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Re: [LUG] email across a LAN



Neil Williams wrote:
>
> Do I need to configure Postfix to recognise the hosts on the LAN?

Usually yes, any machine receiving mail has to know it's own
name. Similarly if postfix is to relay mail for these clients
they want to go in "my_networks".

The LAN doesn't change anything. 

Postfix doesn't assume anything just because the origin is zero
hops away.
Postfix doesn't assume anything just because the domains are the
same, any hacker can change his domain...

> (separately from the hosts file used by other programs) and, if so, how?
> (I tried to understand Postfix using the Webmin interface, but it really
> didn't make much sense.)

Reads the comments in the config files in /etc/postfix, most of
the files are example.

main.cf is the important one for most things.

Postfix isn't complex enough to require Webmin for most
purposes, and when it gets complex webmin ain't gonna hack it.

> Sending mail to other users on the same machine is fine, but email between
> machines just seems to vanish, reappearing as a bounce quite a long time
> later, if at all. The most recent test just seems to have disappeared
> completely.

This is fine for automated e-mails from programs, but I'd use
IMAP on the mail server for reading mail, and forward all your
mail to that server from the others.

If your mail isn't queued (try "mailq" - yes Postfix has a
drop-in mailq) on one of the machines, then maybe it has been
shipped off to your ISPs mail server or some such....  Postfix
doesn't disappear mail unless you tell it to.

Indeed most of the commands to stop mail actually reject the
mail before accepting it, dropping e-mail is considered as bad
as if the postman did it.

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