suggestions to verify outbound mail is really working

[Steve Post]

I send out email.
It goes to some windows server I have no control over. I use the DS line in sendmail.cf.

If that windows server goes off line, people will start to fix it right away. But I might at the bottom of the list for notification.

If there is a problem outside of my area with email, I would like a way to know about it before someone is nice enough to tell me.

Now I guess I can always send an email to an outside address everyday. Then I have to log into that account and verify I got the email daily.

This seems like something other people probably have seen in the past. How do you make sure your email from unix is going to the people correctly?

[Pete Randall]

Steve,

Not sure how you're going to verify the stability of the Windoze server (wow - stability and Windoze in the same sentence - that's funny!!). I have a cron job that sends me a disk space report for my production server every day so I know if outbound mail isn't working. Then it's just a matter of finding out where along the line it failed.


Pete

[Steve Post]

I'm talking about outside. The desktop email is within the same subnet. I'm always check that one.

On the other hand, I wouldn't want to send an email to everyone on EARTH and then call 'em all up and ask "did you get that?"

I could probably send an email to my outside pager. Soon I would get charged for abusing office equipment. I'm not a teenager in highschool texting my buddy 10 feet away. But the phone records might make it look that way if I text my pager to validate email daily.

[Steven Schweda · Accepted solution]

> [...] Then I have to log into that account
> and verify I got the email daily.

Or else automate it. What if there were a
remote system which could automatically reply
to (or forward back to you) a periodic e-mail
message (sent by you)?

My ISP, for example, offers e-mail delivery
to a Solaris system, whence one can do just
about anything with it ("~/.forward", ...).

Perhaps you can find someone else with a
similar requirement, and trade services.

[Steve Post]

That's it. Why couldn't I think of that before?
Thanks.

[Steven Schweda]

> Why couldn't I think of that before?

That's a question I try never to ask. (The
answer could only be depressing.)