[TAG] Settin up the mail subsystem

[Claude S. Sutton]

Ben:

Our emails crossed, so I think your last one put me on the right track.

I do have some questions about SMTP, but certainly not until I get 
fetchmail working as it should and I think your last instruction will 
take care of it.

CSSJR


Benjamin A. Okopnik wrote:
> 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 *
>