[TAG] Settin up the mail subsystem

[Benjamin A. Okopnik]

On Fri, Aug 11, 2006 at 10:43:45AM -0400, Claude S. Sutton wrote:
> I start my Alltel wireless with "pon alltel".
> 
> "pppconfig" rewrites the "/etc/resolv.conf" file everytime "pon" is 
> activated.
> 
> Probably because the Alltel connection only works with a dynamic DNS 
> setting in "pppconifg".
> 
> I tried to outsmart it by setting the DNS setting to "none", as the 
> directions in "pppconfig" say that is the thing to do if you do not want 
> "resolv.conf" re-written on every startup.
> 
> That did not work.  What happens is that "pppconfig" puts some weird DNS 
> in the file that Alltel can't use.
> 
> So I need to find out how to tell "fetchmail" to see  "order hosts,bind".

Claude, you're chasing the wrong problem. 'fetchmail' is a client
application that has nothing to do with name resolution;
'/etc/resolv.conf' has nothing to do with client apps and provides only
name resolution server info.

As long as you can connect to any site by name in any way - e.g., if you
can enter 'http://cnn.com' into your browser and have it go there - then
your 'resolv.conf' is just fine, and messing with it can only bring you
grief.

What is 'fetchmail' doing or not doing? What does the '-v' option
report? I also note, from something you said in an earlier email, that
you're expecting 'fetchmail' to handle SMTP; that's not what it does.
'fetchmail' _retrieves_ mail, which means POP (or APOP|ETRN|ODMR|IMAP);
SMTP deals with sending mail.


* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://linuxgazette.net *