Sometime Today, abhijeet assembled some asciibets to say:
now,i understand that the sendmail daemon
identifies me as
abhije@localhost(when i telnet the port 25)-- i get
"IDENT:abhije@localhost.localdomain" as part of the response to
HELO.
when i say......
That's because you have an ident server running on your machine. I'd
advise you to turn it off. I don't remember how, as it's been a long
time since I did that. I think it may have to do with finger.
sendmail also determines your hostname from what is returned by
hostname -f. If you want to specify it explicitly, then in your
sendmail.cf, add/edit the line that says Dj and add your hostname to it.
Alternately, add it in sendmail.mc and regenerate (preferred). I think
it is confDOMAIN_NAME.
If your host has multiple names, add them to sendmail.cw. Only add full
names here.
MAIL FROM:someone@some.other.domain
....it responds that the sender's address should resolve.....what
does that mean???
This is to block spammers. It's understood that if a server does not
exist, then there can be no emails from there. If an address does not
resolve, it means that it doesn't have a DNS entry.
Since you're probably on a dial-up line, you won't have continuous DNS,
but, since you only receive email when you are connected to the net (and
DNS is up), this isn't really a problem; unless you're trying to
simulate it like above.
i thought because it sends mail ......it should
accept all sender
addresses!!!
Nope. It should only allow senders who are allowed to use it, otherwise
spammers could use your server to send mail from anyone to anyone.
The way sendmail is configured (I hope), is to accept mail from anyone
provided it goes to a local mail box, or comes from a local user.
At the same time.....if i say
MAIL FROM:some_other_login_on_my_linuxbox@localhost
the mail is sent....even if "some_other_login_on_my_linuxbox" knows
nothing about it!!!
That is true. Think about it this way. If you use netscape to send
mail. Let's assume for the moment that you have two vsnl accounts. You
use only one of them for mail, but connect to the net using the other
one. Even though you are logged in as one user, you can send mail as
the other. In fact, who you send mail as has nothing to do with who you
are logged in as, or whether you're logged in at all. The mail server
runs on its own, ignorant of any other servers running, or any other
open session.
my argument is that if it knows that i am
abhije@localhost...and
hence does not accept someone@some.other.domain....how does it
accept mail from some_other_login???
Actually, if you telnet to port 25, it has no way of knowing for sure
who you are. It does an ident on your client, but that can be disabled.
If you run sendmail on the command line (using sendmail -bs), then it
will add a warning header -
X-Authentication-Warning: xxxx owned process doing -bs
or something like that, basically saying who actually started the
sendmail process. If you send mail from a CGI script, you may notice
this. You'll also notice this on mails that I send from the office.
i am new to sendmail..and smtp..could somebody
help????
i know i could use something less scarier than sendmail.....but i
need to know what's happening here......
Sendmail's not scary. As long as you deal only with the mc file and not
the cf file. The actual mail interface is common to all MTAs.
2.> Also is there some other mail client that has
the address book
facility???....i just need a break from pine.....
mutt, and if you want GUI, then balsa, nemh, netscape, etc.
3.>I also have a yahoo inbox.....but the yahoo
server doesn't flush the
mail when polled!!!!
could somebody explain that???? (yes..i have registered for pop3
access)
Do you have option keep in your fetchmailrc? That's probably why. My
yahoo mail is flushed alright.
Philip
--
"How should I know if it works? That's what beta testers are for. I only
coded it."
(Attributed to Linus Torvalds, somewhere in a posting)
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