getting mail to work

Ed Zwart ed.zwart at gmail.com
Sun Mar 11 15:45:49 UTC 2007


I use freebsd on an older computer in my home network to run a
webserver, a few web apps (bugzilla, tikiwiki), and samba.  I just
installed postfix via the ports collection so I can use the mail
functionality of bugzilla.

Bugzilla does its part correctly; I can see the message in the mailq,
but all messages time out.  From the postfix site, I learned about the
MTU black hole issue (http://www.postfix.org/faq.html#timeouts).
After spending some time messing both with my bsd machine's hostname
and my home network gateway's settings (domain name and mtu size), I
got nowhere.

But then I read somewhere (sorry, I don't have the reference) that the
handshake that goes on between my MTA and the destination machine
includes a check that I'm not spoofing a domain that I don't control.
Makes sense!  So, I figured that I don't have an MTU problem at all,
but a hostname/domain name problem.

What I'm a little weak on is understanding is this...

I own my_domain.com.  I've paid a hoster for the last couple years,
but that's ending in a week or so.  Meanwhile, I've used dyndns to
point foo.homedns.org to my IP.

Originally, I had left the gateway's domain as the default (something
based on my isp's domain), and set the bsd machine's hostname to
foo.my_domain.com.  But that's why mail was failing (I think) because
dns was reporting that my_domain.com was not the same as my IP.  Is
this correct?

Also, what are valid entries then for hostname then?  Anything I want,
as long as it's not some domain already known in the dns?  Does it
matter if I change my "domain" name on my LAN router?

Finally, what I'd really like to do is just manage all this myself.
I'm not providing any services to anyone but myself.  (I don't have
users, and don't need to receive mail.)  My plan had been to pay
dyndns to handle pointing to my_domain.com for me, but now I'm
wondering if I can't just do that too. So, last question: does setting
up dns on my bsd box mean I can propogate my IP for my_domain.com
myself?

Thanks in advance for help!

e.


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