[Sussex] Hello

[Steve Dobson]

Paul

On 02 April 2003 at 22:45 Paul Bruce
> OK never used one of these mailing lists before, I've dabbled 
> wit Linux for about a year but now I'm starting to try and delve
> deeper into it (DNS, and hopefully sendmail soon).  Just wanted
> to say hello, I joined the other day. 

Well first hello and welcome to the group.  I don't know if you've 
just signed up or have just de-lurked.

If you haven't played with a Unix Mail Transfer Agent before then
I wouldn't recommend sendmail right now.  Don't get me wrong.
sendmail is very good.  But its configuration sucks(tm).  It was 
designed many, many years ago when disk drives were slow and small.
The CPUs were slow so the configuration file was designed to make it
easy for sendmail to read not for a mortal like you or me.

I the days when I was using sendmail I never quite got everything
working that I wanted to - and I even when as far as buying on of
the books (which was just to old for the version of sendmail I 
was using - but the new one wasn't out then).

Much has been done to make it easier but the sendmail team are 
re-writing (or have re-written) the configuration part to make it
easier.  This, AFAIK, hasn't been released to the Open Source
community yet.

Personally, and there is no reason for you to follow my advice if
you don't want to, would be to use exim.  exim was written at 
Cambridge Uni and can support a very large, distributed site.  It 
is just as configable, but the config file is human readable too.

You didn't say way Linux Distro you have.  This helps hardened geeks
like me, Geoff & Nik help.  I would also help if you gave a few
clues as to your network set up.  For example if you are using 
the Debian distro, Demon as your ISP and the machine was standalone
then I would say all you need do is:
   $ apt-get install exim
When it asks which of the five basic config set-ups use SMARTHOST, and 
enter post.demon.co.uk as your smarthost and your almost set.  Just 
configure /etc/aliases so that all the e-mail addresses you want
to use point to the appropriate Unix account and you should be set
to run.

> DO you people meet up and talk about stuff or something?

Yes, as Mark H said.  Last Thursday of each month.  We always meet
in Horsham, and current the King's Head.  There is a map link on
the meeting web page: http://www.sussex.lug.org.uk/index.php?id=2

It still says about the last meeting but otherwise it is up to date.
 
> I am a "Jock" who moved down to these parts two years to work :-)

Well welcome to the area then.

Steve