Re: More mail questions

[Hadron Quark]

Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> writes:

> Hadron Quark <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I am using smtpmail package through a gmail smtp server to send email.
>>
>> But if I use gnus to send a mail to "root@localhost" why isnt procmail
>> picking it up and diverting it to my local root mmaildir? Procmail does
>> its job just fine when I use the Linux commandline "mail" command.
>>
>> I'm unsure where postfix and smptmail.el fit together.
>>
>> Any pointers appreciated.
>>
>> -- 
>
> When using smtpmail, emacs connects directly to the remote smtp server
> and totally bypasses your local smtp server (postfix). Your procmail
> is probably the default delivery agent for your local smtp server
> (this is the standard config these days). 

I figured this.

>
> This means that your message addressed to user@localhost is being sent
> to the remote gmail smtp server, which if correctly configured, should
> probably reject the message (i.e. doesn't accept @localhost addresses
> unless they come from that machine) or possibly it will attempt to
> find a user with that name on that server (but I think this would be
> an incorrect configuration). In your example, it would be delivered to
> wherever root mail messages are delivered for the remote smtp server -
> probably one of the sys admins.

Yup.

>
> Mail sent via other programs than emacs/gnus don't know about
> smtpmail and is using your local smtp server (postfix) and as the mail
> is originating locally, accepts the message and passes it to procmail,
> which delivers it to the mailbox. 

After I setup my exim4 procmail_pipe or something yes.

>
> I recently started using smtpmail because my ISP has placed all their
> dynamic IP addresses into various blacklists and messages I sent via
> my local smtp server (which was setup as a smarthost that relayed all
> non-local mail to my ISP smtp server, would often get rejected by
> destination hosts that were using a very strict mail policy which

Which is why I switched to smtpmail too - and it took ages to get it
going.

> refuses to accept mail from blacklisted IPs. Many ISPs are doing this
> these days to protect themselves from being blacklisted by a customer
> who runs a local smtp server which is either misconfigured and gets
> abused by a spammer or to send spam themselves. 
>
> I've been running this configuration for a couple of weeks now and it
> works quite well. The only downside is that sometimes there can be a
> slight delay between sending the mail and getting emacs responding
> again - probably due to high loads on the remote smtp server. I have

I dont have that at all. I moved to emacs snapshot - returns very
quickly. Dont forget you can also setup smtpmail to queue the posts.

> also configured fetchmail to retrieve my mail from remote imap/pop
> mailboxes and hand it directly to procmail. This means I no longer

Same as.

> need to run a mail server at all - which is great as I'm way past
> finding maintaining a mail server "fun" and the less I have to
> maintain the better. I was running exim as my local mail server as it
> is easy to setup. Postfix is probably overkill for a local machine,
> unless you have many users and lots of mail traffic. From memory, I
> also seem to remember it is a bit difficult to run postfix and NOT
> have it run as a daemon listening on prot 25. Many people don't
> realise that you only need an smtp server listening on a port if you
> are accepting mail from a remote host. Likewise, many people forget
> that the mail server (postfix, sendmail, exim etc) don't actually
> deliver mail, but instead use a delivery program, such as procmail.

Well, procmail doesnt deliever remotely - thats why you need smtpmail/
exim configured to deliver via a smarthost.

Unfortunately TLS authentication, while working last night, is now
scuppered. But thats by the by.

But this still begs the question : how to configure gnus to
(preferably using procmail rules) palm off emails destined to local users
and NOT to send them off to the smtp server I am using from smtpmail.

>
> HTH
>
> Tim

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