Hey, guys. Got a flame war question for y'all, I guess. What's a good (or the best?) MTA to have on my laptop. Here's what I'd like to be able to do: - Queue outgoing mail while offline, send while online (automatically, if possible... like, "Hey there's a network connection! I'll send all my queued mail!") - Automatically figure out the right way to send stuff based on the current network config. (If I'm at my office, it should use my local office SMTP server... at home, my cable provider.) - Bonus points if it attempts to deliver directly to hosts that will accept it, before falling back to my provider's SMTP. - Extra bonus points if it remembers what hosts won't accept mail directly from me and uses my provider's SMTP for those messages by default. I probably have other demands, but that's all I can think of for now. Maybe like if I'm on a dial up link, it would send small mail first? Stuff like that. Any ideas? -Chuck
Sendmail? Just use sendmail's default config, with no smart relay host. By default, it will use DNS MX records to determine the SMTP server to send to. You might want to use a BIND cacheing nameserver, too, so you can look things up while you are disconnected from the net (put 0.0.0.0 in /etc/resolv.conf). This will work anywhere that doesn't filter outbound SMTP connections. You can probably script something that will check for a network connection and force sendmail's queue to send when you connect. If you must use a smart relay host for SMTP outbound in certain places, then you can probably hook something into the DHCP client (use dhclient with it's dhclient-script hooks) to modify sendmail's configuration based on where you are connected. You'd need to change the "DS" line in /etc/sendmail.cf and then restart sendmail. I don't think you can fiddle with the smart relay host dynamically though. On Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 11:33:52AM -0400, Chuck Homic wrote: chuck> Hey, guys. Got a flame war question for y'all, I guess. chuck> chuck> What's a good (or the best?) MTA to have on my laptop. Here's chuck> what I'd like to be able to do: -- Charles R. Anderson <cra@wpi.edu> / http://angus.ind.wpi.edu/~cra/ PGP Key ID: 49BB5886 Fingerprint: EBA3 A106 7C93 FA07 8E15 3AC2 C367 A0F9 49BB 5886
On Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 11:51:04AM -0400, Charles R. Anderson wrote:
I don't think you can fiddle with the smart relay host dynamically though.
Sure you can. Use mailertable. :) . smtp:your.local.relay.host.com Then makemap that. sendmail dynamically reads the resulting DB file. You could even rig it to add in other bits to force the mailer for certain domains depending on your location: foo.com smtp:mail.foo.com bar.com smtp:mail.bar.com -- Randomly Generated Tagline: linux: the choice of a GNU generation (ksh@cis.ufl.edu put this on Tshirts in '93)
On Wednesday 25 September 2002 11:33 am, Chuck Homic wrote:
I probably have other demands, but that's all I can think of for now.
How about delivery of mail? If you're using pop then probably most reads will do. If your using imap, that's another story. How about interface, graphical, text based? I think that most mail readers will do what you explained as far as queueing mail. I can't think of a read i've used that has not been able to do this.
On Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 12:55:14PM -0400, brad wrote: maitre> How about delivery of mail? If you're using pop then probably most reads will maitre> do. If your using imap, that's another story. maitre> maitre> How about interface, graphical, text based? maitre> maitre> I think that most mail readers will do what you explained as far as queueing maitre> mail. I can't think of a read i've used that has not been able to do this. Those are MUA functions, not MTA functions. I would recommend fetchmail for accessing mail on a laptop. -- Charles R. Anderson <cra@wpi.edu> / http://angus.ind.wpi.edu/~cra/ PGP Key ID: 49BB5886 Fingerprint: EBA3 A106 7C93 FA07 8E15 3AC2 C367 A0F9 49BB 5886
On Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 12:55:14PM -0400, brad wrote:
How about delivery of mail? If you're using pop then probably most reads will do. If your using imap, that's another story.
Prolly a combination of IMAP and fetchmail(POP/IMAP).
How about interface, graphical, text based?
mutt. :) See, I'm from the old skewl, where mail client != MTA. You know, the whole unix modular thing, where you should be able to take your favorite one and combine it with your favorite other and have it work.
I think that most mail readers will do what you explained as far as queueing mail. I can't think of a read i've used that has not been able to do this.
Well mutt is my example. It has no MTA capability, and right now I'm just using smtpclient to jam my mail to my provider's (work or cablemodem) SMTP server. That's on my desktop PCs at home and work. But for mobile use, I want something more badass. Chuck A. and Brad have indicated that sendmail can do all I want (if I can figure out how to make it do it all, which could be a fun project in itself!!) I know there are other options, though. qmail, exim, and probably others. Anyone know about these things, pros & cons & whatnot? -Chuck
participants (4)
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brad -
Charles R. Anderson -
Chuck Homic -
Theo Van Dinter