OT: Comcast email is driving me crazy!!!

[Tony Baechler]

chomiak7737 at att.net wrote:
> I'm
> having no problem setting up fetchmail for her to receive email but I
> can't seem to get sending email right for her. Happen to be using postfix
> but would be perfectly happy to use ssmtp or whatever other package for
> which somebody can give me configuration tips. I keep getting an error
> about:
> host or domain name not found. Name service error for
>   


Hi,

Are you sure that they don't block port 25?  I know that Cox residential 
blocks port 25 so it's impossible to run your own MTA.  Generally I 
would say that it's probably mail.comcast.net but I don't use Comcast.  
I'm not sure about port 465, but maybe try smtp authentication.  I would 
be very surprised if port 25 actually works outside of the Comcast mail 
servers though as most ISPs block it nowadays.  In that case, you would 
have to use something like ssmtp which just moves mail off to a 
smarthost.  There's really no configuration necessary.  If you're on 
Debian, it will ask config questions when you install ssmtp or you can 
do dpkg-reconfigure ssmtp instead.  It's really painless to set up.  
Also, what if you try port 587?  That sometimes is an alternative smtp port.

Personally, I would just use Gmail.  It supports secure pop3, has an 
accessible web interface, has smtp on port 587 to get around port 25 
blocks, has a good spam filter, and generally works great!  Mutt or 
other can probably work directly with pop3s, or you could install 
stunnel and continue using Fetchmail and Postfix.  Actually I think 
Fetchmail supports pop3s but I don't use it.  That way if the person 
gets stuck on a Windows machine, she can still access her Gmail 
messages.  Everything downloaded with pop3s is automatically archived, 
even if she deletes it from her local system so mail is never lost.