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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.easystreet.com!not-for-mail From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@portsoft.com> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Sendmail SMARTHOST Date: 16 Jun 1997 20:39:57 GMT Organization: Portland Software Lines: 48 Message-ID: <01bc7a95$60ff6f80$6601a8c0@teds.portsoft.com> References: <339FFDED.5E1F@slt.lk> NNTP-Posting-Host: mail.portsoft.com X-Newsreader: Microsoft Internet News 4.70.1155 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:42908 Samath Wijesundera <samath@slt.lk> wrote in article <339FFDED.5E1F@slt.lk>... > I was trying to configure my FreeBSD Box so that it send out mail > through an another box (SunOS) to send out mail. > > I used the smarthost feature in sendmail.cf as follows > > # "Smart" relay host (may be null) > DSsmtp:info.slt.lk. > > Things work fine but if the info.slt.lk smtp stops for some reason my > FreeBSD does not try to send direct, and it wait till the info.slt.lk is > up. > This is working as it's supposed to > --------- ---------------- > | FreeBSD | -> |info(mail relay) | --> Mail to Internet > --------- ----------------- > smart host smtp > > Is there a way if mail relay stops to bypass and deliver straight to the > Internet. > Yes - you run sendmail with a command line option telling it to process the queue and use a DIFFERENT sendmail.cf file that allows it to send directly. The whole idea of a smart host is that the machine your on is either not continuously connected to the Internet, (behind a firewall, ppp connection, or whatever) or is too dumb to figure out how to lookup an IP number. FreeBSD doesen't fit in the second catagory, so it's kind of a misuse of the smart host feature if your continuously connected to the Internet to redirect all your outbound SMTP mail to someone else's mail server. Why should their machine do all the work sending YOUR mail, are you too lazy to do it yourself? ;-) If your in a situation where sometimes your connected, and sometimes not, such as a PPP connection, then you don't ever want your machine to attempt to deliver mail, because you won't know when it's connected or not. In this case, you forward all outbound mail to a smart host. When your not dialed up via PPP, mail to the smart host spools, then when you connect to the network you run sendmail -q or some such out of your ppp scripts after your connected to flush out all the spooled mail.