Tamas TEVESZ <ice@???> wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, Jim Pazarena wrote:
>
> > mail.qcislands.net is a stand-alone server
> > qcislands.net has one MX record only, that of mail.qcislands.net
> >
> > now my web server (www.qcislands.net) is also a stand alone server
> > it is however also named "qcislands.net"
> > (without any machine designation)
> > ALL MX records point to mail.qcislands.net _only_
> >
> > I invariably see email on my web server destined to my customers
> > which actually reside on my mail server.
>
> i would blindly reject these.
>
> > What I have been considering recently is to set up my web server
> > as a true secondary MX machine. However I don't want the complexity
> > of mirroring user IDs. So I'm kinda stuck.
>
> the concept of a secondary mx machine is not to have any local users
> on it. it only acts as an intermediate store buffer as long as your
> primary comes back. you don't need to mirror any users there. in fact,
> if you do, that would not be a secondary (as in backup) mx, but...
> hm.. hell broke loose?
I still don't see the case for a backup mail server. If your server
is down, the senders will continue to retry till you come back on-line
or they give up. Most MTA's will retry for at least five days?
If your backup server accepts the message it will do exactly the same
thing. The only difference is the sender thinks the message was
delivered. I suppose your backup server could also generate "waiting"
messages back to the sender but why do you want to take on that
responsibility.
It would seem that you are falling prey to the impulse (mia culpa)
to provide perfect (or more complete) service. In fact you may be
taking on an unnecessary burdon/responsibility.
You could maybe justify a backup mailserver if the backup machine
has some other back-channel connection to the main server. I.e.
batching mail and forwarding over a telco connection (uucp/ppp).
Another scenario is if you are a server for a bunch of MUA's
you may want to be able to accept mail just to avoid user confusion
and associated support calls. In this case, it's still probably
better that everyone knows the mail hasn't gone anywhere...
In any event, as has been argued in this group before, the backup
server should implement all the user/spam/virus checks that the
main server implements just to avoid having to generate mail for
rejects and thereby generating your own form of spam.
--
Do two rights make | Kevin Smith, ShadeTree Software, Philadelphia, PA, USA
a libertarian | 001-215-487-3811 shady,com,kevin
