I do not know much about Sendmail apart from the tidbits I read in the
newsgroups. I haven't found anything regarding my particular issue
albeit I haven't looked extremely hard.

My company uses MX Logic as a smart host to provide content filtering,
virus detection, spam filtering, etc on all outbound (and inbound of
course) email. Recently I had emailed literally hundreds of users to,
by user request, advertise our warehouse sale. I received a notice
from MX Logic stating that the volume was considered spam, either
solicited or unsolicited, and was a violation of their policy. Well,
when we wish to advertise our next sale, either I need to go through a
third party system ($$$) or modify Sendmail. I would like to choose
modifying Sendmail.

With having a smart host already set up pointing to MX Logic's servers
and since I wish to continue using it to provide the policy
enforcement, how would I go about, with either rules, a smart host, or
alternative method, bypass or avoid using the default smart host? I
would be sending the message from the same email address each time so
rules could be based on that. As for adding multiple smart hosts, I
thought about that but can I have that machine itself send out the
email if smart host is already turned on?

Any ideas would be most welcome. Thank you in advance.

-Chris

On 2006-09-13, Chris Lutka <chrisl@iaw.on.ca> wrote:

> I do not know much about Sendmail apart from the tidbits I read in the
> newsgroups. I haven't found anything regarding my particular issue
> albeit I haven't looked extremely hard.
>
> My company uses MX Logic as a smart host to provide content filtering,
> virus detection, spam filtering, etc on all outbound (and inbound of
> course) email. Recently I had emailed literally hundreds of users to,
> by user request, advertise our warehouse sale. I received a notice
> from MX Logic stating that the volume was considered spam, either
> solicited or unsolicited, and was a violation of their policy. Well,
> when we wish to advertise our next sale, either I need to go through a
> third party system ($$$) or modify Sendmail. I would like to choose
> modifying Sendmail.
>
> With having a smart host already set up pointing to MX Logic's servers
> and since I wish to continue using it to provide the policy
> enforcement, how would I go about, with either rules, a smart host, or
> alternative method, bypass or avoid using the default smart host? I
> would be sending the message from the same email address each time so
> rules could be based on that. As for adding multiple smart hosts, I
> thought about that but can I have that machine itself send out the
> email if smart host is already turned on?
>
> Any ideas would be most welcome. Thank you in advance.

If your company is paying MX Logic to relay your mail, you should talk
to them about adjusting their filters to allow your mail through.
Otherwise what's the point in paying them for their service?

--

John (john@os2.dhs.org)

In article <1158158858.727070.251790@d34g2000cwd.googlegroups .com>,
"Chris Lutka" <chrisl@iaw.on.ca> wrote:

> I do not know much about Sendmail apart from the tidbits I read in the
> newsgroups. I haven't found anything regarding my particular issue
> albeit I haven't looked extremely hard.
>
> My company uses MX Logic as a smart host to provide content filtering,
> virus detection, spam filtering, etc on all outbound (and inbound of
> course) email. Recently I had emailed literally hundreds of users to,
> by user request, advertise our warehouse sale. I received a notice
> from MX Logic stating that the volume was considered spam, either
> solicited or unsolicited, and was a violation of their policy. Well,
> when we wish to advertise our next sale, either I need to go through a
> third party system ($$$) or modify Sendmail. I would like to choose
> modifying Sendmail.
>
> With having a smart host already set up pointing to MX Logic's servers
> and since I wish to continue using it to provide the policy
> enforcement, how would I go about, with either rules, a smart host, or
> alternative method, bypass or avoid using the default smart host? I
> would be sending the message from the same email address each time so
> rules could be based on that. As for adding multiple smart hosts, I
> thought about that but can I have that machine itself send out the
> email if smart host is already turned on?

Because of the risks of broadcast mailings, it is generally a good idea
to segregate them as much as possible from normal mail. Even assuming
that you have a solid subscription system that fully confirms each
signup, there will be people who will forget they signed up or decide to
use SpamCop or their ISP's spam reporting systems as ways to
unsubscribe, and if that mail is going thrugh the same machine as your
normal mail, you could have your deliverability hurt badly. Your best
bet is to set up a separate MTA on another machine to do your bulk
mailing. If that's not possible, you can set up a seperate instance of
sendmail on the same machine with a different .cf file, but that is a
bit of a chore. With a list in the hundreds, you don't need much of a
box to get the job done.

If you're really committed to pumping the list mail through the same
instance of sendmail as your normal mail, the canonical answers are
tweaks that pick smart hosts based on sender. I've not used any of
those, but I am aware of Neil Rickert's 'sender_based_routing' which you
can find at http://www.cs.niu.edu/~rickert/cf/ and Andrzej Filip's
'smarttable' which seems to be offline at the moment.

--
Now where did I hide that website...

Bill,

Thanks for your reply.

> Because of the risks of broadcast mailings, it is generally a good idea
> to segregate them as much as possible from normal mail. Even assuming

You make a good point. I had considered that but I was hoping to
minimize machines and possible points of failure. Since I'm not
extremely comfortable with these kinds of modifications, I was hoping
for a quick fix solution but it appears that none really exists.

> tweaks that pick smart hosts based on sender. I've not used any of
> those, but I am aware of Neil Rickert's 'sender_based_routing' which you
> can find at http://www.cs.niu.edu/~rickert/cf/ and Andrzej Filip's
> 'smarttable' which seems to be offline at the moment.

I did see smarttable but the copies on the Internet didn't have the
correct tab formatting and since I'm not versed with Sendmail rules, I
didn't know where the tabs went. I did try the sender_based_routing
but I have no idea how to get proto.m4 to recompile or how it works
since I made the changes and didn't get the routing to work. Then
again, perhaps I had to turn the default smart host off. Humm...
things are starting to make sense. I'll have to check back into that
now.

On to try number 2!

Again, thanks for your reply.

-Chris

> I did see smarttable but the copies on the Internet didn't have the
> correct tab formatting and since I'm not versed with Sendmail rules, I
> didn't know where the tabs went. I did try the sender_based_routing
> but I have no idea how to get proto.m4 to recompile or how it works
> since I made the changes and didn't get the routing to work. Then
> again, perhaps I had to turn the default smart host off. Humm...
> things are starting to make sense. I'll have to check back into that
> now.

Well, I was modifying the wrong sendmail.mc file. Once I put the
directive in the correct file and had my proto.m4 all set up and
recompiled sendmail.mc, all worked as expected. Just as long as I
didn't have the default smart host set up and didn't have any server
set up in mailertable for the email address I was sending from, my own
server sent the message whereas my configuration in mailertable still
has my other domains pointing to MX Logic for outgoing filtering.

> On to try number 2!

The old saying, "Try, try again," will eventually work.

-Chris