[help] can Linux route mail?

[mdulcey at pryder.pn.com (Mark J. Dulcey)]

On Wed, 13 Sep 1995, Robert Luoma wrote:

> I need to set a linux machine to route mail to
> a machine which cannot do so; i.e. I need to
> make the linux machine a "smart host" (I think)
> for one that is dumb; both are on the internet,
> but I need to make sure that the dumb one never
> gets mail directly (I assume that DNS MX records
> can handle this).

No problem here.  The proper DNS setup (including an MX record) will 
indeed handle it.

> So, to rephrase things, the dumb machine will
> send all its mail the the smart linux machine,
> which will in turn send the packages out over
> the internet; now come the tricky part.
> The internet will send mail to some "mail" address,
> and this will be somehow send to the smart linux host,
> which will in turn feed dumb machine.  On top of
> all this, the smart linux machine should be able
> to handle its own email independently.

The usual suggestions for handling this are:

1.  Have the "dumb" machine retrieve its mail using POP.  To do that, you 
have to install a POP server on the "smart" system, and a client on the 
"dumb" one.

2.  Have the dumb machine share the mail directory on the smart 
system using NFS.

You don't ever actually send mail using SMTP to the "dumb" system in 
either of these setups.  You can still sent mail with SMTP from the dumb 
system without any problem; you might want to configure sendmail on the 
smart system to strip away the machine name, so all mail appears to come 
from "domain.org" or whatever.