[techtalk] POP mail

[Laurel Fan]

Excerpts from linuxchix: 15-Dec-99 RE: [techtalk] POP mail by Di
Gregory at sleepy.giant. 
> It's my PERSONAL email that I am concerned about with the POP.  My 
> regular email address is currently a Unix shell account.  They do have 
> POP3 setup but AFAIK not SMTP.  If they do have it, I can't use it 
> because I don't dial into them since it would be long distance anyways.  
> So no matter what I do, I will not be in their domain.

If you don't use smtp, you can't send mail.  You cannot send mail with
pop.  smtp is the almost [1] only way to send mail.  You will either
have to set up your own smtp server, or use someone else's.  I assume
you do not want to set up an smtp server.  Therefore, you will need to
find an smtp server that will allow you to use it.  I wrote how to do
this in an earlier message, but I'll repeat it.

First, find out what your hostname is.  I assume you know how to do
that.  From your hostname, find your domain by taking the last two parts.

For example, my hostname is annex-5.ece.cmu.edu, so my domain is cmu.edu.

Next, find an smtp server for your domain.  Use dig or host, and specify
a record type or query type of 'mx'.  For example:

  dig cmu.edu mx
or
  host -t mx cmu.edu

If these commands are different on your computer, read the manpages.  I
assume you know how to do that.

These commands will give you smtp servers.  For example:

dreadnought:~> host -t mx cmu.edu
cmu.edu                 MX      5 CMU1.ACS.cmu.edu
cmu.edu                 MX      5 CMU2.CS.cmu.edu

means I can use either cmu1.acs.cmu.edu or cmu2.cs.cmu.edu.

If you cannot figure this out, I'll even do this for you.  Just give me
the/a hostname of the machine you want to send from.


[1] I'm sure there's still some uucp or bbs mail systems out there.. 

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