[TriLUG] Another Stupid Sendmail Trick revisited

[Brian Henning]

Hi All,
  People seem to wonder why I want to do such a thing, so I'll try to
explain my intents a little better..  So here goes:
strutmasters.com e-mail is currently hosted by (we'll call them) CompanyX.
a) Rather than try to hack around and figure out a system with which I am
very unfamiliar and over which I have little actual control (the CompanyX
server, which runs FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE-p27), I want to hand off all mail to
our new shiny in-house email server, which runs on FC2, with which I am
quite familiar and over which I have complete dominion.
b) Rather than simply change strutmasters.com DNS to point at our static IP,
I want to have all strutmasters.com e-mail make a first stop at the CompanyX
server.  This is because (b-1) I don't trust our connection to be 100.00%
reliable, and (b-1a) I don't think CompanyX will do plain-old BackupMX for
us.  The thought is that CompanyX would hold mail if it found our server
unreachable.  This is the setup that was in use at a previous place of
employment of mine.  Also (b-2) I don't think CompanyX will register
mx-records, therefore redirecting strutmasters.com DNS would also redirect
our website, which we still want to live at CompanyX's servers (for now, at
least).  Granted, I haven't actually asked CompanyX about backup-mx, but
from my previous experiences with them, I have a feeling they would either
scratch their heads and say "huh?" or tell me it would cost more.
c) Our ISP simply refuses to give us reverse-DNS.  As this lack sometimes
sets off other SMTP servers' red flags, I want to relay OUTGOING mail BACK
through CompanyX's server.  To simplify things, I'll probably just do this
by configuring everyone's MUAs to use CompanyX as outgoing, rather than
worry about smart-relaying.

So does that make more sense?  Here's the catch:
A couple people have already suggested making an entry in
/etc/mail/mailertable.  Unfortunately, I don't have access to the REAL
/etc/mail/mailertable (the server's root) and there is no mail directory at
all in ~/etc (where our domain-specific configuration seems to reside).
This means there's no make in ~/etc/mail to rebuild the mailertable hash.
So, um..  Now what?  Should I start asking more questions to the CompanyX
support team?

Thanks as always,
~Brian, gradually becoming a peak in the TriLUG activity...