UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi all,

First post!
I have just discovered that I can use unix to send mail to a mail address. I normally use entourage for my mail.
This unix mail is very intriguing to me, but something is not working... I tried the search, but could not find the answer...

This works:
(in terminal)
mail myname@mycompany.be
subject: test
test
ctrl-d

That arrive fine in entourage, but the sender is myname@somethingstrange-computer.local

This does not work:
(in entourage)
send mail to myname@somethingstrange-computer.local

This works:
(in terminal)
mail myname@somethingstrange-computer.local
subject: test
test
ctrl-d

That arrives fine in terminal.

Is there any possibility to send mail from any mail address to the unix mail? How can I determine the correct mail address for the unix mail? All myname@mycompany.be go to entourage and myname@somethingstrange-computer.local doesn't seem to work...

Or am I missing something?

All help is appreciated.

bjorn

Where to begin??

First, any email system must know how to find a computer named "somethingstrange-computer.local". Since this isn't an official DNS name, it might be a little confused. If the UNIX computer you are using is named "somethingstrange-computer.local" and you send it to this address, it generally has no problem figuring out that you simply want to send it to the local user "myname". However, another computer won't know how to contact this computer. So you can try emailing to your computer's fixed IP address, if it has one: myname@10.1.1.2 or if not, get a service called "dynamic DNS" so that your computer's IP address is always associated with a domain name, and simply mail to myname@dynamic-dns-service.net (for instance).

Note: it might still not be that easy; your UNIX computer might have a built in firewall or the email "service" might not be configured to receive external emails.