Re: tlug: SMTP questions

[Karl-Max Wagner <karlmax@example.com>]

> 1) Set it up so that it will accept mail from an e-mail client running on my
> Windows machine and send it (this is on a direct Internet connection);
Not necessary. Normally your client will send mail directly to
the destination MX (mail exchanger). If you want your Linux box
operating as a relay, you have to define it as a relayhost or
smarthost at your client's side. However, this makes only sense
if you have some destinations which are notoriously slow.
> 2) Set it up so that it will accept mail from only my Windows machine or
> from within my Linux machine (filtered by IP address);
This means major massaging of the sendmail.cf file. It has an
awkward synthax, but once you master it, you can do incredible
things with it.
> 3) What (hopefully starting at the basics and assuming little prior
> knowledge) books would you recommend for learning more about Sendmail?
The standard book on sendmail is "sendmail", published by
O'Reilly Associates. However, it tends to be a bit out of date.
I also recommend reading "Linux Gazette", an online magazine
available freely at

             http://www.ssc.com

There have been a few articles for beginners in there.

A good way of getting used to sendmail is setting up a small
network of at least 2 computers (take some old boxes and install
Linux or FreeBSD on them - the latter if you happen to get
PC98xx boxes - I don't know how far Linux support for them did
already proceed), and link them using ethernet, plip or ppp.
Then play with that. It is very instructive and prevents you
from putting trash onto the Internet (Actually, that's what I do
to test things before setting them onto the Internet).
> Or, if Sendmail won't do these things, is there a free Linux SMTP server,
Sendmail can be made to do ANYTHING, really ;-)
> hopefully in a nice, friendly .rpm package, that will?
There are also smail and qmail. Qmail is definitely worth a try.
Sendmail has been designed to handle anything that ever existed,
much of it dead and forgotten now. It is incredibly complex and
therefore - despite the utmost efforts from the side of the
designers - bugs keep constantly cropping up. Qmail, on the
contrary, is a new design and supports only what is relevant
today. It is consequently much less complex and thus also less
bug prone. It furthermore uses external script languages for its
configuration, thus making things MUCH easier. Sendmail couldn't
do that because at the time of its inception - almost 20 years
ago - nothing worthwile existed. Qmail, on the contrary, was
designed only a few years ago, at a time when powerful script
languages, like perl, tcl and python already existed and thus
makes use of them.
> Keep enjoying this, Mikio - I feel like I'm morphing into a UNIX system
> administrator or something :-)
Don't name the obvious ;-) You wouldn't believe how fast that
goes once you start fancying it....

......welcome to the guild of sysadmins and their woes.......

                            Greetings from Munich
                            Karl-Max Wagner
                            karlmax@example.com
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