On 04/20/2007 06:23 PM somebody named Carlos E. R. wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > The Friday 2007-04-20 at 17:44 -0400, ken wrote: > >> I could be wrong, but I just don't see how one outgoing email per day >> (and no incoming mail) warrants a mail server. > > Yes, it does warrant an MTA, because it is simpler. Linux/unix are made up > of many programs that do specialized tasks well and safely. Sending email > is the job of the MTA, and it doesn't mean you would be setting up a full > fledged mail server. In fact, it won't be a mail server as it won't be > capable of receiving (external) mail.
Carlos, First, "simpler" is a subjective term and situational. What is simpler for one person or in one situation might not be simpler for another person or in another situation. And generally it isn't of pivotal importance how simple a technology is. A more important consideration is how appropriate a technology is to the situation. There's at least one other consideration which overrides both of these. But that's an off-list topic. Second, I hope we can agree that "mail server" and "MTA" are not the same thing. When I was first told by people here that I needed a *mail server*, I didn't think this was true for the particular issue I was asking about. Mail servers are great, but I just didn't think it was an appropriate solution to my issue. Nor did I think it was necessary to run postfix as a daemon to send an email from a mail client to a remote mail server. I agree with what you say about Linux/UNIX and the way they handle large tasks with suites of relatively small utilities (though in the past ten years or so there's been quite an increase in larger apps). This is one of the major advantages of Linux/UNIX over other OSs. This same sort of modularity is what makes postfix preferable to sendmail. And, yes, generally speaking, and depending upon the definition we give to "MTA", an MTA is commonly necessary to deliver mail. But much depends on how we define "MTA". Mutt, for example, has-- let's just call it "code"-- which delivers email to a remote mail server and which its documentation insists is *not* an MTA. Emacs also has its own code for delivering email to a remote mail server. Nail and sylpheed and pine too. I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure that Thunderbird does as well. And there may very well be others I don't know about which don't require a postfix daemon to send an email. And this very last part is what I was originally asking about. Talking about theory, mail servers, cron error reporting, and general systems administration is fine. But all these are a bit off-topic from my original question. Repeating my original request again here would suggest more optimism on my part than is warranted, so I'll just say I appreciate by all your replies and especially thank the one guy who provided the information about mutt. -- "This world ain't big enough for the both of us," said the big noema to the little noema. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
