For one thing I ran older versions of SIMS previously without using the router .smtp line and was able to have the secondary machine do backup service for the primary. The .smtp router line is a somewhat new feature that never was needed before. Can someone from Stalker tell us if it is really necessary to use that router entry? I can't remember if we had anything special in the router for our backup to perform backup service before or not but I have a feeling that we didn't need to do anything special. I think that the proper DNS MX entry was all that was needed previously.You also would need for the backup machine to be an open relay. It is relaying for anyone to the target domain, so it needs to either be a fully open relay (bad) or it needs to know a particular rule for delivery to the target domain. Before the '.smtp' line, the only way to do that was like this:
*@domain.com = *%domain.com@[1.2.3.4]
or
*@domain.com = *[EMAIL PROTECTED]
That of course meant that if you changed the DNS records or IP addresses, you had to change the SIMS router. The .smtp trick is a cleaner way of telling SIMS that it is to act as a standard relay for that domain.
I just looked at the router section of the SIMS manual and found the following:
"Finally, if no record is found, the messages is routed. If the domain name is not empty, the messages is routed to the SMTP module for delivery to the E-mail address specified by the resulting local and domain parts."
That seems to mean that if the message was not meant for a local account on the backup server then SIMS SMTP module will try to send the message on to the proper SMTP server, my primary. So it would seem to me that if the primary was down then the foreign SMTP server would then deliver the message to the second level MX machine per DNS settings, my backup. Then because it was not meant for local delivery, the backup would try to send it to the primary server until the time out value was reached per the retry value set in the SMTP module.
Can someone from Stalker (or Bill Cole) verify whether or not I am correct on this?
Stalker is certainly a better authority, but yes: if you allow for general open relay (i.e. uncheck 'Relay for Clients Only') you do not need the .smtp router line and everything will work correctly. However, that server will be a totally promiscuous open relay.
--
Bill Cole [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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