ABOUT SETTING UP MAIL ON PPP-CONNECTED DIAL-UP MACHINES OR
WORKSTATIONS USING A CENTRAL MAIL SYSTEM.
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# This howto is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, #
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of #
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. #
This howto is for you if you have a Unix machine that does not have a
permanent Internet connection but rather uses dial-up PPP to connect to
your Internet service provider. The problem also affects those using a
central mail system for a workstation and want the central address to
show up as the "From:" address in the header. A common problem is how
to masquerade as your ISP's mailhost to get
From: [email protected]
instead of
From: [email protected]
Another problem is how to send and receive mail.
0.) Fixing MH
=============
This section is probably not relevant to use of a central mail system.
For PPP connections you just need to add two lines to your MH mail
transport configuration file. For original MH this file is called
mtstailor (typically installed in /usr/local/lib/mh). For nmh it is
mts.conf (typically installed in /usr/local/nmh/etc). In either case
you put in two entries: "localname" defines the machine name used in
From: lines, "clientname" the machine name used in the SMTP HELO
header. (If you don't put a clientname entry then localname gets
used, which may make your SMTP server unhappy if it tries to verify
HELO.)
For example, I have:
localname: sss.pgh.pa.us
clientname: sss.sss.pgh.pa.us
If you do step 0 then you probably do not have to setup sendmail masquerading.
1a.) Setting up sendmail for masquerading
=========================================
If you don't use sendmail or Postfix, you're on your own. (See 1b if
you use Postfix.) If you're using sendmail, all you need to do is to
replace your /etc/sendmail.cf with a new sendmail.cf that you generate
using the m4 files that come with any (newer) sendmail source
distribution.
In that distribution you'll find directories ./cf/cf, ./cf/domain,
../cf/feature, ... You first have to create an m4 config file for your
host. The file ./cf/README explains how to do that. If you don't want to
read it, here is a quick start with an m4 config file (myhost.mc) that
should be appropriate in most cases (if you don't use procmail, delete
the lines regarding procmail; BTW, redhat 4.2 uses procmail):
# myhost.mc
VERSIONID(`Put here some free text describing the version of this config file')
OSTYPE(linux)
DOMAIN(generic)
define(`SMART_HOST', `myispmailhost.com')dnl
FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)
MASQUERADE_AS(myispdomain)
define(`PROCMAIL_MAILER_PATH',`/usr/bin/procmail')dnl
define(`confCOPY_ERRORS_TO',`mylocalloginname')dnl
FEATURE(nouucp)
FEATURE(local_procmail)
MAILER(local)
MAILER(smtp)
MAILER(procmail)
In many cases, myispmailhost.com and myispdomain are the same:
Myispmailhost is the host that accepts SMTP connections on TCP port 25
and acts as a mail relay to the outer world (smart host). Very often
the name of a PPP connected machine does not have a valid entry in
DNS (domain name service), i.e. other machines that try to determine
your IP address using your hostname will get an error. Some domains
(notably AOL) won't accept mail from your host if they get such an
error. Therefore, you need to use a mail relay since otherwise you won't
be able to send mail to such domains. If you did not get the address of
a mail relay from your ISP provider, the best bet is to use the same
host that you were told to use as your POP server.
Myispdomain is what you want to see in your "From:" lines. For example,
if you choose
MASQUERADE_AS(isp.nowhere.com)
your "From:" lines will appear as
From: [email protected]
although the name of your PPP connected Unix machine is completely different.
After editing myhost.mc, put the file into ./cf/cf. Then cd to ./cf, call
m4 m4/cf.m4 cf/myhost.mc > sendmail.cf
su
cp sendmail.cf /etc
touch /etc/sendmail.cw
and restart sendmail. That's all.
1b.) Setting up postfix for masquerading
========================================
You will need to edit the postfix main.cf file often found in
/usr/local/etc/postfix. No other file needs adjustment.
In the section titles "ADDRESS REWRITING", add the lines:
masquerade_domains = $mydomain
masquerade_exceptions = root,mailer-daemon
You may add any other accounts for which you do not want
masquerading to querade_exceptions.
Normally you will not want to set both mail_origin and masquerade_domains
as they will be processed sequntially and masquerade_exceptions will
be lost.
You can find more information on these changes in sample-rewrite.cf.
2.) Setting up fetchmail
========================
Fetchmail is very good at downloading mail from your mailbox at your ISP
using POP3 (post office protocol version 3).
First get and install fetchmail (for example, from any sunsite
mirror). Configuring fetchmail means basically editing a file
~/.fetchmailrc. Here is my ~/.fetchmailrc:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
poll sirius.physik.TU-Berlin.DE protocol pop3:
user henrik there has password ********, is henrik here;
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Replace "sirius..." with the name of your POP server (your ISP should
have told you which server to use). Of course, you have to change the
login names and the password.
Don't forget to set the file permissions to 600 using "chmod 600
~/.fetchmailrc" (otherwise other users can read your password).
3.) Automatically sending the sendmail queue and fetching mail at dial-up
========================================================================
If you're sending mail while not being connected to the Internet,
sendmail will append this mail to the mail queue. To automatically send
all mail in the queue whenever you connect to the net using PPP, add
this line to your /etc/ppp/ip-up:
PATH=$PATH:/usr/sbin:/sbin
export PATH
sendmail -q
You probably want to fetch all your new mail whenever you connect,
so add this to /etc/ppp/ip-up (will fetch your mail on startup and
afterwards in intervals of 300 seconds):
su -c 'fetchmail --daemon 300 --syslog;' henrik
(replace "henrik" with your local login name)
and add this to /etc/ppp/ip-down to automatically kill the fetchmail
daemon when you disconnect:
PATH=$PATH:/usr/sbin:/sbin
export PATH
su -c "fetchmail --quit" henrik
That's all.
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Henrik Seidel, http://satchmo.physik.tu-berlin.de/~henrik/
TU Berlin, Inst. f. Theor. Physik, Sekr. PN 7-1, Hardenbergstr. 36
10623 Berlin, GERMANY, tel: +49-30-314-23000 fax: +49-30-314-21130
use "finger [email protected]" to get my public pgp key
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