[X-Unix] Postfix and proxies

[Eric F Crist]

On Jul 20, 2007, at 6:04 PMJul 20, 2007, John Harrold wrote:

> Howdy
>
> I've got a bit of a problem. I'm a Peace Corps volunteer working at  
> the
> National Univeristy of Samoa (NUS). I get my internet connection  
> through
> NUS and I use postfix to send my email through gmail's secure POP  
> server.
> My delima is that my ISP (which is NUS) has been flagged as a spam  
> source
> (the entire university goes through a single ip address on the  
> internet).
> Because my email is routed through a known spam source, it's getting
> rejected by some hosts.
>
> I've had lots of crazy issues with the network here (such web pages  
> being
> banned because of particular phrases). One solution I've used in  
> the past
> is to create a socks 5 proxy over ssh using the '-D' option. Many  
> networked
> applications have application level proxy settings and for many  
> that don't
> the system wide proxy settings seem to work.
>
> However, the system wide settings don't appear to work for postfix.  
> I was
> wondering if anyone here could help me either:
>
>   o configure postfix to route all traffic through a socks 5 proxy
>
>   o create some sort of jailed environment that can achieve the  
> same effect
>
> Thanks.
>

Why are you using a proxy at all?  Does the university block outside  
mail traffic and/or intercept it?  If so, I'd do one of the following:

1) Have someone set up a mail server for you, and possibly an SSH  
tunnel to send your email.
2) Use GMail's web interface
3) Have users on the other end white-list your email address.

If they're *not* blocking outgoing mail traffic (or intercepting it),  
just send your email directly to GMail and forget about the proxy.
-----
Eric F Crist
Secure Computing Networks