Sendmail: Do I need it running?

[Ryan Merrick]

Ekrem wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 02:00, Rus Foster wrote:
> 
>>On Mon, 29 Sep 2003, Ekrem wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Hi people,
>>>
>>>I'm using FreeBSD on my standalone desktop PC. I use dialup for the
>>>internet and use Evolution as the email client, but the following 2
>>>processes always running;
>>>
>>>sendmail: accepting connections (sendmail)
>>>sendmail: Queue runner at 00:30:00 for /var/spool/clientmqueue (sendmail)
>>>
>>>Do they need to be running for things like daily/weekly cron jobs that
>>>send emails to root, or for any other purpose?
>>
>>No if you aren't using SMTP to receive email from outside your can disable
>>these by putting sendmail_enable="no" in /etc/rc.conf then just kill of
>>the processes
>>
>>Rus
> 
> 
> Thanks for your reply.
> 
> Actually, I am retrieving my emails from my ISP's SMTP server but I know
> I don't need to run sendmail to retrieve them. I did kill those 2
> processes. I'm just too sure if it will have some impact on email
> notifications.
> 
> Interestingly, I do have sendmail_enable="NO" in my /etc/rc.conf file,
> yet sendmail continues to automatically start whenever I reboot.
> 
> I might have to go learn more about auto-start processes.
> 

To completely disable sendmail in #/etc/rc.conf use sendmail_enable="none"

Sendmail is used as the default mailer for cron. This only works if an 
email address is mapped to root in #/etc/aliases.

-Ryan