configuration scalix with two smarthosts or 2 gateway MTAs

[toni31]

Hi everybody,

being a newbie in using linux, the configuration of scalix confuses me.

i wanted to configure scalix located in local net together with 2 mta located in the dmz.

Do i understand it right that sendmail config is not part of scalix management interface nor manuals? Using SLES 10 bothers me once i tried to setup using https for apache. this os behaves like Windows! Therefore i wanted to do this via console. Which config-files are involved with this and *important for me* where do i find them?

to keep things easy i want to have scalix that all mail will be send to the mta in the dmz and receive only from mta via smtp. in case one mta is down scalix should try the 2nd mta.


Thanks

[jaime.pinto]

You have a couple of concepts mixed in your head.

As I understand, one of your questions is 1) how to configure the sendmail in the scalix server (behind the firewall) with a *failover* smarthost?

Rather than defining the smarthost by name in the sendmail.mc file like this...
define(`SMART_HOST', `mail01.mydomain.com')

... and having to either change the entry (and rebuild sendmail.cf) or change the address to which the name resolves, try the following, using the litteral IP addresses of you primary and secondary external gateways, like this...

define(`SMART_HOST', `[200.200.200.1]:[200.200.200.2]')

Failover should be immediate, when sendmail is stopped on the primary smarthost in the DMZ, sendmail on scalix server will automatically began routing mail via the
secondary machine. This component of the setup is just to send emails out.

The other question is 2) whether or not you can use a scalix GUI or console to manage sendmail or apache configurations
No, so you understood correctly: sendmail and http(s) config are not part of scalix management interface nor manuals, although they are part of normal linux rpm distribution. Scalix does make an effort in their installation script to ensure these packages are installed before scalix is, and it does "insert" some lines in their configuration files during the web components installation. But once they are first set you are pretty much on your own.

As for the 3rd question, I believe you are looking for a failover incoming mail queuing system, with a common ultimate mailstore being scalix..The MTA/SMTP parts here are a bit confusing.
Well, assuming that you have 2 non-scalix mail servers on the DMZ already, you can define who is primary and secondary for your domain with the MX entries in your DNS servers. Obviously, when the primary server is down emails will be queued up for delivery on the secondary server. Now if you want to setup these 2 guys as the front end for scalix to receive emails you are probably opening a can of warms, requiring an additional authentication system on those servers, fetchmail on scalix, etc. Please confirm this is your indeed what you are thinking of. There are many ways to skin a cat. Be more specific and we could point you to some other threads with complete answers already.

[toni31]

Thanks for your answer, but some phrases i do not understand.

"Now if you want to setup these 2 guys as the front end for scalix to receive emails you are probably opening a can of warms, requiring an additional authentication system on those servers, fetchmail on scalix, etc. Please confirm this is your indeed what you are thinking of. There are many ways to skin a cat. Be more specific and we could point you to some other threads with complete answers already."

The two mta at in the dmz are the two mxers, who receive email from the outside, scan them and should deliver them directly to the scalix mailserver in the internal network. Why do i have to need authentication? on the two mxers there are no mailaccounts, this is done by the scalix. Any better ideas?

another questions depending the issue with sendmail.cf: in another thread someone asks about configuring it but he couldn't find the sendmail.mc. Answer was to directly configure sendmail.cf. This is working with only entering one mta after"DS", but when you want edit it with the sendmail.mc (which is recommended in some sources) do you have to execute "omsendin" afterwards to have scalix own entries in this sendmail.cf (that some colleague has told me)? And maybe you could tell me where to find a file on suse 10 similar to sendmail.mc?

greetings
toni
[/quote]

[jaime.pinto]

the dmz are the two mxers, who receive email from the outside, scan them and should deliver them directly to the scalix mailserver in the internal network

I don't have enough information on your 2 MXers on DMZ and how they interact with scalix, so I won't comment on it.

SUSE has a different setup for sendmail.mc than redhat, so I won't comment on it either.