Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2007 17:28:23 -0500 From: Jeffrey Goldberg <jeffrey@goldmark.org> To: Ed Zwart <ed.zwart@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: getting mail to work Message-ID: <56A5B5E4-5644-4C50-9346-5EC9A372C3DB@goldmark.org> In-Reply-To: <6660f1280703110845w52b8babapf2814da0ac6424ae@mail.gmail.com> References: <6660f1280703110845w52b8babapf2814da0ac6424ae@mail.gmail.com>
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[mailed and posted] On Mar 11, 2007, at 10:45 AM, Ed Zwart wrote: > I own my_domain.com. I've paid a hoster for the last couple years, > but that's ending in a week or so. Meanwhile, I've used dyndns to > point foo.homedns.org to my IP. I am going to add my voice to those suggesting that you use your ISP's mail server for outgoing mail. There are a number of reasons. First of all, if you are on a dynamic IP, it is very likely that your ISP blocks outgoing STMP traffic that doesn't go via their own mail server. That is, they won't allow "direct to MX" mailing from dynamic addresses. Another reason is that it just isn't a good idea to run your own direct to MX mail system, unless you have some real expertise in how mail transport works. Professionally, I set up mail servers for small and medium sized businesses, and in more and more cases, I actually suggest that they use outside mail servers for their out going mail. (Generally, I think that ISPs tend to do really poor jobs with email and that it is best to avoid being locked into your ISP for much, so I recommend services like fastmail.fm.) Let me also add, that while I do set up and manage mail servers for others, I don't do direct to MX from home myself. (Well, I do for a mailing list server I run, but not for my normal everyday mailing.) So even with the expertise needed, I don't really recommend running your own MX (incoming) or own Direct to MX (outgoing) servers unless you have a specific need to fill. Anyway With postfix you just need to specify relayhost=YOUR-ISPS-OUTGOING-SMTP-SERVER-HERE in /usr/local/etc/postfix/main.cf and then run # postfix reload Then just send a test, eg $ mail -s test your@external-email-addres < /dev/null to see what happens. If your ISP wants authentication for handling your outgoing mail, look at http://macosx.com/tech-support/smtp-relay-host-authentication/938.html which describes how to configure postfix for that on Mac OS X. For FreeBSD just replace /private/etc/postfix/ in all of the paths mentioned with /usr/local/etc/postfix/ -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/
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