Re: More mail questions

[Gernot Hassenpflug]

Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> writes:

> Hadron Quark <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I am using smtpmail package through a gmail smtp server to send email.
>>
>> But if I use gnus to send a mail to "root@localhost" why isnt procmail
>> picking it up and diverting it to my local root mmaildir? Procmail does
>> its job just fine when I use the Linux commandline "mail" command.
>>
>> I'm unsure where postfix and smptmail.el fit together.
>>
>> Any pointers appreciated.
>>
>> -- 
>
> When using smtpmail, emacs connects directly to the remote smtp server
> and totally bypasses your local smtp server (postfix). Your procmail
> is probably the default delivery agent for your local smtp server
> (this is the standard config these days). 

/../

> I recently started using smtpmail because my ISP has placed all their
> dynamic IP addresses into various blacklists and messages I sent via
> my local smtp server (which was setup as a smarthost that relayed all
> non-local mail to my ISP smtp server, would often get rejected by
> destination hosts that were using a very strict mail policy which
> refuses to accept mail from blacklisted IPs. Many ISPs are doing this
> these days to protect themselves from being blacklisted by a customer
> who runs a local smtp server which is either misconfigured and gets
> abused by a spammer or to send spam themselves. 
>
> I've been running this configuration for a couple of weeks now and it
> works quite well. The only downside is that sometimes there can be a
> slight delay between sending the mail and getting emacs responding
> again - probably due to high loads on the remote smtp server. I have
> also configured fetchmail to retrieve my mail from remote imap/pop
> mailboxes and hand it directly to procmail. This means I no longer
> need to run a mail server at all - which is great as I'm way past
> finding maintaining a mail server "fun" and the less I have to
> maintain the better. I was running exim as my local mail server as it
> is easy to setup. Postfix is probably overkill for a local machine,
> unless you have many users and lots of mail traffic. From memory, I
> also seem to remember it is a bit difficult to run postfix and NOT
> have it run as a daemon listening on prot 25. Many people don't
> realise that you only need an smtp server listening on a port if you
> are accepting mail from a remote host. Likewise, many people forget
> that the mail server (postfix, sendmail, exim etc) don't actually
> deliver mail, but instead use a delivery program, such as procmail. 


Greatly helpful explanations Tim. That's what I do too on the Tx side,
although on Rx side I use gnus's POP mail facility and rely on my
ISP's fitlering (and manual intervention for training via webmail
interface).

-- 
Gernot Hassenpflug (gernot@rish.kyoto-u.ac.jp)      Tel: +81 774 38-3866
JSPS Fellow (Rm.403, RISH, Kyoto Uni.)              Fax: +81 774 31-8463
www.rish.kyoto-u.ac.jp/radar-group/members/gernot   Mob: +81 90 39493924