From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Aug 4 21:37:25 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id VAA06591 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 21:37:25 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA06529 for ; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 21:37:21 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id XAA18216; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 23:35:53 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan) Message-ID: <19980804233552.A17894@emsphone.com> Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 23:35:52 -0500 From: Dan Nelson To: jerry@dunham.org, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Need help for script to prod ISP's sendmail References: <199808050345.WAA07465@freeside.fc.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.94.2i In-Reply-To: <199808050345.WAA07465@freeside.fc.net>; from "Jerry Dunham" on Tue Aug 4 22:45:45 GMT 1998 X-OS: FreeBSD 2.2.7-STABLE Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In the last episode (Aug 04), Jerry Dunham said: > > I connect to my ISP via PPP over an ordinary modem. With the > exception of mail from mailing lists, my mail comes to my home > machine (rider) at dunham.org. Since my ISP as a matter of policy > will not call rider, my mail sticks in their sendmail queue until the > next time I establish > [ ETRN two hosts ] > > This could be run once every three hours, eliminating the dreaded > sendmail complaint. What I don't know how to do is the "wait for my > ISP to respond" part. This would seem to be rather like the chat > script PPP uses to log me in, but I don't understand how that works. > > Any useful suggestions will be appreciated. Get the "fetchmail" port, and stick this in /etc/crontab: 0 */3 * * * nobody fetchmail -p ETRN -S rider.dunham.org,dunham.org myisp.net Assuming you have PPP set up to auto-dial and to idle-timeout, your system should dial out every 3 hours, pull any spooled mail, then disconnect. You might want to have another crontab entry that fires 3 minutes before your fetchmail one, that does a "pppctl /var/run/ppp.ctl open". That way PPP has 3 minutes to make the connection to your ISP before fetchmail tries opening the connection. Or you could ask your ISP if they have a dedicated "mail exchanger" SMTP host, with timeout settings cranked up specifically for intermittently-connected hosts like dialups. -Dan Nelson dnelson@emsphone.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message