[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Robert Schader) writes:
| It seems to me that the rcpthosts functionality is reversed from what it
| should be. I thought that maybe the functionality I wanted was to be found
| in the locals file, but that seems to control what machines qmail will
| accept mail for and hold locally. Following what appears to be the noted
| practice of duplicating this in the rcpthosts file, I assumed this would
| allow any of the machines in rcpthosts to relay through qmail anywhere they
| wanted. But it seems the behavior of this file is to only allow me to
| send mail to ONLY the hosts in rcpthosts, so I am stuck in my own little
| domain.
Welcome to the FAQ.
The name "rcpthosts" only makes sense if you think of things in terms
of low level (RFC821) protocol traffic, instead of high level MTA
configuration. It means, ``accept message only if these domain names
appear in the smtp "rcpt to" command, whatever that is.''
In other words, it's real function is to define what we mean by ``don't
let smtp input simultaneously be smtp output.''
| You would think that the rcpthosts file could serve a better purpose by
| allowing the machines listed in it to send anywhere,
Some other file has that job.
| instead of any machine
| out on the internet to only send files to the machines in rcpthosts, which
| in the case of the same information being in locals, serves no purpose
| that I can see.
The reason for the two files is that they will be different if you
decide to relay mail for some non-local third party, or if you have
some virtual domains. Sometimes people want to do that.
But you have a point. 99% of the time rcpthosts is purely redundant,
and qmail should just use the contents of locals and virtualdomains
instead. Unfortunately, a nonexistent rcpthosts file turns on
pro-spam-mode, instead of sensible-default-mode.
