Re: [Exim] smarthost

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Author: Steve Romero
Date:  
To: Eric G. Ortego
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] smarthost
Eric,

A smarthost is a host that can relay mail on behalf of another MTA.

I'm using this in my environment to offload the queueing mechanism on a
small Ultra 1 that is running sendmail to a larger Ultra 450 with more
diskspace that is running Exim.

To set up your MTA as a smart host you only need to modify one option in
your exim.conf file:

host_accept_relay = some.dumbhost.com

some.dumbhost.com represents the mail server that is relaying mail to your
Exim machine via a smarthost option. If you don't allow mail to be relayed
by the smarthost, then you will see rejections in your mail logs on the
dumbhost.

In order to set up an Exim MTA to route mail to a smart host you would do
something similar to the following in your config:

smarthost:
driver = domainlist
transport = remote_smtp
route_list = * some.smarthost1.com:some.smarthost2.com:some.smarthost3.com
host_find_failed = freeze

The host_find_failed option using the "freeze" switch will cause the host
trying to send mail to an unreachable smarthost to be frozen in the run
queue. This is the safe way to do things, as I've lost mail before on the
sendmail host - the default settings seem to discard mail when the
smarthost is unavailable (oops).

Regards,
Steve Romero

At 02:49 PM 4/30/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>OK this might be a dumb question , but what is a smarthost? Can Exim be a
>smarthost? or where do I get one that will work with exim?
>
>
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>
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