If I have a production mailserver and a series of Linux servers that all develop mail from logging etc, it seems slightly redundant to have so many smtp servers installed on each of those boxes simply forwarding mail as I choose to not have local delivery. Is there a mechanism possible in CentOS to setup a pointer to a different mailserver such that programs like mailx could still send mail? Currently I have postfix setup with maps so that root on server A has mail sent from root at server-a.fqdn<mailto:root at server-a.fqdn> and that is relayed to my production box. It just seems like it is an additional service to manage on so many hosts? Thanks! jlc -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20080206/a86cfd00/attachment.html>
Joseph L. Casale wrote:> Currently I have postfix setup with maps so that root on server A has mail > sent from root at server-a.fqdn<mailto:root at server-a.fqdn> and that is relayed > to my production box. It just seems like it is an additional service to > manage on so many hosts?I'm not aware of any other method, and as for managing, it's typically set it and forget it. Forward all mail to a central server, no other configuration needed on the local systems. my postfix config for this purpose is 8 lines, and could probably be cut down even further, haven't tried though # Postfix Client configuration for production environments queue_directory = /var/spool/postfix command_directory = /usr/sbin daemon_directory = /usr/libexec/postfix mail_owner = postfix inet_interfaces = 127.0.0.1 recipient_delimiter = _ setgid_group = postdrop relayhost = prod-utility-vip.sea2.my.domain nate
Joseph L. Casale wrote:> If I have a production mailserver and a series of Linux servers that all develop mail from logging etc, it seems slightly redundant to have so many smtp servers installed on each of those boxes simply forwarding mail as I choose to not have local delivery. Is there a mechanism possible in CentOS to setup a pointer to a different mailserver such that programs like mailx could still send mail? > > Currently I have postfix setup with maps so that root on server A has mail sent from root at server-a.fqdn<mailto:root at server-a.fqdn> and that is relayed to my production box. It just seems like it is an additional service to manage on so many hosts? >you don't need an smtpd server (listener) but you need a daemon that queues mail and sends it to the relay host. programs such as cron cannot handle mail delivery failures. it is a wrong approach to try to minimize daemons. having many daemons that do only one task is better than a monolythic service that does everything. In other words, look at the plan9 side, not at the windows side.
On 06/02/2008 17:26, Joseph L. Casale wrote:> > If I have a production mailserver and a series of Linux servers that > all develop mail from logging etc, it seems slightly redundant to have > so many smtp servers installed on each of those boxes simply > forwarding mail as I choose to not have local delivery. Is there a > mechanism possible in CentOS to setup a pointer to a different > mailserver such that programs like mailx could still send mail? > > > > Currently I have postfix setup with maps so that root on server A has > mail sent from root at server-a.fqdn <mailto:root at server-a.fqdn> and that > is relayed to my production box. It just seems like it is an > additional service to manage on so many hosts? > > > > Thanks! > jlc >There are lightweight SMTP clients that can be used as drop-in sendmail(1) replacements by speaking directly to a remote SMTP server instead of dropping the message in the local queue directory. One that I've used is mini_sendmail (http://www.acme.com/software/mini_sendmail/), though this was a while ago but I seem to recall having some success with it. Others have mentioned the trade-off between the additional complexity of maintaining an MTA on each system and the fault-tolerance such a setup provides, however, you can achieve similar levels of fault tolerance by implementing redundancy on your relay server system(s). I guess it's up to you to figure out what's appropriate to your environment. cheers Luke -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20080207/cf87ff40/attachment.html>
Luke Dudney wrote:> There are lightweight SMTP clients that can be used as drop-in > sendmail(1) replacements by speaking directly to a remote SMTP server > instead of dropping the message in the local queue directory. One that > I've used is mini_sendmail > (http://www.acme.com/software/mini_sendmail/), though this was a while > ago but I seem to recall having some success with it. > > Others have mentioned the trade-off between the additional complexity > of maintaining an MTA on each system and the fault-tolerance such a > setup provides, however, you can achieve similar levels of fault > tolerance by implementing redundancy on your relay server system(s). I > guess it's up to you to figure out what's appropriate to your > environment.it's not a redundancy issue. it's a queue issue. when cron sends mail and if the sendmail command fails, cron can't do anything (it won't queue mail and retry later). That said, one can write a script (perl comes to mind) or program that: - replaces sendmail - tries to send, and if it fails saves the message in a queue - runs periodically (from cron for example) to check the queue but I am not convinced that setting this up on every machine would be easier than configuring postfix or sendmail as a "null client".
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