hi SiegeX,
quick question. will relaying a local mail server's outgoing mail through the isp's smtp server result in the mail being stamped as originating from the isp's smtp server? sorry for such a simple question, but i have absolutely no experience with mail servers. never bothered with them because of the port 25 issues you already addressed.

Its a very good question. You see, when an email gets relayed through any SMTP server, that server will tack on a header that basically says "this email was here". If you have ever tracked a UPS package, its the same exact idea. So when you are using SMART_HOST, the first thing that happens is that your own SMTP server puts its header on, then it connects to your ISP's SMTP server and that server will tack a header on top of yours. From there the ISP's server will route that email to its next destination (not always final). The reason why this will help in preventing your emails from being dropped is that the "next destination" is now being handed email from a static, non-residential IP. Hope I cleared up your question.

the reason i asked is the user account of the isp is not owned by myself. i don't want to use it as a relay if any and all emails i send through it get stamped with that e-mail account to reply to. had this problem before when using the isp smtp server "straight" with an e-mail client.

Excellent HOWTO. I may even setup sendmail after reading it. I have a home webserver and I want to be able to feedback email through a web page form. Thanks.

On the Linux Answers submission of this HOWTO, I would like to add that maybe LQ should change the link name from Linux Tutorials to Linux Answers. Perhaps, just add the word Answers after tutorial: Linux Tutorials/Answers. ;) Just a thought!

All the ISP SMTP servers that I have delt with will let you specify the 'MAIL FROM' to be from any host@domain you wish as long as either 1) The IP you send it from belongs to that ISP or 2) You authenticate using client-side SMTP AUTH. That is not to say that there arnt SMTP servers out there that will reject relaying all mail that doesnt have their domain name as the MAIL FROM address, ive just never encountered one yet.


And thanks for the compliment on the howto, let us know if you have any problems. And I think your suggestion about the "Linux Tutorials" is a good one, I wasnt aware until now that Tutorials links to Linux Answers. Might also be a wise idea to give "Linux Answers/Tutorials" its own Forum but have the link simply redirect to the page its on.

just got my first piece of mail to go through with my local machine's hostname.domainname as "from"!!! really easy to follow your instructions...took me a while to determine that i MUST change darkstar.localhost to an actual FQDN. (kept getting unqualified host name errors)

too bad...i kinda liked the darkstar login
but i like things working more

Hey SiegeX,

Problem, followed your first post, and when I tried to pick up from the server side SMTP.
I edited everything created the certs and when I got to [saslauthd -a shadow]
I realized that you did something different in the begining of this post, and that is you compiled sendmail with arguements that I believe created some directories and options that I did not get when I used your first post on this subject. Is there a way to include these into my current configuration or should I rip out sendmail and sasl and start over?

Thanks,
Wolfy

In my first post I recommened downloading prebuilt sendmail and sasl slackpacks from linuxpackages.net. In this howto I go through how to do it yourself, but when everythign is said and done the configuration options should be the same, there should be no reason why you couldnt follow everything but not including the Install&Config section if you installed the prebuilt packages.

saslauthd error
 

im getting this error when i saslauthd -a shadow

everything runs fine. i can send and recieve mail at this point. im wondering what step i missed.

hmm... think i figured it out. error in compiling sasl.

trying to recompile sasl. uninstall, redo compile. make && make install, yet theres still nothing in /var/state/saslauthd. somethings making the configure parameters not register or something.

ok figured it out.

--with-saslauthd=/var/state/saslauthd needs to be /var/state

thnx for the very informative tute.

if only all sendmail howtos were just so

:)

s/n i also had to ln -s /usr/lib/sasl2 /usr/local/lib/sasl2
i think --with-plugindir=/usr/local/lib/sasl2 needed to be --with-plugindir=/usr/local/lib

Yep, I second that. Up until now, sendmail has been a scary Linux app for me.

bump
 

*bump*

seige, is the compile parameters for cyrus-sasl2 in your tutorial correct and my machine just a bit picky?

It worked beautifully. Thanks.

No problem, I appreciate all the comments (both positive and negative) but fortunately they seem to all be positive ;). I just got done adding MIMEDefang + Spam Assassin + ClamAV to sendmail and when I get the time Ill write up a howto for this as well. What is also neat is that I have fetchmail grabbing from three of my POP accounts and sending them through my sendmail server so they all get washed for spam and viruses and I only need to have my client grab from my local POP3 server to recieve the mail from all three.

Hello again SiegeX,
I have a question.
I recently did a re-install and I did not do anything to sendmail prior to starting your How-to.
Everything went fine with no errors, but you make a note that after installing the new sendmail that we should make changes to the access,local-host-names,and aliases files.
I did not modify these or did I make copies since I did not attempt to configure them prior to following your How-to.
These files are for the most part empty, Could you tell me what I should put in these files?
I kinda know, but I am unsure of the syntax needed to make them work properly.
[access] I assume is who gets access i.e. users
[local-host-names] I believe to be my FQDN
and [aliases] I believe is what other names that users would receive mail from.
I'am going to proceed with your How-to in the hopes that it will only be as simple as adding some information later if needed.

Thanks,
Wolfy