best options for a *WORKING* MTA

Matthew Seaman m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk
Mon Jun 1 21:08:39 UTC 2015


On 01/06/2015 20:39, Aryeh Friedman wrote:
> Then tell me how this is not broken when the default behaviour (even after
> editing local-host-names):
> 
> from Localhost:
> telnet localhost 25
> [standard SMTP output]
> 
> from any other machine:
> telnet mailserver 25
> connection refused
> 
> and no where in the handbook or documentation does it a) say this is the
> default behavior and b) how to fix it with installing SASL or something
> else from ports (violating the idea that the base system works out of the
> box with no additions)

local-host-names has nothing to do with what network interfaces and
ports sendmail will listen on.

The default setting using the stock sendmail with 'sendmail_enable="NO"'
is to run sendmail bound to the loopback interface.  This means you can
send e-mail but not receive it on a machine.

To disable sendmail completely you need 'sendmail_outbound_enable="NO"'

This is documented in rc.sendmail(8)

Now, making sendmail work as an MTA to receive incoming e-mails is more
complex.  I will happily explain, but as it seems that you have managed
to make exim do what you want, I shall forbear to do so unless requested.

Other than to confirm that while the stock sendmail will both send and
receive e-mail, you will certainly need to compile SASL functionality
into it (or simply use the ports version of sendmail) if you want to be
able to authenticate users eg. for submitting new messages.  The stock
sendmail in the base system is poorly configured for use as a personal MTA.

Personally I'd just install postfix -- I'm a recent convert -- as it
makes much more sense to me than either sendmail or exim, but whatever
floats your boat.

	Cheers,

	Matthew



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