alt.os.linux - Local mail delivery question

Author

Local mail delivery question

Joel Rosenberg

2002-11-27, 4:25 pm

I'm running a small -- two workstation -- private LAN (using the Class
A addresses), connecting out via a cable/modem router, getting DNS
from roadrunner through that. I'm running postfix on both machines,
and using fetchmail to retrieve mail from popmail servers. The
xxx@ellegon.com addresses are hosted on a friend's server, across
town.

Is there any obvious way that I can have local mail delivered locally?
(E.g. if bob on joelr.ellegon.com wants to send mail to betty on
rachel.ellegon.com, I'd rather it just go directly across the LAN,
rather than out to the mailserver hosted elsewhere.)
--
------------------------------------------------------------
http://islamthereligionofpeace.blogspot.com

Paul Lutus

2002-11-27, 5:26 pm

On Wed, 27 Nov 2002 15:02:24 +0000, Joel Rosenberg wrote:

> I'm running a small -- two workstation -- private LAN (using the Class A
> addresses), connecting out via a cable/modem router, getting DNS from
> roadrunner through that. I'm running postfix on both machines, and
> using fetchmail to retrieve mail from popmail servers. The
> xxx@ellegon.com addresses are hosted on a friend's server, across town.
>
> Is there any obvious way that I can have local mail delivered locally?
> (E.g. if bob on joelr.ellegon.com wants to send mail to betty on
> rachel.ellegon.com, I'd rather it just go directly across the LAN,
> rather than out to the mailserver hosted elsewhere.)

Run a copy of sendmail on the ellegon.com server, if there is one. Or, run
a copy of sendmail on each machine that serves anything or that has a
unique domain name. Set up the appropriate sendmail configurations.

--
Paul Lutus
www.arachnoid.com

Jeroen Geilman

2002-11-28, 1:24 pm

Paul Lutus wrote:

> On Wed, 27 Nov 2002 15:02:24 +0000, Joel Rosenberg wrote:
>
>
>> I'm running a small -- two workstation -- private LAN (using the Class A
>> addresses), connecting out via a cable/modem router, getting DNS from
>> roadrunner through that. I'm running postfix on both machines, and
>> using fetchmail to retrieve mail from popmail servers. The
>> xxx@ellegon.com addresses are hosted on a friend's server, across town.
>>
>> Is there any obvious way that I can have local mail delivered locally?
>> (E.g. if bob on joelr.ellegon.com wants to send mail to betty on
>> rachel.ellegon.com, I'd rather it just go directly across the LAN,
>> rather than out to the mailserver hosted elsewhere.)
>
> Run a copy of sendmail on the ellegon.com server, if there is one. Or, run
> a copy of sendmail on each machine that serves anything or that has a
> unique domain name. Set up the appropriate sendmail configurations.
>

Wow.

That was helpful, Paul - or did you just fail to notice that he said he's
running Postfix on both machines ?

Obviously his question is HOW do I setup sendmail or any other MTA.

J

Paul Lutus

2002-11-28, 1:24 pm

On Thu, 28 Nov 2002 19:54:38 +0100, Jeroen Geilman wrote:

> Paul Lutus wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 27 Nov 2002 15:02:24 +0000, Joel Rosenberg wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I'm running a small -- two workstation -- private LAN (using the Class A
>>> addresses), connecting out via a cable/modem router, getting DNS from
>>> roadrunner through that. I'm running postfix on both machines, and
>>> using fetchmail to retrieve mail from popmail servers. The
>>> xxx@ellegon.com addresses are hosted on a friend's server, across town.
>>>
>>> Is there any obvious way that I can have local mail delivered locally?
>>> (E.g. if bob on joelr.ellegon.com wants to send mail to betty on
>>> rachel.ellegon.com, I'd rather it just go directly across the LAN,
>>> rather than out to the mailserver hosted elsewhere.)
>>
>> Run a copy of sendmail on the ellegon.com server, if there is one. Or, run
>> a copy of sendmail on each machine that serves anything or that has a
>> unique domain name. Set up the appropriate sendmail configurations.
>>
>
> Wow.
>
> That was helpful, Paul - or did you just fail to notice that he said he's
> running Postfix on both machines ?

How did you fail to notice that is irrelevant to his inquiry?

> Obviously his question is HOW do I setup sendmail or any other MTA.

Obviously you didn't read his post. His question was about enabling local
mail delivery. Here it is, since your lexical scanner is obviously broken:
[colo
r=darkred]
>>> Is there any obvious way that I can have local mail delivered locally?[/color]

I replied. You objected. Now go back and read it all again.

--
Paul Lutus
www.arachnoid.com

Jeroen Geilman

2002-11-28, 2:24 pm

Joel Rosenberg wrote:

>
> I'm running a small -- two workstation -- private LAN (using the Class
> A addresses), connecting out via a cable/modem router, getting DNS
> from roadrunner through that. I'm running postfix on both machines,
> and using fetchmail to retrieve mail from popmail servers. The
> xxx@ellegon.com addresses are hosted on a friend's server, across
> town.
>
> Is there any obvious way that I can have local mail delivered locally?
> (E.g. if bob on joelr.ellegon.com wants to send mail to betty on
> rachel.ellegon.com, I'd rather it just go directly across the LAN,
> rather than out to the mailserver hosted elsewhere.)

