[plug] Small office email problems

[James Elliott]

Hi Kevin

I am new to Linux but have dealt with similar problems in the past with
networked Windows machnes in a mining office, and more recently with a
hybrid of Linux and Windows machines attached to a D-Link gateway (which
happily serves both linux and windows machines)

Two things that come to mind are:
1.  most gateways, whether hardware or software, include a user settable
time out feature;
2.  Tesltra has fixed MTU's or maximum packet sizes and if you exceed these
the e-mail will not send (but you might still be able to receive and can
defiietly communicate between computers).
 I don't know if that is of any help.

James Elliott
Ravensthorpe Computers
ABN 34 305 232 710
Tel:   08 9838 1043
Fax:  08 9838 1049
Cell:  0428 39 6052
E-mail:  James.Elliott at wn.com.au
Australia Post:
PO Box 228, Ravensthorpe WA 6346
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin Shackleton" <kevins at wn.com.au>
To: <plug at plug.linux.org.au>
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 7:58 PM
Subject: [plug] Small office email problems


> I have a problem with email provision for four users in a small office
scenario.
>
> Our dial-up network connection works relatively well (50 kbps) and we have
had no
> problems with running a Windows machine dialing up and getting our email
from
> Bigpond using Outlook 2k.
>
> I have now set up a network with a Linux machine (RedHat 7.1) functioning
as the
> PPP gateway.
>
> Web access works fine using squid - no trouble getting 1 MB files out to
networked
> clients.
>
> I set up accessability to mail.bigpond.com by adding a MASQ rule to
ipchains
> forwarding.  I have not set up an MTA.  The setup works for test files but
appears
> to time out with typical (30 KB) emails, with all clients using Win98 and
Outlook
> 2k.
>
> There appears to be two approaches to get email to work - overcome the
MASQ
> timeout issue (if that's really what the problem is) or set up sendmail to
> (hopefully) overcome timeout issues.
>
> I've not set up sendmail before and could not find a recipe for a simple
relaying
> configuration.
>
> I'd be keen to liaise with someone with expertise in this area of
configuration -
> either effective MASQ'ing or MTA'ing.
>
> Thanks,
>
> K.
>
>
>