Mail question -- what to use???
 

I have an old computer (PII-233) that I installed Slack 8.1 on and I am using it as a NAT/firewall/webserver. I have the firewall set-up exactly how I want it (everthing incoming is dropped unless on port 80); NAT is working flawlessly; Webserver is chugging along just fine, thanks. Now, I think I need something to send mail from the firewall computer across the lan to my personal Linux box. (I am about to put tripwire and portsentry on it and both need the ability to mail). Whatever I end up using for MTA, I don't want it to try to access my ISP (just mail to local machine). I have heard and read that sendmail is a bitch to configure, so, is there something else that will do what I need? What are your suggestions? The only problem I may have (but I'm not sure) is that the webserver is www.mydomain.com, and the router is router.mydomain.com, and my personal box is myhost.mydomain.com. When the mail program tries to send mail, will it first try to resolve the address through my ISP's DNS server, or can I force it to only use the local LAN for mail?

If I was unclear about this, I'm sorry.

Use whatever mail server you'd like, I always suggest Postfix as it's far easier to use than Sendmail, easier to config, easier to setup... just an all around better application, it's more secure as well since you look like a security nut, that's probably a good point to bring up ;)

After that, you can setup to resolve the names of your local machines in /etc/hosts so that the mail will never go outside your local network to check for email, unless it's sent to an external domain/IP not setup/resolved in /etc/hosts or any local DNS servers you have.

HTH

Cool

Thanks. That's all that I was looking for, a suggestion. I've never had to set up a MTA, so I was unsure.

'preciate it.

Denny

Now, I guess I have a configuration problem. My desktop system is setup to where all mail is forwarded to my user account (denny). I ssh'd into the router, after setting up postfix and mutt, and then tried to send an email from mutt to denny@debian. BTW, both computers (router and debian) have the same /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.1.7 router.xxx.com router
192.168.1.5 debian.xxx.com debian
192.168.1.1 lanell.xxx.com lanell

The mail is stuck somewhere on router. This is a snippet from /var/log/maillog:

Sep 14 18:35:17 router postfix/pickup[15048]: 37A80C250: uid=0 from=<root>
Sep 14 18:35:17 router postfix/cleanup[15057]: 37A80C250: message-id=<20030914233517.GA15052@xxx.com>
Sep 14 18:35:17 router postfix/qmgr[15049]: 37A80C250: from=<root@xxx.com>, size=446, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Sep 14 18:35:17 router postfix/smtp[15059]: 37A80C250: to=<denny@debian.xxx.com>, orig_to=<denny@debian>, relay=none, delay=0, status=bounced (Name service error for name=debian.xxxf.com type=A: Host not found)
Sep 14 18:35:17 router postfix/cleanup[15057]: EF082C25B: message-id=<20030914233517.EF082C25B@router.xxx.com>
Sep 14 18:35:17 router postfix/qmgr[15049]: EF082C25B: from=<>, size=2265, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Sep 14 18:35:18 router postfix/local[15061]: warning: dict_nis_init: NIS domain name not set - NIS lookups disabled
Sep 14 18:35:18 router postfix/cleanup[15057]: 507A2C250: message-id=<20030914233517.EF082C25B@router.xxx.com>
Sep 14 18:35:18 router postfix/qmgr[15049]: 507A2C250: from=<>, size=2414, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Sep 14 18:35:18 router postfix/local[15061]: EF082C25B: to=<root@xxx.com>, relay=local, delay=1, status=sent (forwarded as 507A2C250)
Sep 14 18:35:18 router postfix/smtp[15059]: 507A2C250: to=<denny@debian.xxx.com>, orig_to=<root@xxx.com>, relay=none, delay=0, status=bounced (Name service error for name=debian.xxx.com type=A: Host not found)

The only thing that I see that MIGHT be wrong (and to honest, "hell if I know") is the third line of /var/log/maillog says "root@xxx.com", shouldn't that be "root@router.xxx.com" ?? I CAN see that the denny@debian got expanded correctly to denny@debian.xxx.com, so that's good. Whatever, the problem is, can someone help me fix this? I'll be glad to provide any more info necessary...

TIA

Denny

SOLVED
 

After much googling, I came to the conclusion that this is not possible to do without having a DNS server on the local net. If that is incorrect, oh well, I got it to work this way. If you have two Linux boxen on your net, say one is your router/firewall and the other is your personal desktop. If you want the firewall to be able to send the "root" emails to you at your desktop, the only way I found to accomplish this is to set-up DNS. It's a REAL PITA to do this. If anyone wants specifics they can email me : dpeeples at wfbiz dot rr dot com