Sorry for the delay in summarizing, I was hoping to test out the
suggestions before summarizing but I have been too busy. (Same
old story ...)
My original message was
>
> We are soon going to be changing our domainname. I have been told
> that it is not possible to have multiple mail hosts in a single
> domain. Is this true? The problem is as follows:
>
> 1) Some users always use particular machines and want mail delivered to
> these machines.
>
> 2) The machines in the domain are administered by different people: thus a
> message to root for one group of machines should go to a different person
> than mail to root on a different group of machines. (Is this the same
> problem as 1) or different?
>
> 3) All mail should appear to the outside world to come from the same source.
>
The answers seem to be as follows:
1) It is not possible to have more than one mail host in a single
domain if users are to be able to see their mail file from any of
the machines in the dimain. If the users are retricted in the
machines from which they can read their mail then it is possible
to have more than one mail domain.
2) A .forward file in the root area or local a local alias should
solve this problem. Mail to root@domainname would go to the
overall network administrator.
3) This is no problem. A standard feature of most mailers.
Thanks to:
blymn@AU.com.awadi.baobab (Brett Lymn - System Admin)
"Harold A. Miller" <Hal.Miller@au.csiro.dit.mel>
Piete.Brooks@uk.ac.cambridge.computer-lab
Eckhard.Rueggeberg@de.dlr.go.ts
kevin@uucp.ukw (Kevin Sheehan {Consulting Poster Child})
Jim Mattson <mattson@EDU.UCSD.cs>
stern@COM.Sun.East.sunne (Hal Stern - NE Area Systems Engineer)
paulo@br.unicamp.dcc (Paulo L. de Geus)
Mr T Crummey (DIJ) <tom@uk.ac.bangor.sees>
stanonik@mil.navy.nprdc (Ron Stanonik)
cagroth@gov.llnl.snll-arpagw (groth curtis a)
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Full replies below:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>From blymn@AU.com.awadi.baobab Fri Jun 12 02:41:38 1992
From: blymn@AU.com.awadi.baobab (Brett Lymn - System Admin)
Subject: Re: Multiple Mail Hosts in Single Domain
To: donald
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4dev PL52]
According to Donald Ballance:
>
>We are soon going to be changing our domainname. I have been told
>that it is not possible to have multiple mail hosts in a single
>domain. Is this true? The problem is as follows:
>
Not True!!! We have 4 widely separated sites that are connected by 64K
links, each site has it's own mail server. Each site is a different
subnet but the all belong to the same domain.
>1) Some users always use particular machines and want mail delivered to
>these machines.
>
We use the /etc/aliases file to send the mail to the correct machine.
If you have the following in the aliases file (I assume you are using
NIS?)
fbar : fbar@home_machine.your.domain.name
then fbar's mail will be directed to the nominated machine. The only
problem is that they can ONLY receive mail at this machine because
sendmail believes the aliases more than it believes the users
>2) The machines in the domain are administered by different people: thus a
>message to root for one group of machines should go to a different person
>than mail to root on a different group of machines. (Is this the same
>problem as 1) or different?
>
Different problem, you can get around this one by putting a .forward
in / to redirect root's mail to the appropriate person for each
machine.
>3) All mail should appear to the outside world to come from the same source.
>
I have grappled with this and lost, it can be done because others with
suns have done it but we cannot work out what is different between the
setups. I would like a solution to this one if you get it.
-- Brett Lymn Computer Systems Administrator AWA Defence Industries---------------------------------------------------------------------- >From hal@au.csiro.dit.mel Fri Jun 12 04:38:51 1992 From: "Harold A. Miller" <Hal.Miller@au.csiro.dit.mel> Subject: Re: Multiple Mail Hosts in Single Domain To: donald X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Donald,
This isn't a very difficult situation. I use Neil Rickert's (et al) version of IDA sendmail to do just this. It's freely available and well supported. You would set up a site as though it were a single mail hub, then within set up "exceptions". I don't think you'll have any trouble with it.
I'll be happy to assist if you like. I've done it remotely before!
The compressed tar file of source is available in many places, including from me if you wish. About 1 1/2 megs prior to expanding it, but once you're done, you don't need to keep the sources on line. Initial configuration takes a bit, but later changes are real easy, and you won't ever be hacking at .cf files.
Let me know if you'd like assistance. -- |Hal Miller, DIT, CSIRO, | Computing Facilities Management Project | |723 Swanston St. Carlton| (TEL) +61 3 282 2628 (FAX) +61 3 282 2600 | |VIC 3053, Australia | Internet:hal@mel.dit.csiro.au |
---------------------------------------------------------------------- >From Piete.Brooks@uk.ac.cambridge.computer-lab Fri Jun 12 07:22:12 1992 To: Donald Ballance <donald> Cc: Piete.Brooks@uk.ac.cambridge.computer-lab Subject: Re: Multiple Mail Hosts in Single Domain From: Postmaster <Piete.Brooks@uk.ac.cambridge.computer-lab>
> We are soon going to be changing our domainname. I have been told > that it is not possible to have multiple mail hosts in a single > domain. Is this true? The problem is as follows: * No.
