E-mail on your own box

[Brent harding]

It  seemed that my provider allows these ports, mail comes in to my
machine just fine when I come online. I don't think dynodns has that. What
does tzo's free service give?


On Fri, 23 Jun 2000, Joseph Norton wrote:

> Hi Brent:
> 
> What happened with you getting "unexpectedly terminated?"  Sounds ominous.
> 
> Anyway, here's a little info that may be helpful, sorry if I'm being
> redundant.
> 
> As you know, it is possible to send and receive mail on your own Linux box
> with the aid of services like dynodns.net, tzo.com or yi.org as long as
> your isp doesn't block access to or from your machine on ports 25 and 110
> (to name just 2 of them).  Sending mail is usually no problem unless
> something goes wrong (like the message being deferred) that keeps it in
> your mail queue.  Receiving is a bit more ticklish as you need some
> machine to store your mail when you're off-line.  When you're on-line,
> again, it's probably ok as long as the mail server trying to communicate
> with you can access your machine on port 25.  If you're off-line and no
> other machine is mapped as a secondary mail exchanger, the messages people
> send to your machine will be deferred at best, and bounced at worst.
> 
> I don't know if dynodns.net offers any solution for this, but, tzo.com
> does offer a service (unfortunately they charge around $60 for 5 megs of
> storage per 6 months) which will take mail for
> <whatever at yourmachine.tzo.com> or <whatever@[yourmachine].yourdomain.com>
> if you have a domain hosted by tzo.  This is in addition to the charge for
> the regular or premium service that does the dynamic domain
> redirection.  So, it's a bit costly, but, kind of neat anyway.  I decided
> to try it out for six months, but seriously doubt if I'll keep it, so,
> it's back to my regular E-Mail address after that.  If your ISP allows you
> to send and receive on port 25, Tzo will map the primary mail exchanger
> preference to your machine and the next preference to their machine.  When
> you're off line and the sending mail server can't communicate with your
> machine, it tries the next preference and the machine at Tzo simply takes
> the mail and holds it.  When you sign on to Tzo, they dump the mail they
> receive to your machine on port 25--to your machine, it looks like regular
> messages coming in.  If your ISP doesn't allow you to send and receive on
> port 25, you can even have Tzo configured to use some other port to
> communicate with your machine's smtp daemon.  Of course, this means that
> all mail to your machine must go through the Tzo server even when you're
> on-line.  Usually, in this case, Tzo doesn't bother using your machine as
> one of the mail exchanger preferences since it probably won't work.  Tzo's
> only shortcoming is that you can't configure these preferences after you
> set them up--you must call them or E-Mail them with the information.
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> On Fri, 23 Jun 2000, Brent harding wrote:
> 
> > That's what I would like to do. I might be switching isps soon, and would
> > rather switch everything to that address now before I get terminated
> > unexpectedly again.
> > I had pine set up to use my local smtp, and it sent as from
> > wbth.dynodns.net. Is there a way to make mail wait until I come on, or
> > does the mail system fail if the system isn't always there?
> > I'm using debian 2.2 potato.
> 
>