sendmail and bind

[ndelo]

Ok, a sendmail newbie question: do you need to be running Bind on the machine running sendmail to do DNS resolution or can you just you just point a sendmail server to your ISP's nameservers to perform DNS(MX) resolution. For instance, I am going to set up a sendmail server at work as was wondering if all I needed to do was to specify "use DNS" in under sendmail section in linuxconf and then specify my ISP nameservers? Or is it more involved than this? I have set up a small test machine running POP3 and SMTP over the local network, but have yet to try to route mail over to the internet. A little help in exchange for a little good charma.

[PLBlaze]

I'd stay away from sendmail and go with www.postfix.org (http://www.postfix.org) but then again that's my opinion.

Now back to your question, default senmdail setup should not require dns if the mail is on the local net but it would be ideal to have dns running if you intend to send/receive from internet.Check www.sendmail.org (http://www.sendmail.org) and www.isc.org (http://www.isc.org) for faq's about sendmail and bind or visit /usr/doc directory for more info.Hope this helps.

[ndelo]

Should I set up Bind or use DNS from my ISP. And, if I need to run Bind, can or should I run it on the same server as sendmail? I would go with Postfix except the I believe NeoMail needs to use sendmail, though I could be wrong.

[PLBlaze]

What do you mean by using your isp's dns? in /etc/resolv.conf?It would be fine but if you intend to have more than one box,bind would be helpful.

Yes bind can be on the same box as sendmail though if you configure named make it run as some other UID/GID than root (by default named is run under root) or put it in jail (chroot enviroment).

Postfix has sendmail compatibility so there should be no problem with running NeoMail.Hope this helps again.

[Sweede]

Qmail

[ndelo]

Thanks for the help. I'll give postfix a try. By my ISP's DNS I do mean putting them in /etc/resolv.conf. Right now PSInet provides DNS services for all the computers on my LAN. I was hoping that all I would need to do is provide PSInet with the ip my mailserver, and then, in the mail server's resolve.conf, put the ips of their nameservers (which we currently use). Aside from this mailserver, we will have no hosts directly connected to the internet, so setting up Bind for one machine seems a little much. I'd like to avoid it if I can. http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by ndelo (edited 18 January 2001).]