Re: tlug: mail

[Rex Walters <rex@example.com>]

On Tue, Jul 07, 1998 at 09:47:11AM +0900, Eric Standlee wrote:
> 
> You asked "Are you having a problem sending mail or receiving mail?"  The
> answer is both.

It's like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer -- think how good
it will feel when you stop (presumably after you get it working :-).

>                  Now that I am using sendmail, I just ppp-on'd and then ran
> mailq.  But, when I checked /var/spool/mqueue it still had the outgoing
> emails...

A couple things to check:

1) Do you have DNS configured correctly?  Does nslookup return an IP
address for any domains you are sending to?  (That is, if you're sending
to user@example.com, type "nslookup", then at the ">" prompts type
"set type=mx", then "somewhere.co.jp" -- you should get several lines of
mail exchange records and/or internet address records.)

2) What do you have in /etc/sendmail.cf?  There are some seriously
broken sendmail.cf files floating around the net.  Try cc'ing yourself
to see if headers are being rewritten in some bizarre way.

>            And, fetchmail is still not getting anything off my pop
> servers...

Try running fetchmail with the "-v" option.  It should tell you where it
is having trouble.  What's in your .fetchmailrc file?

> 
> >1.  Can you pick up mail via POP from your ISP?
> I am not sure what it means when you say that mutt doesn't require X.

It does require X Windows to be running -- you can run it under any
terminal session (uses slang/curses, not X).  You can run it on the
console or via a telnet session or even with a real VT100 attached to a
serial port.

>                                                                        As
> far as I know, all of the soft I am using for mail is non-X.  But, I still
> haven't gotten mutt.  Lazy?  Busy?
> 
> >2.  Can you deliver mail locally?
> Yes, local mail works just fine.
> >2.  Can you deliver mail received via smtp?
> Yes, the telnet localhost smtp worked just like you said.  I never knew you
> could do that.

Now you know how people forge mail.  ;-)  The next time you get mail
from Bill Gates, you'll understand!

> 
> So, I guess that since local, and smtp work, I have to work on my fetchmail
> rc file.  Or just get mutt somewhere.  Is that in a RH RPM?

My hard disk just died on my main machine, so I don't have the URL handy
(argh).  I think it is "http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~me/mutt/" but if that
doesn't work, do a search for "mutt" at www.yahoo.com.  I'm pretty sure
there are RPMs available (I know the RedHat 5.0 and 5.1 cd's have rpm's
for older versions on them -- I think newer versions are available
somewhere).

>                                                              I recently
> installed alien.rpm, but I don't know how that works yet.  But, if alien can
> read the deb or slack package with mutt, point me in the right direction for
> mutt.  Is it possible it is on my Sunsite Linux Archives cdrom?

Follow the home page links for mutt -- I'm pretty sure it lists the
location of RPMs (don't know about deb's).

> 
> Thanks Rex and Karl-Max.  I definitely have learned a lot about ISP mail,
> mail in general, and networking through this process,
> Eric S. Standlee

Any time.  If you like tinkering, you should take a look at qmail.

Regards,
-- 
Rex
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