> Thanks Chris, I never understood this [EMAIL PROTECTED] (probably because I > have inadequate knowledge of many matters relating to mail within an OS). > Where is [EMAIL PROTECTED], where is mail for [EMAIL PROTECTED] stored, how > is it > meant to be retrieved? localhost means your box. Any network traffic destined for the localhost goes through the "loopback device" and shows up right where it left. localhost resolves to 127.0.0.1, as you'll notice in any default /etc/hosts. If you have sshd running on a box, you can "ssh localhost". If you have apache running, you could type in your browser "http://localhost/";. Using localhost works on Windows too...
Most importantly (to this discussion) ... > Is this meant to be a real (external) mail server e.g. smtp.my_isp.com, or > is there a Linux OS setup I can use internally without mail leaving the > box? If you have an MTA (Mail transfer agent) running on your box, you can relay e-mail through your localhost. However, chances are you don't want to run a full-blown MTA, not even to deliver root e-mails. These programs would include postfix, exim, and sendmail. Although it can be quite trivial to restrict traffic to your localhost, an MTA like postfix is really overkill for a personal computer. Instead, you can configure ssmtp to relay through somebody elses' SMTP server. The problem is that if you e-mail something to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]", but connect to smtp.yourisp.com, localhost still means "127.0.0.1," which as far as smtp.yourisp.com is concerned, is /their/ localhost, not yours. Thus, you implement a reverse alias in /etc/ssmtp/revaliases. That way, any outgoing mail destined for root, the headers can be rewritten to have it sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED] So, if you're not running an smtp server on your localhost (and you probably don't need to be... shouldn't be), you could relay through your ISP. But, you may not want clear text about problems with your machine flying around the internet... It does raise security concerns, but you're probably ok to do it. -Chris -- Christopher Cowart Unix Systems Administrator Residential Computing, UC Berkeley "May all your pushes be popped"
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