Technical Support

Frequently Asked Questions

Internet Exchange Messaging Server

Overview
The Internet Exchange Messaging Server is made up of the following modules:


Common Installation Problems
Changes between different Linux distributions, Apache versions, and operating system updates occasionally cause problems with IEMS installations. Please see the Common IEMS Installation Problems page.

Updated IEMS Sendmail Utility
Versions of the sendmail compatibility utility that ship with IEMS Versions 7.1 and before do not include support for the -t option allowing for the extraction of recipients from the supplied message header instead of on the command line. A new version of the utility for Linux can be found here.

Mandrake Security Tools
When IEMS is installed on Mandrake 9.1 the sendmail compatibility utility may have its ownership and mode changed automaticallly if the Mandrake Security Tools (msec) are enabled, resulting in sendmail not running properly. Msec is usually invoked from an hourly cron script, and ownership and modes of various system files are checked and reset according to the configuration files located in /usr/share/msec. To reset the IEMS sendmail compatibility utility to the proper permissions, run the following as root:

    # chown iems.iems /usr/sbin/sendmail
    # chmod 6755 /usr/sbin/sendmail
Then make sure that either msec is disabled in the various cron scripts, or update the msec configuration files to refelect the ownership and modes as shown above.

Running Internet Exchange Without Your Own Dedicated IP Address
Internet mail servers such as Internet Exchange and others typically rely upon fixed Internet IP addresses in order to provide SMTP service that external systems can communicate with. Smaller organizations and home users connecting through dialup, ADSL, cable or other similar means usually do not have fixed IP addresses, making the provision of services problematic.

Two solutions can be used to solve this problem with Internet Exchange: BSMTP Tunneling, and Dynamic DNS.


Additional And Related Documentation
The following are additional documentes related to the Intenet Exchange Messaging Server: