Test email -- there is a better way.

[Tom Needs a Hat Mitchell]

On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 08:19:16PM -0600, Mike Chambers wrote:
> 
> No emails going out did some working on the network, so making sure
> nothing is broken.


Test messages to large lists are silly...
Here are some better ways!


Sign up for a 'free' yahoo/netscape/whatever account and test by
sending to and from it.  Sure, use a local throw-away-dynamic
alias/account when applying for the free account in case spam happens.

Try sending mail to some impossible user address at a real box (owned
and managed by a friend) instead.  You will get one bounce. Read the
headers and you can discover if you got out.

You can also ask a friend to setup a courtesy account on another box
in another domain.  Perhaps with a .forward line that reflects mail
back.  Return the favor.

Having an external account can be VERY important if you have trouble
with your domain and need to communicate with the administrators
at say mydyndns.org.

"Mail -v someuser at someplace.outthere" is your friend when debugging
mail locally.  Ximian Evolution is harder to use when debugging mail.

Use and bookmark a sendmail sanity test site like this:

    http://www.abuse.net/relay.html

There are other things to test but 'open relay' is the first to check.


-- 
	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
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	mitch48-at-sbcglobal-dot-net