needn't use fetchmail.
>  However, if you do that, be sure to set up sendmail with anti-relaying
> and all the proper security patches.
>
>
>
> --
> Pete Peter Turnbull
> Network Manager
> University of York
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