Dean,
> Surely what you are saying requires using fetchmail ?
No. ETRN was defined by RFC1985 way back in August 1996. It is an
extension of the SMTP protocol. You can read about it at:
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1985.txt
Essentially what happens is this. In the DNS records for your domain
you have two MX records defined with lower precedence given to your
e-smith server (written in DNS zone file notation):
@ IN MX 10 mail.mydomain.xxx
@ IN MX 20 mail.myisp.net
Anyone trying to send mail to you will have their mail server first try
to contact 'mail.mydomain.xxx' to deliver your mail via SMTP. Assuming
your server is online, the mail will be delivered directly to your server.
If you server is offline, the sending mail server will make a couple of
attempts to connect to your server. After failing, it will fallback to the
next listed MX entry, which in this case is 'mail.myisp.net'. The mail
will be delivered there and (assuming your ISP has it correctly
configured) will be queued up for you.
When your server comes back online, it initiates a SMTP connection to the
ISP's mail server and issues the SMTP command 'ETRN'. This causes the ISP's
mail server to initiate a SMTP connection to your (now online) mail server
and deliver directly all the mail that it had queued up to go to you.
While it is online, your mail server will still be receiving email directly.
When it drops offline, the mail will again get queued at your ISP.
> I dont want to have to use fetchmail for my mail. How would I go about
> getting my isp to support ETRN they have a qmail server , any ideas on how
> to configure, install ETRN.
1. The appropriate DNS MX records need to be set up.
2. The ISP has to be able to queue your mail - not sure how that is
configured.
3. The ISP's mail server has to be able to accept the ETRN command
and send the queued messages to you.
Regards,
Dan
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