Yes of course there is ! Gazillions of them, actually - but we won't go into
that now...

What you need in order to make local deliveries from and to the two machines
is a common mail domain - one that's seperate from the "real" maildomain
out on the Internet, but can still co-operate with it.

You run Postfix on both machines, so what you *could* do is :

On both machines, configure Postfix to first consider themselves and the
other machine when trying to send mail, and only then forward it to the
ellegon.com mailserver. This part is easy...

BUT - in order to have Postfix (both of them) decide what mail is actually
local, you need a way to share the addresses between the two servers...
OR you could just designate one of them as mailhub and let that machine sort
everything out - believe me, it's by far the easiest solution, the only
thing you need for it is a database (/etc/passwd will do...) with all
usersnames from both machines (check postfix "virtual maps" for that)

If, on the other hand, you want both machines to be able to do the trick and
use only their local user databases, then you need to set up aliases for
each and every user to the other machine, thusly :

Machine 1 (joelr) :
name = joelr.ellegon.com, users = bob, billy, joe

Machine 2 (rachel) :
name = rachel.ellegon.com, users = betty, karen, chris

Machine 1 aliases file :

betty@ellegon.com betty@rachel.ellegon.com
karen@ellegon.com karen@rachel.ellegon.com
chris@ellegon.com chris@rachel.ellegon.com

Machine 2 aliases file :

bob@ellegon.com bob@joelr.ellegon.com
billy@ellegon.com billy@joelr.ellegon.com
joe@ellegon.com joe@joelr.ellegon.com

That should work - even from the internet !

But note that you still cannot have duplicate users on those two machines -
you need separate mail domains for that...

All things considered, it's usually far, far easier to use one machine as a
dedicated mail server / forwarder and let the other one play client...

HTH

J

Jeroen Geilman

2002-11-28, 5:24 pm

Paul Lutus wrote:

> On Thu, 28 Nov 2002 19:54:38 +0100, Jeroen Geilman wrote:
>
<snippy>

>> That was helpful, Paul - or did you just fail to notice that he said he's
>> running Postfix on both machines ?
>
> How did you fail to notice that is irrelevant to his inquiry?

No - I noticed alright, but since local mail *delivery* is pretty much *on*
by default, I grepped that that wasn't actually the question - see later on
if you disagree ;-)

>> Obviously his question is HOW do I setup sendmail or any other MTA.
>
> Obviously you didn't read his post. His question was about enabling local
> mail delivery. Here it is, since your lexical scanner is obviously broken:

Yes, again - isn't local mail delivery by the installed MTA pretty much the
one thing that always WORKS - even when you've freshly installed any
imaginable distro out there ?

If you take his question as it stands, then you're absolutely right, but I
took it to mean he wanted help on how to make it work for his situation -
which is letting the two machines sort out their "local", i.e. LAN-based
mail before sending it on to the mail server.

That's actually a bit more involved than just "gettiong local mail delivery
to work", isn't it ?

Sorry if I offended your sensibilities (oh ;-), no offense meant actually !
[colo
r=darkred]
>>>> Is there any obvious way that I can have local mail delivered locally?
>
> I replied. You objected. Now go back and read it all again.[/color]

I did, then I redressed ;-)

--

J
(who did not participate in the earlier "flame Paul" thread - I was too late
! ;-)

Paul Lutus

2002-11-28, 6:24 pm

On Thu, 28 Nov 2002 23:21:04 +0100, Jeroen Geilman wrote:

> Paul Lutus wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 28 Nov 2002 19:54:38 +0100, Jeroen Geilman wrote:
>>
> <snippy>
>
>>> That was helpful, Paul - or did you just fail to notice that he said
>>> he's running Postfix on both machines ?
>>
>> How did you fail to notice that is irrelevant to his inquiry?
>
> No - I noticed alright, but since local mail *delivery* is pretty much
> *on* by default,

No, actually this is not correct. If you have a LAN, and if you have an
Internet connection, setting up local (meaning LAN) mail delivery is
rather baroque in complexity. Try it with a current distribution.

> I grepped that that wasn't actually the question - see later on if you
> disagree ;-)
>
>>> Obviously his question is HOW do I setup sendmail or any other MTA.
>>
>> Obviously you didn't read his post. His question was about enabling
>> local mail delivery. Here it is, since your lexical scanner is
>> obviously broken:
>
> Yes, again - isn't local mail delivery by the installed MTA pretty much
> the one thing that always WORKS - even when you've freshly installed any
> imaginable distro out there ?

No, in fact it doesn't work by default, and the effort required to set it
up is significant.

> If you take his question as it stands, then you're absolutely right, but
> I took it to mean he wanted help on how to make it work for his
> situation - which is letting the two machines sort out their "local",
> i.e. LAN-based mail before sending it on to the mail server.

Well, if that was his plan, this is not likely to succeed as described.
Most ISPs won't allow relaying.

> That's actually a bit more involved than just "gettiong local mail
> delivery to work", isn't it ?

No, it is on the same level of complexity. I know, I just did exactly
this. With current mail server software, it a grueling undertaking.

/ ...
[colo
r=darkred]
>>>>> Is there any obvious way that I can have local mail delivered
>>>>> locally?
>>
>> I replied. You objected. Now go back and read it all again.
>
> I did, then I redressed ;-)[/color]

Nice use of language.

--
Paul Lutus
www.arachnoid.com

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