22 Mar
2003
22 Mar
'03
6:31 a.m.
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