Pkg exim4 users - Jan 2006 - Configuring a fallback mailserver

Hello,

We''re currently running a Mail-Firewall which acts as the SMTP-server
for our company and handling mail for several domains. In addition to this
system I want to setup a fallback-server in case the primary server has an
outage. (At this moment this is still done by our providers smtp-servers). I
setup a Debian Sarge linux-box which runs smoothly but I have no knowledge on
Exim4. The fallback-server only needs to forward mail for defined domains in
case the primary server isn''t available, and may not be abused as a
mail-relay ofcourse. Howto set this up?

Thanks in advance,

John
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Dautzenberg, John wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> We''re currently running a Mail-Firewall which acts as the
SMTP-server
> for our company and handling mail for several domains. In addition to
> this system I want to setup a fallback-server in case the primary server
> has an outage. (At this moment this is still done by our providers
> smtp-servers). I setup a Debian Sarge linux-box which runs smoothly but
> I have no knowledge on Exim4. The fallback-server only needs to forward
> mail for defined domains in case the primary server isn''t
available, and
> may not be abused as a mail-relay ofcourse. Howto set this up?
First some general tips:

o Install your exim4 package(s)
  "apt-get install exim4"

  Optionally you can install the exim4-daemon-heavy for extra compiled
options.

o You can reconfigure your setup via the debconf tool with
  "dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config"

o Than there are some very good reading documents included:
  "zless /usr/share/doc/exim4/README.Debian.gz"
  "zless /usr/share/doc/exim4/spec.txt.gz"

o You will need to setup exim to forward the email to your main mail
server. The debconf lets you make sure that it is not an open relay.
Read the questions it askes about that.

o I think exim will hold and forward mail automatically. You just need
to tell it where to forward mail to.

> 
> Thanks in advance,
Hope it helps.
I am sure there will be some work involed.

Maybe you could let us know what worked the best :)


-- 
respectfully, Joseph ==============-                                 
---------------------= **********  =

On 2006-01-03 "Dautzenberg, John" <j.dautzenberg@heerlen.nl>
wrote:
> We''re currently running a Mail-Firewall which acts as the
> SMTP-server for our company and handling mail for several domains.
> In addition to this system I want to setup a fallback-server in case
> the primary server has an outage. (At this moment this is still done
> by our providers smtp-servers). I setup a Debian Sarge linux-box
> which runs smoothly but I have no knowledge on Exim4.
[...]

Hello,
If you''ve got no knowledge of exim4 why do you end up in a position to
set up a mail-server running exim in a production environment? Exim is
the default MTA, but if you are familiar with e.g. sendmail or postfix
there is absolutely no reason to run exim just for this single job.
> The fallback-server only needs to forward mail for defined domains
> in case the primary server isn''t available, and may not be abused
as
> a mail-relay ofcourse. Howto set this up?
Start with upstream''s default configuration and strip it down to a
single router/transport. (Either manualroute or dnslookup, depending
on your needs.) You''ll probably want to use callouts for
recipient verification.
               cu andreas
-- 
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