Dear fellows,

I have a question about sendmail. I have DNS servers and a mail server running sendmail. I have 2 domains which I maintain locally and have users of on my mail servers. I have zones of few clients on my DNS servers and in few zones they want my mail server to use as a backup server if their primary mail server goes down.

I dont have mail users of my clients domain on may mail server machine. I just want may mail server to store their mails as que server when their primary server goes down.

I know i cant use those domain in my local domain names file in /etc/mail. How can I make my mail server just to store the incoming mails for my client domains. Should i put their domain entries in relay_domains file or whereelse.

Although didnt get any reply on such big forum in other category but still waiting for someone who knows about sendmail to reply!

Set up a small postfix server on your bastion that will store and forward when your primary server is available. The added benefit of this is that you can also scan for spam and viruses before you forward on to your main server.

http://www.freespamfilter.org/

I've been running this for about 6 months on a 486 and it works wonderfully.

ken

Dear Ken,

Thanks for the reply. Seems like you didnt get what I mean. I dont need a secondary server for myserlf. My primary mail server is a backup mail server for some of my clients whose domain names are being hosted on my DNS.

Here is the example of my client abc.com with zone entries on my DNS server

@ IN MX 10 mail.abc.com (this is my clients primary mail server)
@ IN MX 20 mail1.abc.com (this is my mail server being used as a backup server for my client)

mail1 IN A x.x.x.x (this is the IP of my mail server)

I want mails for my clients domain to be qued on my mail server and I dont have users for that domain on my mail machine. I just want my mail server machine to que the mail for my clients when their primary mail server goes down.

I am just confused. I guess and believe sendmail does the queing by itself for domains listed in the relay_domains file. Am I right or not?

I gave up on sendmail after much confusion, but basically, you want your secondary server to be a forwarding server to your first one. If it can't connect tot he first one, it will queue the mail. You'll have to read up on sendmail on how to make it a forwarding server.

ken

Q4.14 in this faq talks about relaying.

Thanks guys,

I was right. To que to the mail for other domains we just need to enter domain name or IP address in relay domains file. Thanks for help though.