On Tuesday 29 June 2004 14:20, bjsamuels@beenthere-donethat.org.uk wrote:
My ADSL comes with a fixed IP address and I gather that, among other things, it would enable me to run my own mail server.
After reading my ISP's instructions about running an SMTP mail server, in double-dutch of course ("A" records ???), it all sounds a little daunting. I already run Postfix locally if that has any bearing on the subject and I don't, as far as I know, run a DNS server locally.
What advantages would this give?
Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain
(Silly answer coming up...) I hesitate to jump in with so many people around who know what they're doing, but I'm not sure what benefits there are - for a domestic user - in running incoming SMTP as opposed to simply having your server collect mail from your ISP using fetchmail then distribute it to local users via Postfix. This way it doesn't matter if the server or ADSL go down from time to time. You don't even need a fixed IP address, for that matter. All I need one for is to host a couple of webservers that don't carry anything critical but allow me to do server-side processing my ISP wouldn't support.
A short tutorial from one of the IT experts would be most interesting. Like, what is a secondary MX provider or reverse DNS and why would we need it? Apologies for such green questions but most of what I read might as well be Sanskrit for all the practical help it gives me.
-- GT