On Thu, 22 Apr 1999, Harald Hanche-Olsen wrote:
> + [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
>
> | From: lines and the envelope sender address ,[EMAIL PROTECTED]' to
>
> (Please follow English quoting conventions, like `01019freenet' etc,
> when mailing to a English-speaking list. Those commas are very
> confusing.)
Sorry, I'll use the English conventions in future.
BTW, is there some netiquette about mailing lists or this list in
particular? For example, I'm not sure if I should mail replys to the list
only or to both the list and the author I reply to.
> | setting the environment variables as follows:
> |
> | MAILUSER=hans_wilmer
> | MAILSUSER=hans_wilmer
> | MAILSHOST=01019freenet.de
> | QMAILINJECT=f
> |
> | 1.) Any local user can pretend to be ,[EMAIL PROTECTED]' by
> | setting these variables, and ,[EMAIL PROTECTED]' can pretend to be
> | ,[EMAIL PROTECTED]' ...
> |
> | 2.) All local users actually do pretend to be @01019freenet.de --- and that
> | especially applies to some daemons and some lokal programs that have
> | their own lokal accounts, when these daemons (cron, for example) or
> | programs are sending mail.
> |
> |
> | The first problem is currently just very ugly, since I'm the only
> | (human) user on my maschine. But is it a good idea to have those
> | variables and to allow anyone pretending to be someone else?
>
> Well, such is life in the SMTP world: Anyone *can* pretend to be
> anyone else.
Ugh, that's hard to swallow! I'm used to the opposite convention --- i. e.
that all users must not pretend to be anyone else --- from using the
Mausnetz. The Mausnetz is a German mailbox network, and having to pretend to
be yourselfe as a must seems to fit very well into german mind :_)
> Moreover, this is quite legitimate sometimes: I
> occasionally pretend to be [EMAIL PROTECTED], for example. Or
> people might wish to pretend to be themselves, but at a different
> location, perhaps with a differently named mailbox.
I see, and it makes sense in such legitimate cases. Now I understand why the
ISP requests no authentification from me for sending mails --- but that
still comes with the disadvantage that anybody pretending to be me can send
mails via my account at the ISP. Abuse (for sending SPAM, for example) seems
to be a feature ...
> | The second one is even more ugly. To get hold of the mails my
> | daemons/programs send, I've added 01019freenet.de to control/locals.
>
> So you should not set all that bogus information in the control file,
> but only in your personal environment variables. Just let
> defaulthost, defaultdomain etc point to your local machine, while you
> set up the environment to get the addresses you wish to use when
> sending your own mail to the outside world.
Thank you very much! I've done so now, and the output of qmail-read looks
good. Unless it actually works, you wouldn't receive this mail :_)
> | An overview over all the related files and programs is not easy to
> | get. Is there some other documentation I should read? I would be
> | glad if someone could help me.
>
> Have you checked the ASCII qmail pcitures /var/qmail/doc/PIC.*?
Not all of them yet, but `PIC.local2rem' was indeed somewhat helpful. At
least, installing a certain program is one thing. Understanding how
transporting and delivering of mail on Unices, possibly including PPP
connections, TCP/IP and all the related issues work and how the stuff is to
set up is just another. Alas, the SuSE is nice distribution that installs
quite easily and produces a usable system, but every now and then it lets
you find out that you seem to know absolutely nothing about a great deal of
what's involved because it worked for you until you tried to find a solution
that exactly suits your needs. I tried a Debian 2.1 and appreciated it, but
I'd have had to have to spend too much time on tailoring it with my still
insufficient knowledge --- and especially my knowledge considering
networking is so little that even a SuSE can't help it ;_) Studying the
NET-3-HOWTO etc. is still on my todo-list ...
> If you want more graphical pictures, try the Big qmail picture (look
> at http://www.qmail.org/ to find its location).
THX, I've already found them and had instructed wwwoffle to fetch the
pictures, but for some reasons they weren't fetched or cached. But the ASCII
pictures are quite good enough and viewable with lesser effort.
GH
