mail delivery on LAN

[Mark Weaver]

Shiraz Baig wrote:
> Sir,
> I am trying to configure email delivery on my intranet
> LAN. I am running Redhat 9.0. I have about 6
> computers, hostnames are host11 upto host16. 
> When I send a mail from userA at host11  to userB at host16.
> It does not get delivered. It keeps sitting in the
> /var/spool/mqueue. The question is what additional
> configuration is needed to deliver this mail?
> 
> Presently, I am not connected to Internet. So, I have
> not installed DNS. I am using /etc/hosts. All
> computers are pinging each other. I have installed
> sendmail on each. I checked up with 
>              # telnet localhost smtp
> They all respond and show me that the mail daemon is
> running. When I send mail to a user on the same host,
> it gets delivered. For example, an mail from
> userC at host11 addressed to userA at host11 is working
> fine. But when I try to send the mail to a user to the
> other host, it does not get delivered.
> 
> Quest1: How to configure the system, that the mail is
> delivered to users on the other hosts on my Intranet?

Hi Shiraz,

First off, you don't need to be running Sendmail on the client machines
in order for them to be able to get their mail messages. The only
machine that needs Sendmail installed and running is the mailserver
itself. The client machines pick up their mail via either pop3 or imap.
Personally I prefer imap since it keeps things nice and clean and gives
the admin the ability to back up all users' email messages should one of
the client machine's take a fit. Another reason for using imap protocol
on the server and client is because should one of those "windows"
clients take a fit and require to be reloaded the admin doesn't have to
fight with outlook or outlook express to back up and retreive the email
that was being stored on the client hard drive. With Imap everything
remains on the server. The only thing the client downloads upon
connection to the mailserver is the message headers, and then when the
message is opened on the client the message is read in much the same way
one reads a web page with a browser. The message content is downloaded
to the client, but the message remains on the server until the client
deletes the message header.

> Quest2: My domain (mydomain.com.pk) is registered. The
> DNS servers for my domain are the DNS servers of the
> ISP. When my Intranet is connected to Intranet, I plan
> to install a DNS on one of my machines and a mail
> server with an MX entry in the DNS tables. Two of my
> users are very fond of Windows. So, I shall tell them
> to use their outlook express, and in the SMTP server
> and POP server fields in outlook express, enter the IP
> address of my mail server. Is this planning OK for
> using email on the Internet, for all my users?
> 

actually, even though your network isn't yet connected to the internet 
you can and should be running DNS for your intranet machines so mail can 
be accessed and made available properly to the client machines.

-- 
Mark

"If you have found a very wise man, then you've found
a man that at one time was an idiot and lived long enough
to learn from his own stupidity."