* What mailer are you using ?
> 1) Some users always use particular machines and want mail delivered to > these machines. * Sure -- aliases should cope with that.
> 2) The machines in the domain are administered by different people: thus a > message to root for one group of machines should go to a different person > than mail to root on a different group of machines. (Is this the same > problem as 1) or different? * Then they cannot share aliases files -- still OK.
> 3) All mail should appear to the outside world to come from the same source. * Ahh -- this causes problems with (2). * If mail is sent from "root", where does the reply go to ? * You could HACK it by aliasing (in outgoing mail) root to "root1" and "root2".
---------------------------------------------------------------------- >From eckhard@de.dlr.go.ts.ikarus Fri Jun 12 08:00:43 1992 From: Eckhard.Rueggeberg@de.dlr.go.ts To: donald Subject: Re: Multiple Mail Hosts in Single Domain
3) Is the easiest : You can enter any string you want in the sendmail.cf file to be used as a from-adress. Standard is Dq$g$?x ($x)$. I use Dq$x@$m, and you could use $f@junk.nowhere.what
1) is easy, too : On the mail exchanger machine you declare to the outside world via DNS, you could use a (NIS?) alias map with entries like user:user@hisownmachine
2) is a bit tricky. If you don't use NIS, you can use different entries in the /etc/aliases file like root:user@machineX. If you use NIS, I have no idea.
/| / | Eckhard R"uggeberg / | DLR G"ottingen _____/___|_____ Abt. SM-TS / / / / Bunsenstr. 10 / / / / /____/____/____/ 3400 G"ottingen / Germany | / | / Tel. : 0551/709-2429 | / Fax : 0551/709-2446 |/ E-Mail : Eckhard.Rueggeberg@ts.go.dlr.de
Niulize nitakujibu
---------------------------------------------------------------------- >From kevin%uucp.ukw@net.eu.Germany Fri Jun 12 11:19:06 1992 From: kevin@uucp.ukw (Kevin Sheehan {Consulting Poster Child}) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.3 5/22/91) To: Donald Ballance <donald> Subject: Re: Multiple Mail Hosts in Single Domain Sender: kevin <kevin%uucp.ukw@net.eu.Germany>
[ Regarding "Multiple Mail Hosts in Single Domain", donald@control.eng.glasgow.ac.uk writes on Jun 11: ]
> We are soon going to be changing our domainname. I have been told > that it is not possible to have multiple mail hosts in a single > domain. Is this true? The problem is as follows: > > 1) Some users always use particular machines and want mail delivered to > these machines. > > 2) The machines in the domain are administered by different people: thus a > message to root for one group of machines should go to a different person > than mail to root on a different group of machines. (Is this the same > problem as 1) or different? > > 3) All mail should appear to the outside world to come from the same source.
This is doable - Sun does it in fact. Mail from various sub-domains gets rewritten as coming from the subdomain (like foo@bar.Eng.Sun.COM becomes foo@Eng.Sun.COM on the way out) just as you want. It does involve some work in sendmail.cf, but it does work.
l & h, kev
---------------------------------------------------------------------- >From mattson@EDU.UCSD.cs Fri Jun 12 18:01:48 1992 To: Donald Ballance <donald> Subject: Re: Multiple Mail Hosts in Single Domain From: Jim Mattson <mattson@EDU.UCSD.cs>
The only problem I can think of is: where does mail from the outside world go when sent to root@source (where source is the apparent source of all of your outbound mail)? The rest is easy. Here, for example, we have all faculty/staff mail directed to odin, and all student mail directed to beowulf, but from the outside, it looks like all mail comes from cs. You just have to understand sendmail.cf files or find someone who does.
--jim
---------------------------------------------------------------------- >From stern@COM.Sun.East.sunne Fri Jun 12 18:47:17 1992 From: stern@COM.Sun.East.sunne (Hal Stern - NE Area Systems Engineer) To: donald Subject: Re: Multiple Mail Hosts in Single Domain
you can have multiple mail hosts, just not more than one machine called "mailhost". if you run sendmail in remote mode (the default if you NFS mount your mail spool, and use sun's sendmail.cf on the clients), then mail gets sent right away to "mailhost".
(1) on mailhost, set up a forwarding alias for those users who want local delivery: fred: fred@fredhost (2) you have two choices: - put the groups into different NIS domains, and then alias "root" differently in each - on each machine, create a local root alias that forwards the mail as appropriate for that machine. (3) this is a rewriting rule on the machine that is your connection to the outside world. make sure it has some rewriting rules to "hide" local names, and just use user@gatewayname
--hal
---------------------------------------------------------------------- >From daemon Fri Jun 12 22:31:59 1992 From: paulo@br.unicamp.dcc (Paulo L. de Geus) To: Donald Ballance <donald> Subject: RE: Multiple Mail Hosts in Single Domain
Donald Ballance writes: > We are soon going to be changing our domainname. I have been told > that it is not possible to have multiple mail hosts in a single > domain. Is this true? The problem is as follows:
I don't know for sure, but I think only one mail host is allowed.
