ken wrote:
On 04/20/2007 03:45 PM somebody named David Brodbeck wrote:
ken wrote:
If I needed a mail server, well then, yes, I'd use it. But I don't need
that. It just seems ridiculous to set up a mail server on every machine
on which somebody sends out an email.
I don't know. It depends on how you look at it. To me it's like
asking, "Why should I have to run a print spooler service just to
print? Each program should talk to the printer directly, using its own
drivers."
Often it just makes sense to centralize functionality like this instead
of requiring individual programs to carry around a lot of baggage. It's
especially handy if you have more than one program that sends mail,
since you only have to configure everything once, in postfix. Postfix
isn't really acting as a server in any real sense, here; more like a
middleman for the mail client. Hence the term "mail transfer agent."
No argument. Being the original poster, I should probably repeat the
solution I was after:
One user on one machine sends out (via a script run from a cron job) one
email per day. This user is serviced by a quite robust remote mail
server (actually a cluster of eight mail servers dispersed around the
US). For me to set up my own mail server would not likely improve the
reliability of this system. Of course there could be a network outage,
or a local problem preventing delivery. But this would be noticed by a
human at the email's destination. And there will be some kind of error
message on the source side; nail, for example, seems to return an error
code in the event of failure.
I could be wrong, but I just don't see how one outgoing email per day
(and no incoming mail) warrants a mail server.
Whether or not you see it, mail transfer agents have been standard
equipment on unix systems for decades. Suse provides a postfix MTA which
works nicely out of the box.
Would one ftp transfer per day "warrant" an ftp client? Would one
scheduled cron job per day "warrant" a cron daemon? Well, in any case,
feel free to reinvent the wheel if you don't like the standard solutions.
Joe
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