[Info-vax] pop mail change

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

glen herrmannsfeldt wrote 2013-02-26 19:08:
> Tom Linden <tom at kednos.company> wrote:
>> On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 06:57:36 -0800, Stephen Hoffman
>
> (snip)
>>>> Comcast is my connection and they are now blocking port 25 for
>>>> outgoing.
>
> (snip)
>>> Blocking TCP port 25 outbound from netblocks containing dynamic
>>> addresses and from netblocks that aren't hosting mail servers is common
>>> practice, and quite often good practice.
>
>>> Blocking TCP port 25 from a static IP assignment is less common,
>>> however.  A static IP assignment is typical with mail servers, so you'll
>>> want to check with your ISP about the blocks.
>
> (snip)
>
>>> For sending outbound mail from an SMTP server on a network with an
>>> outbound TCP port 25 block, you'll either need to get the block removed,
>>> or establish a relay, and TCP/IP Services doesn't offer a
>>> submission-port relay feature.  Postfix does offer the ability to
>>> perform an authenticated relay, but I don't know off-hand if the Process
>>> Multinet stack does.  (I know Process has a transport shim for sending
>>> authenticated mail from the Mail client, but I don't know if the Process
>>> Multinet SMTP server can relay.)
>
>>> Probably the easiest: Roll in a Linux box, or a Mac Mini Server running
>>> OS X Server...
>
>>> This all presumes the ISP ToS permits this stuff.  Not all do.
>
> Well, when the ToS says "server" they really mean allowing others
> to access it. As you note, the wording might not say that.
> They might be able to tell from the signon, but the usual configuration
> of a unix-like system is to queue the mail and then send it on.
>
>> I guess I didn't adequately explain my situation.  I run my own mail
>> servers on VMS with TCPIP and mx.  I use Outlook as my pop client
>> on XP at home and connect through comcast to the internet.
>
>> These are dynamic IPs of course.  Comcast is blocking port 25 so
>> I don't get to my servers.  So what I would like is to change
>> from port 25 to 587 (as you corrected me) and my question related
>> to what I needed to do with TCPIP in order to permit me to send
>> outgoing pop mail through the server.  How do I configure it to
>> accept this?
>
> Yes, I believe what he said was right. You configure a Linux or
> OS X box to run postfix, which will then relay mail as
> appropriate.
>
> For a long time, I had a unix box relay mail out port 25. I set my
> firewall to block port 25 except from the mail relay host, and
> to block it coming in. That avoided any problem with malware trying
> to send directly out port 25. (Smart malware would figure out where
> the mail relay was.)
>
> The only one that I ever ran into that wouldn't accept mail that way
> was the school district that my kids went to school in. They blocked
> comcast addresses, except for the actual comcast server.
>
> I then had a postfix forwarder, as described, but now I usually
> just use the comcast web mail. The forwarder has to have a comcast
> login, but it doesn't have to be the same one as you use.
> (Comcast allows for something like six e-mail addresses.)
> Specfically, it doesn't, (last I knew) require the return address
> to be the logged-in user. Well, even more it doesn't even require
> the return address to be comcast.net.  (Last I knew.)
>
> -- glen
>

Hm, maybe I'll look into using one of my (four) RasperyPI's to act
as a mailgateway for my office VMS system. I guess that one can
find something to run on it that does mail forwarding, maybe
this "postfix" thing...

Jan-Erik.