From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Dec 20 07:57:37 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id HAA24111 for questions-outgoing; Sat, 20 Dec 1997 07:57:37 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions) Received: from BIGFUN.vwcom.com (BIGFUN.vwcom.com [151.197.101.21]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id HAA24100 for ; Sat, 20 Dec 1997 07:57:34 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from bmc@WillsCreek.COM) Received: from WillsCreek.COM (gw.willscreek.com [151.197.101.46]) by BIGFUN.vwcom.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id KAA04708; Sat, 20 Dec 1997 10:52:04 -0500 (EST) Received: from current.willscreek.com (current.willscreek.com [172.16.87.1]) by WillsCreek.COM (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA02512; Sat, 20 Dec 1997 10:56:59 -0500 (EST) Received: (from bmc@localhost) by current.willscreek.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) id FAA00373; Sat, 20 Dec 1997 05:56:56 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 05:56:56 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712201056.FAA00373@current.willscreek.com> From: Brian Clapper MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: rknebel@csrlink.net Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: hostname In-Reply-To: <19971220084828.26231@net> References: <199712200622.GAA36350@out2.ibm.net> <19971220084828.26231@net> X-Mailer: VM 6.23 under Emacs 19.34.1 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk rknebel@csrlink.net wrote: > Hi, > A while back I read a post that to be able to post on this group you would > have to have a real domain name or something like that. I use my computer at > home with freebsd 2.2.5 on it. > I use fetchmail to download my mail from my ISP and mutt to mail and read > it. I have sendmail masquarading as my ISP so my from name comes out right > on my headers. > I still get mail kicked back from this group with error messages. > My hostname of my machine was left at myname.my.domain. > Do I need to change this and if so to what. > Do I just pick a name? > THanks Alot If you simply set up your local sendmail to relay through your ISP's SMTP server, instead of having your sendmail try to deliver the mail directly, you'll have no trouble at all. Your system will hand all its mail off to your ISP for delivery; your ISP's SMTP server will connect to the FreeBSD mail server, and all will be well. Judging from the "Received" headers in your mail, you're connecting directly to FreeBSD from your machine: Received: from csrlink.net (pm3bl1-23.csrlink.net [207.44.9.24]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id FAA17241 for ; Sat, 20 Dec 1997 05:50:14 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from rknebel@csrlink.net) Received: (from rknebel@localhost) by csrlink.net (8.8.7/8.8.5) id IAA07176; Sat, 20 Dec 1997 08:48:29 -0500 (EST) I suspect this last message of yours got through because, when you connected to your ISP, you happened to get an IP address that's in the ISP's DNS. If you connect to your ISP and happen to get an IP address that *isn't* in the DNS, and you attempt to deliver mail directly from your machine to a FreeBSD mailing list, your attempt will fail. (You can verify that scenario by checking with your ISP, to ascertain whether there are, in fact, dial-up IP addresses that don't happen to be in their DNS.) In any case, you can safely avoid all those worries by *not* delivering mail directly yourself; instead, have your sendmail program hand mail off to your ISP's mailer host. `mail.csrlink.net' appears to be the correct host for you. Assuming you're using sendmail's m4 macros to generate your sendmail.cf file, simply adding this line to the the appropriate m4 input file should do the trick: define(`SMART_HOST', `mail.csrlink.net') There are other advantages to this approach. A big one: Once you've handed mail off to your ISP's server, that server is responsible for delivering them. If the destination site is down for any reason, your ISP's machine will continue to attempt to deliver the mail even if you disconnect from your ISP. Trust me, you really want to shove the burden of mail delivery off to your ISP. That's what you pay them for. ----- Brian Clapper, bmc@WillsCreek.COM, http://WWW.WillsCreek.COM/ Thou shalt not omit adultery.