On Sat, Dec 20, 2003 at 03:29:23PM +0800, Zhang Weiwu wrote: > Hello. Just to confirm: if I use dial-up connection on my laptop and use > the ISP's smtp server to send emails, I don't really need sendmail's most > functions, so it is safe to set 'sendmail="NO"' in rc.conf without loosing > local emails like "weekly run output", is it?
If you're using something like Netscape or Evolution for your e-mail needs, then yes, you don't need an MTA on your local machine to do that. However, automatic e-mails from your system -- usually from the periodic(8) scripts -- do require sendmail(8) or equivalent. Note that you don't need to have sendmail listening on port 25 for incoming e-mail, but you do need sendmail to run occasionally to process outgoing messages in the mail queue. You can achieve that by: sendmail_enable="NO" sendmail_msp_queue_enable="YES" Now, the sendmail MSP (Mail Submission Process) needs to hand-off the e-mail to a MTA (Mail Transport Agent) -- you can either run an MTA process locally, or you can configure the MSP to deliver straight to your provider's smarthost. For the first, just add: sendmail_submit_enable="YES" which will start up a sendmail process that listens on the loopback address only. For the second, you should create a slightly customized sendmail configuration, as follows: # cd /etc/mail # cp freebsd.submit.mc submit.mc # vi submit.mc (or whatever your favourite editor is) and change the last line from: FEATURE(`msp', `[127.0.0.1]')dnl to FEATURE(`msp', `smtp.yourprovider.net')dnl where smtp.yourprovider.net is the mail smarthost provided by your ISP. Then: # make # make install # make restart Note that these configurations will cause your system to dial-up every time you send an e-mail. If that's not acceptable to you, then you can generate a configuration that just queues up the mail and only attempts to deliver the next time that your link comes up. But that's a topic for another e-mail. > I was told nowadays many spam filters only accept smtp server's email when > the smtp server is in the same domain as the sender's email address. So it > seems I better not use the sendmail on my laptop to send emails in case > they are filtered. Should I? Thank you. That's not the case, and a server set up in that way would be breaking the SMTP standards. It's perfectly permissible to run e-mail for several different domains from the same server. What you do need to ensure is that your system and your e-mail address are appropriately registered in the DNS. Generally if you use the SMTP service from your provider, then this will not be a problem. Cheers, Matthew -- Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks Savill Way PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Marlow Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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