Sending to multiple email servers {OCC Scanned}

Nigel Paterson NPaterson at OCC.AC.UK
Sat Apr 3 08:59:30 IST 2004


Howard...

This information came from a post here a some time ago if I remember correctly. It's for Sendmail so not sure if it would work with Postfix...

We have two MailScanners, which deliver to a single server acting as an internal relay.  For inbound mail from the internet I have a 'standard' setup with MX records in my external DNS.  The internal relay machine uses entries in the Sendmail mailertable to route the mail according to the domain.  However, the last line of the mailertable is like this to deal with the outbound mail...

.               smtp:[xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]:[yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy]

^^ the 'dot' at the beginning meaning 'everything else' and xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy are the IP addresses of my two MailScanners.  This makes Sendmail always use the first MailScanner for outbound traffic if it is available.  If it is down, Sendmail will switch over and send to the other machine. Once the first MailScanner is up again then (after a few minutes) Sendmail reverts to using the first IP again.  Presumably, you can add more IPs to the line to include additional machines but I haven't tried this. The square brackets [..] prevent Sendmail from trying to resolve the IPs.

Hope this helps.

Nigel





-----Original Message-----
From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK]On
Behalf Of Howard Yuan
Sent: 03 April 2004 00:52
To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Sending to multiple email servers {OCC Scanned}


Hello all.

I currently have my MailScanner set up to receive mail for anything
going to mydomain.com. Its configured to receive the email, scan it for
viruses and spam, then send it off to my main mailserver, which
distributes the mail to my users. I have three mailservers (in case one
goes down). I was wondering if its possible to set up the MailScanner
to...well, what I'm worried about is if my main mailserver goes down.
Then MailScanner will have no where to send the email. Normally, a
mailserver would scan through the mx records and go to the next server
listed to try to send the email before it sets it aside for retry. I
would like MailScanner to do something equivalent, where it'll try to
send it to one mailserver, if that fails, to try another one, and so on
and so forth before it gives up. Any ideas? Thanx in advance.

Howard

-- 

== Oxford & Cherwell College Email Gateway MX1 ==
This message has been scanned using MailScanner
(www.mailscanner.info) and is believed to be free
of viruses and other dangerous content.


-- 
Notice: The contents of this message are confidential and
may be legally privileged.  If you are not the intended
recipient any disclosure, copying, printing or distribution
of the contents is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have
received this message in error please inform the sender
and remove it from your system. Any views or opinions
expressed in this message are the responsibility
of the originator and do not necessarily reflect those of
Oxford and Cherwell College, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

This message has been scanned at the Oxford and Cherwell
College email gateway using MailScanner (www.mailscanner.info)
and is believed to be free of viruses and dangerous content.
You are advised, however, to carry out your own checks before
opening any attachment(s).




More information about the MailScanner mailing list