Congratulations on not giving up and starting from scratch. Why don't you point us to the documentation that you found helpful? I would like to try exim or postfix for one of my next home server projects and could use the help. Exim is installed by default on Debian server class installs, instead of Sendmail, IIRC. Or was that postfix?
Smarthost usage is what allows your mail to be relayed thru the ISP SMTP server. Your mail gets a note in the header that it was relayed via a smarthost and so it is allowed at some destinations that would have previously bounced the mail, since you don't own the IP address. Reverse DNS of mdg.homelinux.net, shows RoadRunner owning the IP address instead matching the owner of mdg.homelinux.net. If you had a business class account you would get static IPs and RR would handle the reverse DNS to look right to the world. Some mail servers will still block your mail however, because your IP is in the range of a broadband provider and they choose to blanket block all those IPs. Some choose also to block ranges that are assign to countries such as China and Korea that are notorious for spammers and open relays.
On the MX host settings to use at dyndns.org, read their FAQ on MX and then read it a few more times. I did and it eventually made sense. If you have a firewall that is accepting all outside connections from one IP address and forwarding to the appropriate server, then you may be able to leave the MX blank. DNS will then use the same IP address as the rest of the domain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MX_record
Brian Kelsay
linux@bizniche.com 10/07/04 09:46AM >>>
It's nearly there! I decided to give exim one more shot, and then move to sendmail if I still can't get it going. Following the advise in several emails, I found a few errors and corrected them. Earlier, for a test, I setup an account in fetchmail to see where _that_ mail would end up, and after correcting my errors, it those messages (from the pop3 account fetchmail was pulling down) ended up in my inbox. (Viewed in mutt.) That was encouraging. New mails to that account also end up in my inbox. So...SOMETHING is working right.
I still can't get local mail (mail -s "testing" mdg) or mail sent
straight to mdg@mdg.homelinux.org to get to my inbox though.
The other issues, that I figured I would deal with last, is that reading through the exim logs, I find that some test mails I sent from the mdg@mdg.homelinux.org account are rejected by the recipient server, and it tells me to stop using a dhcp host, and to use my isp's smarthost.
Also, this domain is a dyndns.org domain, and it lets me setup an MX host for this domain. I assume it would be mdg.homelinux.org.
So...great help so far. I'm not quitting this time...I'm getting this thing going if it kills me.
Here is a question that I've wondered about. I see great benefit by using fetchmail and some spam filters together. I have a few pop3 accounts that I check via thunderbird. It seems like I could have my little linux email server checking these for me, filtering the spam, and making the emails availble in an IMAP format (which I prefer.) Knowing that...Can I also _send_ from each of these accounts, through my linux server? That is...if fetchmail is pulling mail from mdg@domain1.com and mgraham@otherdomain.com, and I'm reading them trough an IMAP setup in thunderbird...can I respond to these mails and have them come from mdg@domain1.com and msgraham@otherdomain.com respectively? It seems like they'd always come from mdg@mdg.homelinux.org. Right?
Matt