[H-GEN] Mail problems.......

[Michael Anthon]

I am trying to set up Linux at home so that I can fiddle/learn with it. 
 Having spent most of the last few years using Winbloze, I thought I would 
try out a real OS and see if I could come up with an uses for it.

The Situation
Anyway, I have set up Linux on my old DX4/100 as well as my newer Cyrix 
166+.  The way I would LIKE to set it up is with the DX4/100 as an internet 
gateway so that I can reboot my Cyrix as much as I like without loosing my 
connection to my ISP.  The reason for this is that it can sometimes take a 
LONG time to reconnect due to congestion (and no, I do not ahve any other 
options re ISPs as i live in Caboolture, this is the only one that is a 
local call).

I have actually got all this working *mostly*.  I have IP masquerading 
running on the DX4 as well as PPP with auto-reconnect etc. etc.  and I must 
say I am quite pleased with myself for getting this far.  (Thanks go here 
to many of the regulars on #Linux).

Oh, Linux = Redhat 4.2 (2.0.30)

The Problem
I am having trouble with the sending of mail.  I have tried several 
configurations such as
- M$ Outlook via ipmasq to my ISP
- M$ Exchange via ipmasq to my ISP
- Netscrape Mail via ipmasq to my ISP
- M$ Outlook delivering to Sendmail on the DX4, then being forwarded to 
where ever
- Ditto with qmail.

The symptom is that the mail takes an enourmous amount of time to send.  A 
small message will almost always work fine, but larger messages have 
trouble.  When sending directly from Windows clients, a large message will 
normally fail with a timeout error, when sending via the Linux box, they 
will still work, but take a VERY long time to send, even if going direct to 
my ISP. ( it is taking several hours to send a message with a 500k 
attachment.  This goes through in about 10 minutes when connecting directly 
to my ISP using windows).

At this stage I am a bit out of my depth and would appreciate any 
suggestions as to what the problem is, or any suggestions as to any diag  
nostics tests I can perform.  I am not even sure where the problem lies, 
but given that it works fine via a direct connection from windows, then I 
suspect a glitch/config problem in ip masquerading.

Hmmm... sorry for the length of this post, but this is preventing me from 
leaving this as a permanent setup at this stage since my wife uses the 
computer for work and large emails are part of the daily routine.  She 
tends to get a little upset if it doesn't work correctly (she just doesn't 
understand !!!!)

TIA

Michael Anthon

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