> > 1) Some users always use particular machines and want mail delivered to > these machines.
Aha! That's a different problem. You want multiple mailbox servers, not multiple mailhosts, and that's possible, though not so easy. With the concept of mailbox servers, a client machine mounts /var/spool/mail from the mailbox server, so it's easy to set a group of machines to mount /var/spool/mail from a particular mailbox server and all machines will present the same mailbox to the user, no matter where he's reading mail from (from any machine of that group). You can also have a single mailbox server for all machines, which would allow the user full transparency when using any machine in the domain.
> > 2) The machines in the domain are administered by different people: thus a > message to root for one group of machines should go to a different person > than mail to root on a different group of machines. (Is this the same > problem as 1) or different? >
> 3) All mail should appear to the outside world to come from the same source.
That's set in the definitions in the beginning of the sendmail.cf file on the mailhost. Sometimes you also need to change sendmail.cf ont he mail clients.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- >From tom@uk.ac.bangor.sees Fri Jun 12 16:21:24 1992 From: Mr T Crummey (DIJ) <tom@uk.ac.bangor.sees> Subject: Re: Multiple Mail Hosts in Single Domain To: donald X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Hello Donald, > > We are soon going to be changing our domainname. I have been told > that it is not possible to have multiple mail hosts in a single > domain. Is this true? The problem is as follows: No, this isn't true. > > 1) Some users always use particular machines and want mail delivered to > these machines. > > 2) The machines in the domain are administered by different people: thus a > message to root for one group of machines should go to a different person > than mail to root on a different group of machines. (Is this the same > problem as 1) or different? > > 3) All mail should appear to the outside world to come from the same source. > It appears what you need is to designate a central mail hub. (put mailhost in its /etc/hosts). Configure the sendmail on this machine to do host hiding (as in UK sendmail) (I assume you still want to do grey book mail as well as SMTP?) This gives you the all mail appearing to come from the same source part.
On the client machines, just use the standard sun supplied sendmail.cf.client. You must also run sendmail and each machine needs its own /var/spool/mail directory. (this is for the separate roots etc part)
That takes care of outgoing mail.
Incoming is more tricky. You will need to set up an aliases file such that the entries for each user point to the appropriate machine, i.e. fred fred@sun2.
The trickiest bit is setting up your sendmail.cf on this machine to do what you want.
If you are still using grey book mail (i.e. with NRS) start with one of the standard sendmail.cf buildig packages that come either with the niftp package of Piete Brooks (UK Sendmail) or with the SUN coloured book software. These packages may allow you to specify exactly what you want, or more likely you will have to do some sendmail.cf fine tuning, which isn't easy. Drop me a line directly if you want my sendmail.cf file and more advice. -- Tom.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tom Crummey, | /\ School of Electronic Engineering Science, | / \ University of Wales, Bangor, | ^ / \/\ Dean Street, Bangor, TEL: +44 (0)248 382806 | / \/ \ \ Gwynedd, LL57 1UT, U.K. FAX: +44 (0)248 361429 | / ========\=\ | B A N G O R EMAIL: tom@uk.ac.bangor.sees (JANET) | (Triple Peaks, UK) tom@sees.bangor.ac.uk (INTERNET) | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------- >From stanonik@mil.navy.nprdc Fri Jun 12 16:45:14 1992 From: stanonik@mil.navy.nprdc (Ron Stanonik) To: donald Subject: Re: Multiple Mail Hosts in Single Domain Reply-To: stanonik@mil.navy.nprdc
Our local machines forward all mail destined for outside to one master machine, which rewrites the sender address as user@nprdc.navy.mil and then delivers the mail. (Our local machines rewrite the sender as user@nprdc.navy.mil too, just in case they "leak" some mail outside). The rewriting is handled by sendmail.cf (suns and bsd vaxs).
We have an mx record for nprdc.navy.mil which directs incoming mail to the master machine. The master machine strips the @nprdc.navy.mil and uses aliases to forward the mail to the specific machine for the recipient.
On each machine is an alias for root, specifiying who should receive mail addressed to root.
Having one master machine does mean a single point of failure halts mail with the outside, but it also means only having to look in one place when mail problems occur.
We small enough that we don't have subdomains and one alias file encompasses everyone here.
Ron Stanonik stanonik@nprdc.navy.mil
---------------------------------------------------------------------- >From cagroth@gov.llnl.snll-arpagw Thu Jun 18 18:04:04 1992 From: cagroth@gov.llnl.snll-arpagw (groth curtis a) Subject: Re: Multiple Mail Hosts in Single Domain To: donald X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
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