webhosting recommendations with procmail

Mon Jan 20 11:05:01 PST 2003

Quoting William R Ward (bill at wards.net):
> David Wolfskill writes:
> >>Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 03:18:38 -0800
> >>From: bill at wards.net (William R Ward)
> >

> >What is at issue (as far as I'm concerned) is that the technique involves
> >picking up the mail after "final delivery" ahs been accomplished (and
> >thus, after the envelope information has been discarded) and trying to
> >go through the process of figuring out where the message should go once
> >the envelope is gone.
> 
> Well, in my case, the envelope itself may be gone but enough
> information remains - principally, since my ISP uses qmail, there is a
> "Delivered-To:" header added which indicates what the envelope
> recipient (at my domain) was.  This is what I use in my .procmailrc to
> filter mail with.
Which is simple enough to add to any MTA (as an admin).

> >original query.  Sorry about that.  As for me, I was lucky enough to get
> >a static IP assignment from Pac*Bell when I got residential DSL, and I
...
> Static IP's are not necessary for this.  You can use Dynamic DNS
> (www.dyndns.org) to get the appearance of static IP for any broadband
> account.  I use AT&T Broadband, and even though technically it's not a
> static IP, the IP has never changed except when my MAC address has
> changed.  But I run a program that updates Dynamic DNS regularly just
> in case.  So while I don't have a static IP, I do have
> "wards.dyndns.org."
> 
> (While it's true that you can't use a CNAME for an MX record, if you
> really want mail delivered to your home box, you don't actually need
> to have an MX record...  Just have the domain's CNAME point to your
> Dynamic DNS hostname with no MX.)

You have that address except when you are not on the net for a time. e.g.
1) your machine crashes for a time and isn't available.
2) when your provider, which never would make a mistake, makes a mistake.

Someone else comes in, gets your IP while your down and, if
they have an SMTP server, gets mail hitting them.  Odds may
be low, but it can happen.

My twisted workaround is that mail hits a machine with a static
IP (friends, etc) and relays to my machine via a tunnel.

If my dynamic DNS changes, that tunnel doesn't end right so the
new holder of that IP won't get my mail - they will get some
very odd packets expecting them to have a tunnel, but so what?
Tunnels can be IPSec or simply IPv6/IPv4 or even IPv4/IPv4.