[newbie] Re: Simple (???) email question

2002-12-13 Thread cervixcouch
Stephen Kuhn writes: 

On Fri, 2002-12-13 at 09:06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

I have two linux boxes connected to an Ethernet hub.  In the /etc/hosts file 
on each computer I have the IP address, fully qualified name (for the local 
domain) and alias of the other machine.  I can ping and FTP the other box 
without a problem.  

But if I try to email the other box, the email sits in the queue and 
eventually I get an error message saying the domain couldn't be found and 
the message is undeliverable.  

I thought that by having an entry in /etc/hosts the mail program would query 
the other computer to see if there was an account on that host to receive 
the email.  

Do I really need to set up one of the computers as the server on such a 
simple network? 

You have to make sure that POP3 is running as a service. 



pop3??? 

my understanding of pop3 was that the emails were held on a remote server 
until you retrieved them. 

I wanted to send an email directly from box A to box B.  I didn't want 
client B to have to retrieve email being held on server A. 


As well, you're
going to have to double check your POSTFIX configurations as well. 



I actually left the postfix configurations at the default, since the 
comments within the config file said it would get my hostname and domain 
through system variables ($HOSTNAME and $HOSTDOMAIN or something like that) 

I guess I could fiddle with the postfix settings too...

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Re: [newbie] Re: Simple (???) email question

2002-12-13 Thread John McQuillen
On Sat, 2002-12-14 at 01:17, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Stephen Kuhn writes: 
 
  On Fri, 2002-12-13 at 09:06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  I have two linux boxes connected to an Ethernet hub.  In the /etc/hosts file 
  on each computer I have the IP address, fully qualified name (for the local 
  domain) and alias of the other machine.  I can ping and FTP the other box 
  without a problem.  
  
  But if I try to email the other box, the email sits in the queue and 
  eventually I get an error message saying the domain couldn't be found and 
  the message is undeliverable.  
  
  I thought that by having an entry in /etc/hosts the mail program would query 
  the other computer to see if there was an account on that host to receive 
  the email.  
  
  Do I really need to set up one of the computers as the server on such a 
  simple network? 
  
  You have to make sure that POP3 is running as a service. 

 pop3??? 
 
 my understanding of pop3 was that the emails were held on a remote server 
 until you retrieved them. 
 
 I wanted to send an email directly from box A to box B.  I didn't want 
 client B to have to retrieve email being held on server A. 

 As well, you're
  going to have to double check your POSTFIX configurations as well. 
  
  
 
 I actually left the postfix configurations at the default, since the 
 comments within the config file said it would get my hostname and domain 
 through system variables ($HOSTNAME and $HOSTDOMAIN or something like that) 
 
 I guess I could fiddle with the postfix settings too...

You don't need pop3, this will work between the postfix daemons of the
two boxes... however, for reasons I haven't yet bothered to investigate,
postfix now maintains its own hosts file and resolv.conf. You need to
make sure that your /etc/hosts and /etc/resolv.conf are the same as
/var/spool/postfix/etc/hosts and /var/spool/postfix/etc/resolv.conf.

That should fix it. You should really only have to mail user@alias
(/etc/hosts) to successfully send mail between the boxes. But without a
valid resolv.conf, you won't be able to send mail outside either.

'postfix check' will let you know if these files are out of sync.

Hope that helps,

Regards,

John...


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