Sendmail sending mail to Exchange

[Ric_]

I think I have this clear but I would like someone to clarify it...

Using a 'standard' sendmail configuration, any mail sent will wander off and look for the relevant MX records in DNS and send then fire off the mail via SMTP to the relevant IP.

So if I have an MX record for ServerA (IP: 192.168.0.9) which is my Exchange box, the Linux box ServerB (IP: 192.268.0.30) will simply fire off the mail and it will arrive OK.

Is this correct or do I have to point sendmail towards the Exchange box in some way? At the present time I don't need external mail from this box but I assume mail to another domain will simply require a valid MX record for that domain?

This might be a novice question but for some strange reason my brain isn't working too well at the moment.

[Geoff]

sendmail is not newbie friendly. Any chance of using something else? like Exim or Postfix?

[CyberNerd]

I think you need to add the exhange server domain to the mailertable database. mailertable allows you to specify destination servers for specific mail domains.
My relay /etc/mail/mailertable looks something like this

staff.external.sch.uk      esmtp:[exchange.college.internal]
student.external.sch.uk    esmtp:[zimbra.college.internal]

the file then needs to be turned into a database like this

/usr/sbin/makemap hash /etc/mail/mailertable.db < /etc/mail/mailertable

I didn set up this sendmail relay, but Ive played with it a bit - and like Geoff says its not noob friendly. Personally I would go with postfix.

[Ric_]

The only reason I was thinking sendmail is because it's the default mailer installed by Debian... I'm happy to take suggestions. I'll have a play tomorrow and if I get nowhere I will try postfix.

[linescanner]

Stay away from sendmail. You need a degree in Outer Mongolian to get it doing stuff.

Postfix will do what you want dead easy.