[cobalt-developers] SMTP Relaying on Cobalt

[Metin Ozsavran <metin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Everybody,

Its been a week since I rented a Cobalt RaQ-3. So far its
proving to be an extremely risky move. Below is a copy of
the message I send to support people at the ISP where
I rented the Cobalt from.

There is something called Webmin, which runs circles around
Cobalt's pretty web GUI. If there is any engineering pride
at Cobalt, they have to either provide updated software,
or provide how-to manuals for that.

1. Kernel Updates. Current version gives root access to
ordinary users. See sendmail.org.
2. PHP4 and mod_perl, Python, etc. Even the Perl version
is old.
3. Sendmail updates. Mail is the most importand application.

Only 1 (one) half-decent engineer is enough to keep this
software up to date. Now that Cobalt is sold to Sun, they
should be able to hire that engineer, and fire the clowns.

Nobody can expect people will buy RaQ-4s, just to get
updates free software. They'll just go install OpenBSD on
an old PC.

And yup, the only reason I rented that cobalt is the
hard disk, memory, and bandwidth capacities. Nothing
about superior Cobalt Engineering, unfortunately.

What is the value added Cobalt claims to provide here?
A PC in a 1U box? Many companies sell 1U PC cases.
Anybody can build that at home. Oh, maybe its the face
plate?? Or the ability to enter IP numbers from the
cool LCD panel?  Well that is really no use to me.
However, I will talk forever having paid the first
month's rent.

Metin.

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Dear Sir/Madam,

While trying to setup e-mail accounts on my raq3 (#45132),
I had to face these age old questions:

1. HOW DO YOU SOLVE THE SMTP RELAYING?
--------------------------------------
Users get a "550 - Relaying Denied" error while trying to send
messages. Although: we dutifully entered domain names for "all"
ISPs in our country into the E-mail service setup. This is because
ISPs have many POPs which use different IP blocks. Now, it is mind
boggling that nobody loaded sendmail 8.10+ which uses Cyrus-SASL
for simple password based SMTP authentication. This POP-before-SMTP
scheme is utterly passe and pathetic; however, we seem to not have
that either. Cobalt refers but not supports it??? What is that???
What are we supposed to do to let our users simply send e-mail???
I want my latest stable sendmail 8.11.3 with Cyrus-SASL SMTH AUTH
please. I am not gonna ask customers to please POP-before-SMTP!!

2. HOW DO YOU SOLVE VIRTUAL E-MAIL USERS?
-----------------------------------------
How do I create info@xxxxxx and info@xxxxxx? The cobalt GUI
says "user info already exists" Now do I actually go and edit/create
virtusers.db for sendmail? I don't wanna break the stupid GUI you
know. What is the exact procedure to create working users whose
e-mail names coincide please??

These problems are solved years before elsewhere. Its so funny they
exists behind the jazzy face of a Cobalt RaQ. I would be happy to
direct my flames to head of engineering at Cobalt, if you have the
e-mail. Or I might just use Usenet, or ISP hosting lists.

Anyway, looking forward to hear from you ASAP please.

Kind Regards,

Metin Ozsavran,
TurkNet.