first stab at simple mailer

[Oliver Fromme]

walt <wa1ter at myrealbox.com> wrote:
 > Emiel Kollof wrote:
 > > Op dinsdag 20 maart 2007 22:43, schreef Simon 'corecode' Schubert:
 > > 
 > > > How it works:
 > [...]
 > 
 > > If I somehow lag behind with this ...
 > 
 > I'm lagging behind both of you by decades :o) but I do have a
 > question, based on years of reading bikeshed debates over what
 > email solution is the best.  (And I still have no idea!)
 > 
 > I do know that this problem is a very old one, and there are
 > already many candidates 'running for election' on this platform.
 > 
 > Simon:  what problem are you trying to solve with your first
 > stab at a solution?  What do you find lacking in all of the
 > existing attempts to solve the same problem?

For local delivery, there are several possibilities.
/usr/libexec/mail.local comes to mind, which is as simple
and lightweight as it can possibly get.  It's part of the
sendmail suite, but can be used independently from it.
And then there's maildrop or procmail, if more capabilities
are needed for filtering etc.  (Personally I use maildrop
on my machines, because the filtering language syntax is
cleaner and easier to read/write -- YMMV).

For simple remote delivery I use ssmtp ("Simple SMTP", on
FreeBSD it's from ports/mail/ssmtp, haven't checked pkgsrc
pkgsrc yet but I'm sure it's there, too).  However, it
doesn't do queuing, i.e. if immediate delivery fails, an
error is returned to the calling process which then has to
act appropriately.  However, I think a queuing feature
could be added to ssmtp quite easily.  A bigger problem
is probably that it's GPL.  :-(   But there are other
similar tools ...  esmtp comes to mind, or nbsmtp which
already supports queueing, SSL/TLS, STARTTLS and SASL, see
nbsmtp.ferdyx.org.

Well, I'm just mentioning existing options.  Whether one
of those could be used, or whether it makes more sense to
re-invent the wheel, that's for others to decide.  :-)

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd

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