General SMTP/MTA Question

[Gerry Doris]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Evan Klitzke" <eklitzke.lists at gmail.com>
To: <redhat-list at redhat.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2007 8:31 PM
Subject: General SMTP/MTA Question


>I am thinking about running an MTA on my home server. At home I am
> connected to the Internet through a regular DSL account, so my IP
> address is not static, and every few days when I get a new DHCP lease
> and the DNS record for my domain has to be updated, which takes about
> half an hour. In the meantime, the DNS record for my domain will point
> to the old IP address. This isn't really a problem with my HTTP server,
> because it is mostly for personal use, so when it isn't reachable it
> isn't a big problem. However, I would be concerned about losing email if
> an MTA tried to pass mail to me and found that they couldn't reach my IP
> address, or that port 25 was blocked on that address.

You can set this up to work without a problem.  I believe others have 
already told you how.  However, you may find that your ISP will not allow 
you to run server on their network.  My ISP, Rogers Cable, specifically 
states that this is not allowed in their End User Agreement and actively 
scans for servers.  If they find one then your receive notice that it must 
be removed immediately or service will be terminated.  I believe this 
resulted from all the mis-configured servers causing network issues.  Also, 
the dynamic ip blocks of most ISP's are blacklisted.  You will likely find 
that your mail will be rejected by many mail servers.  You can thank the 
spammers for this.

That said, you can still setup your email server for all your local accounts 
but forward all your email to your ISP's server to send out to the world. 
Use fetchmail to retrieve all incoming mail from your ISP.  This gives you 
full flexibility to configure your server as your wish but avoids the 
hassels.