fakedomain

[MarkLeong]

I setup my RH7.1 box as redhat1.somefakedomain.com (somefakedomain is registered) using private ip. Sendmail and DNS are running on the RH7.1 box.

However when I send email to some external accounts, the message got bounced back indicating that the domain could not be found (redhat1 is not set up in other public DNS). There were no problems with some hosts.

Am I right to say that this is due to the fact that I am using a private IP? Is there a way to get round this through sendmail?

[The Whizzard]

You'll need to do some port-forwarding on your firewall/gateway/ipmasq box. Port-forward any ports that has to do with email. SMTP, POP3, etc.

[MarkLeong]

I am connected through a router which I could not reconfigure.

Any other way around this?

Am I correct to say that if I make an entry in a public DNS, the problem would be solved?

[subnet_rx]

I'd say that's pretty correct. You just need your registrar to point the address to your IP. You have a public IP if it's static and on a permanent connection. go to their site and input your address, then wait about 72 hours, and you'll be set.

[MarkLeong]

Thanks.

That means there is absolutely no way that I could get around it? That means I cannot use sendmail inside the company since the registration of the host would run into some trouble.

Arrrrrrrrgh..........

[wreckd]

i have mail relay through my isp's mail server. its a pretty easy fix (postfix mailer). incoming mail comes straight to me but outgoing relays.

as far as the dns thing...you could easily set up a dynup account to handle it-- almost instant and requires little info about your host. or you could use easydns.com for a "real" domain.

[MarkLeong]

Thank you wreckd.

I did try to relay mails through my ISP but the problem is that my ISP does not allow mail relaying.

What is this dynup thing?

[wreckd]

interesting about the no relay allowed thing. i use earthlink and i'm sure they have relaying highly restricted, but they still allow their own domains to relay.

dynup is just one of several free dynamic dns services. my firewall runs a script to reconnect my given hostname with my current ip. sign up at dynup.net

i'm not sure if that would be enough to fix the problem with mail servers doing a reverse lookup though. i still get mail bounced from certain domains, such as aol.com, if i do not relay it. that could just be a problem with my setup...most would go through without a hitch.

[Craig McPherson]

Are you actually the owner of somefakedomain.com? If you are, you can set up free DNS hosting for your domain at http://www.zoneedit.com/. Register with ZoneEdit, point your domain's DNS servers at ZoneEdit's, then set up your zone files using ZoneEdit's web interface. It should work really well for you.

[MarkLeong]

Thanks Craig. Will look at your recommendation.

What if I do not own a domain? How can I get sendmail to work?

[Craig McPherson]

You could just use the ISP's domain name -- the same as the domain of your e-mail address -- which would fix the problem, but would also prevent you from e-mailing other people on the same domain. You could also set up your Sendmail to forward all mail to your ISP's mailserver as a smarthost, but I don't know anything about Sendmail configuration. There are a lot of options; I'm not really sure which is best.