Re: [Exim] exim4 smart host - how to use it only when non-sm…

Michael Johnson wrote:

|> But services like POBox have three issues:
|>
|> 1) They CHARGE. I'm a poor student working part time trying to pay the
|> bills with a family. I cannot really afford even the $15/yr.
|>
| I have a very hard time believing a statement like this. I see it all
| the time on slashdot, and I don't think it holds water there either.

Tell my wife that! If I proposed using a $15/yr service she would say
"Absolutely not!".

|
|> 2) They want you to have your address as <whatever>@pobox.com. If I'm
|> going through all the effort of running a MTA, I don't want people to
|> have to worry about relaying through someone else just to get to me. I
|> want them to be able to contact me directly.
|>
| They do. As far as they know, there's no difference. I get messages
| on my home server while at work and vice-versa. Nobody has to know if
| I'm at work or at home. Sometimes, I'm even at the beach house or
| skiing in the mountains. They still contact me directly regardless of
| where I happen to be. I don't need to have a different email address
| for each place I might be.
|

Thats not what I meant. I don't want to have to give out a @pobox.com
address. I want the message being DIRECTLY delivered to my server. I use
this address for home/work/etc.. also. I am trying to avoid yet another
address. I have this address, this is the address I advertise, this is
the address I want people using.

|> 3) they put limitations on things that I might not want. For example,
|> PoBox limits emails to 10MB. I ROUTINELY send/receive 25+ mb messages
|> to/from my employer. If I send a full source tree update, it's usually
|> about 20MB BEFORE encoding. If we assume the standard encoding rate of
|> the encoded message being 4/3 the physical size of the unencoded
|> attachment, that puts it at around 26-27MB.
|>
| I can't even begin to tell you how wrong it is to use a mail server to
| send attachments that size. Use a protocol designed to transfer large
| files instead of one designed to send small ones. Off the top of my
| head, CVS, sftp, WebDAV, and scp come to mind. All of them much easier
| to set up, and CVS is specifically desinged to do what you're
| describing.
|

CVS: Don't I wish. This is ALL win32. My boss has flat out refused to
set up a CVS server, repeatedly.

sftp: Secure FTP? Again, would be nice, but not an option. As far as my
boss is conserned, if it won't run FOR FREE on a Win98se box, it won't
be used by his employees. And I DO mean ONLY on the 98se box. All his
machines are 98se. I even offered to setup a free ftp server on the 98se
box (using DragonServ, since it's free), and he even said no to that.

WebDAV: What is THAT?

scp: Again, This is going from a Win32 box to a Win32 box. And if you
cannot run it for free on his Win32 box, forget it. He's even too cheap
to rent an office. His "office" is the basement of his house! The Phnoe
# he has for business use is a residental additional line. This guy will
bend over backwards to spend $0.25 less!

|> Now luckily for me, my employer's ISP does not block my IP. But if I
|> need to send mail to someon not on my employer's ISP, I can run into
|> issues.
|>
| How about using your employer's ISP's smtp server? It should be simple
| enough to get them to have you authenticate to send through their
| server. But then again, their admin will probably get angry with you
| for sending massive file attachments.
|

Yea Right. I know their ISP. I lost a job to that ISP! I was the sys
admin of an ISP here that got bought out by these guys. Then they
promptly brought in their own sys admin and said "You are no longer on
the payroll after this friday." to me.

And since then, I've watched the quality of service drop like a rock.
Now they have a policy againist 3rd party use of their servers. You MUST
have an account with them to relay through their servers. And yes, the
admin would freak if he saw 20+mb attachments going through.

I'd love to use any method besides smtp for that, but smtp is the method
my boss has dictated will be used.


- --- Dan