Re: to 'secondary mail exchange' or not?

On Tue, 09-May-2000 at 09:53:37 -0600, Schneider, Tim wrote:

> then say the mail.linux.bogus server dies or drops off the network.
>
> From what I understand, the internet will forward mail to the

Yep.

> mail.friend.bogus server, but what happens to it then?
>
> column A: The mail sits at mail.friend.bogus until mail.linux.bogus comes
> up and then the mail spews across the net to mail.linux.bogus.
>
> column B: Users must have login credentials for mail.friend.bogus and go
> there to get the mail

Actually, you can set it up either way. Normally, however, you do column
A.

> What if mail.linux.bogus is down for a long time?

That all depends on how mail.friend.bogus is configured. By default, it'll
probably keep trying for a certain period of time, possibly sending out
delayed delivery messages, and finally give up and bounce it.

> and mail.linux.bogus goes down, mail bounces back to the sender right!

Not necessarily. Now it's up to the sender's mail system to decide what
happens. Most likely, it'll do the same thing as mail.friend.bogus would;
sit on the message for a while and keep trying.

The main reason for having a secondary MX is that you *know* how it's
configured. If you don't have one, then some people will bounce the
message right away, more likely they'll sit on it for an unknown amount of
time, or maybe they'll chuck it in the bit bucket. In fact, not all people
sending mail even necessarily *have* a queue for the message to sit in and
keep trying. Who knows, some people might be on an on-demand dialup link,
but trying to send mail directly.

The secondary MX just gives you a bit more control over what happens if
your machine (or its connection) is down. Plus, if it's also your box, or
belongs to a friend, you can probably tell it to flush its queue when you
do bring mail.linux.bogus back up; that way you're not waiting as long for
the backed up mail.

-- 
Take care,
Scott \\'unsch
... Read this sentence over again from the beginning.

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