Re: [cobalt-users] New User says Hello!

[Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

List wrote:

> hi i have just received and setup (i think?) my raq4 - i am new to the
> list (about 5 minutes now) not shy and wanted to say hello, i am
> markbrown.com my name used to be mark brown before the advent of the
> internet. ;-)

Ah, the artist formerly known as "Mark Brown"; welcome <smile>...

> anyway i am in the process of migrating my domains from a win apache
> xitami environment to raq4.  i like this thing allot so far,

Just give it some time; soon enough you'll hate it like the rest of us
<smile, again>.

> and after
> a  full  day  yesterday  of determination (not to read the manual) and
> struggling  i got mail to work i think.  the web site and ftp part was
> a  no  brainer  and took all of 5 minutes (for my first time ever) not
> bad for a win user.

At least on the RaQ everything to do with the website is on one screen;
in IIS configuration you're jumping between screens continually; I still
make mistakes after years <frown>.

> example if i
> have a guy who is on excite or att ect. access. how then will he be
> able to send mail using his domain name? currently it seems that he
> can receive mail but can not send out using that same domain name

Quick answer is you don't have anything to do with it.  It's between
him, his knowledge of the email client he's using, and whether or not
he's got a brain-dead ISP.

Your RaQ will NOT relay for anyone unless you set it up to do so, and if
you make any mistakes, such as setting it to relay for an IP# that's
attached to a dialup ISP, you're asking to be a spammer.  The safest way
is to activate SMTP after POP (or maybe it's called POP before SMTP; I
really don't remember), but it may not help.

Many ISPs (including us for our dialup customers) don't allow any email
off their network unless it goes through their own server.  That's so
they can limit it and log it as part of an ongoing effort to fight
spam.  So for those (and they include any of the ISPs using "Megapop"
points of presence, and AOL, to name a few) your client would have to
use his ISPs mailserver to send email.

How would he end up with his domain in his return address using that
scheme?  He'd just set it in his email client.

But there are a few completely braindead ISPs, specifically the old GTE
(I'm not sure what it's called now, Verizon, maybe?) who won't accept
email unless the return address is from their domain or one they do the
webhosting for.  They claim the purpose is to block spam, but the fact
is it does NOTHING for spam, as it doesn't affect the logging necessary
to catch spammers at all.  In fact if they did allow it, they'd make
spammers easier to catch, since the logs would show the domain name of
the spammer instead of just "gte.net".  The real purpose is to tell
their customer to stop being your customer, that the way to fix it is to
let them host the website.

The only way those customers can do it is by switching ISPs.  If they
can't or won't switch, then you could lose them as a customer, but it's
still not EASY to do anything about it.

While you can set up a completely separate instance of sendmail to
listen on a different, unblocked, port, doing so is well beyond the
scope of this list, and probably well beyond the scope of most RaQ users
as well.  If you're interested, go find a sendmail list.  And expect the
gurus there to tell you not to do it as spammers will port-scan and
eventually find and use it and you'll be a spammer.

Sorry to be such a "downer"; I hope I've done a bit towards educating at
least someone <smile>.

>i guess i have to figure out what mail server he is using and place
> that in my relay text box?

That won't help at all.  Once he's got to his ISP's server, he doesn't
use your email server at all.  Thanks for warning us though; if you do
that we'll want to warn the rest of the Internet to stop allowing mail
from you, as it might turn you into a spammer in days.

> thanks in advance for tolerance. mark brown

Tolerance?  What tolerance <smile>?  No tolerance where spam is
involved.  Recently on the SPAM-L, someone posted an exchange of
correspondence that might have actually gotten a spammer jailed or even
executed (a minor governmental functionary in China).  When someone
pointed out what her fate could have been because of the email exchange
(which WAS designed to hurt her, by the way), his response was "Good".

Jeff
-- 
Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Linux and Cobalt/Sun/RaQ Consulting
nobaloney.net
P. O. Box 52672, Riverside, CA  92517
voice: (909) 778-9980  *  fax: (702) 548-9484