[SlugLUG] Mail server on the campus network

[Erich Blume]

I've decided to try and set up an MTA for my server, timothy.dnsalias.net
(I'm between web pages, so surfing to it will just give you the default
apache page). The server is receiving mail just fine, but I've had a LOT of
trouble getting it to send mail. Plus, it's also doing something really
funky with the from address. I'd love any tips on these issues. I'll split
them up below as I believe they are not related.

Also, it's important to note that I'm using Postfix and HOPEFULLY
Cyrus-SASL. I know I installed Cyrus-SASL, but I have no idea whether or not
it's being implemented. I also installed TLS, but I'm pretty sure I'm not
using that as I haven't had to generate a certificate.

1) Relaying outgoing mail through cruzmail.ucsc.edu fails with an error 591.
In order to circumvent the issue of most spam filters and ISP's filtering
out mail from dynamic dns hostnames, I've decided to forward my outgoing
mail through cruzmail.ucsc.edu. Since I know I'm not going to abuse the
system, I don't think that's ethically a bad idea. Also, I know I am the
only one who's going to be sending mail, though it would be nice to find an
option that disables sending mail off-machine for all users save for a
specific user just in case I later add another user.

Anyway, the issue is that it's not working. I know cruzmail.ucsc.edu uses
SMTP_AUTH, which is mentioned in the verbose error 591 (I can retrieve that
error if you like, but basically it's a link to a resnet web page that says
"your email client does not use SMTP_AUTH, contact resnet staff), but I
can't find any documentation on how to get Postfix to use SMTP_AUTH. I do
know I have several lines in my main.cf following my relayhost (I think it's
'relayhost' ...) directive, which have to do with sasl and which include
specifying the database file which includes my user name/password. But
that's sasl - is sasl related to SMTP_AUTH?

2) The hostnames of the "from" and "to" path are getting rewritten
incorrectly.
This error manifests itself in two ways: first and foremost for myself,
since I originally wanted an MTA just in order to send messages for local
use such as in cron jobs, sending mail to a user name on the local machine
actually sends the mail to, for user foo, "foo at timothy.ucsc.edu", as opposed
to just plain "foo" or "foo at timothy.dnsalias.net". Since timothy.ucsc.edu
doesn't exist, this definitely fails. The second way the error manifests
itself is by rewriting from fields on every email. This happens before the
mail leaves my system, indeed before I even write an email, since my current
mail program (mutt) reports my email address as "eblume at timothy.ucsc.edu" in
the composition window. Again, this host is fictional, so using it is
clearly misleading and will likely cause me trouble.

Anyway, those are my woes. This is try 3 to get a working mail system set
up. I'm so fed up with the sickening over-abundance of completely incoherent
documentation for this type of thing. Either I'm missing some fundamental
resource, or it's a skill reserved for true network administrators, because
clearly the instructions easily available are not aimed at getting a working
MTA set up on a regular system.

I should also mention that I'm doing this so that I can consolidate my many
email addresses (via fetchmail), implement good spam filtering (including
exclusive whitelisting for some accounts, where all emails are blocked as
spam until the sender authenticates herself by sending a specialized email),
and also using the Horde email client to make this consolidation available
to me from any computer with web access.

One last thought: I couldn't find anything on the ResNet web page that
forbids running a well-behaving MTA (no spam, of course) on the campus
networks, and such a rule would seem to conflict with there recent allowance
of port 80 traffic, but you guys should know: am I breaking the rules?

As always, thanks,
Erich