MTA: Ultra Simple

mkaito · 2011-05-17 01:18:53

Hey,

Let's begin by saying that mail servers are something I've never been able to wrap my head around, for no apparent reason. It just seems to be over my head, or something. However, I've found myself in a situation where I can not elude setting up such a server, even though the requirement is very simple: a bulletin board needs to send out notification and confirmation emails. Nobody is ever going to receive mail on that domain, and the only "person" ever going to send mail from it, is a PHP script.

In the past, I would have resorted to Google Apps to sort the mail sending, but the customer insists he wants his own server to handle it. And while he's probably just being stubborn, I'm not in the mood to argue over it, so I might as well take the chance to learn a few ropes on MTAs.

Let's head onto the questions, then. First, which MTA should I be using? I understand sendmail is a gargantuan monster that's anything but easy to tame. Let's cross that one off. I've heard about postfix and qmail, but I haven't done enough research (nor do I understand enough about MTA to actually assert their qualities) to decide between one of them. I'll probably go with a disabled shell account for the email thing, but I'm not sure I even need that, since I'm not going to receive mail.

Any hints, tips, tricks, and pointers will be very, very welcome, as I finally take on this peeve of mine. I'm of course googling, but all I can find are "postfix + <12 other packages for various services>" howto documents, that are way too complex and don't seem to fit my situation anyway. But maybe there's a page I've missed?

Thanks in advance!

karol · 2011-05-17 02:29:31

I'm using heirloom-mailx for notification e-mails, but I don't know if it will be the right tool for you.

jt512 · 2011-05-17 06:11:40

Postfix's config files are well documented with comments, making Postfix pretty straightforward to configure. Sendmail, um, not so much.

fukawi2 · 2011-05-17 09:41:18

+1 for Postfix.

I've put an uber-simple main.cf in the ArchServer postfix package that might be a good starting point for you
http://git.archserver.org/?p=server-ext … 09;hb=HEAD

linux-ka · 2011-05-17 10:24:43

If you just want to send mails via php script or sth else, why don't you use a smal MTA like msmtp or nbsmtp. They are rather easy to handle.

zenlord · 2011-05-17 10:59:27

Hmm, is exim4 not the standard MTA on Debian? Should count for something, no? I have practically no experience with this, only some email-filtering to mailfolders - that was accomplished pretty straightforward with 1 dot-file in the users homedir...

mkaito · 2011-05-18 00:29:55

Thanks for all the hints. I've gone with Postfix after all, and it wasn't as hard as I thought to get the thing sending mails out. Thanks, again

Arch Linux

#1 2011-05-17 01:18:53

MTA: Ultra Simple

#2 2011-05-17 02:29:31

Re: MTA: Ultra Simple

#3 2011-05-17 06:11:40

Re: MTA: Ultra Simple

#4 2011-05-17 09:41:18

Re: MTA: Ultra Simple

#5 2011-05-17 10:24:43

Re: MTA: Ultra Simple

#6 2011-05-17 10:59:27

Re: MTA: Ultra Simple

#7 2011-05-18 00:29:55

Re: MTA: Ultra Simple

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