Disabling postfix error returns to sending SMTP server

[av_bell]

Hi guys,

we have a setup that allows us to continue using the Mail Server that is provided to us by our ISP and still have IMAP functionality when connected to our LAN. The ISP’s Mail Server is set to forward every incoming mail to our internal server running Mac OS X 10.3.8 Server and keep a copy of the message in the POP mailbox. This way we have a somewhat redundant setup that allows us to check the POP boxes on the external server in the unlikely event of a failure of the internal server.

And because this redundancy exists and we have a script running to alert us if anything is deferred or bounced we generally DON’T NEED an error message being sent to our customers or some postmaster in the event that cyrus’s deliver command times out again, which happened a lot in the past few days, or anything else happens in this regard.

I already turned the “soft_bounce” feature on which judging from the documentation should help with our problem.

If you know of anything else that has to be turned on/off please let me know. I generally don’t want our customers to receive any error messages that are due to a problem with our internal server.

Thanks in advance,

Adrian

[av_bell]

I just had an idea and after checking if it works would like your opinion.

I setup Mac OS X Mail on the internal server to receive emails from the external POP server, delete it from the POP mailbox and automatically forward it to the postfix system with an address like [email protected].

This solution would be a lot better since what is not on the POP server is either being forwarded to the IMAP mailboxes or is already in an IMAP mailbox. If the postfix / cyrus duo refuses incoming messages for some reason we could look at the Mail application to find out which messages couldn’t be sent.

There are two things that bother me though. Some user account would have to be constantly logged in to run the Mail application on the server. Is this advisable from a security standpoint when the user is non-administrative?

The other thing is that from the time we extensively used mail with our POP mailboxes we learned that Mail likes to report bad passwords a lot even though the passwords for the POP accounts have not changed. A script could be written to automate the dismissal of this error dialog and ensure that Mail is still checking for new emails after that. The question is: are we following the wrong path with such a solution?

Would it be possible to use the existing unix tools that come with Mac OS X Server to implement this “Receive from POP / Delete from POP / Forward to SMTP” funtionality?

Again, thanks in advance for any tips.

Adrian

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