[arch-general] Light-weight SMTP "server"
Any good suggestions for a light-weight SMTP server? All email goes off-box to my ISP for remote delivery, I don't require any local delivery. Things like exim/sendmail/postfix feels like overkill. It would even be enough if all that's available is something like an /usr/lib/sendmail executable. Is there something suitable and light-weight? /M -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe
Magnus Therning wrote:
Any good suggestions for a light-weight SMTP server?
All email goes off-box to my ISP for remote delivery, I don't require any local delivery. Things like exim/sendmail/postfix feels like overkill. It would even be enough if all that's available is something like an /usr/lib/sendmail executable. Is there something suitable and light-weight?
/M
Searching the arch packages turned up a few: http://www.archlinux.org/packages/?q=smtp Caveats: * haven't used any of these, so can't vouch for how good they are. (Maybe others can chime in?) * a few of them appear to be unmaintained orphans BTW, I'd be curious to hear back what you wind up choosing. I'm using my MTA for a similar purpose as you (smart host forwarding to an ISP) and currently using exim for it, but like you said it's way overkill for that. Would happily move to something simpler. HTH, DR
I have used msmtp. From memory it just consists of a command line utility and a config file containing the mail server you want to use, credentials if used, etc. Worked well for me. There are quite a few tutorials on the web about using it with mutt. On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 7:06 AM, David Rosenstrauch <darose@darose.net>wrote:
Magnus Therning wrote:
Any good suggestions for a light-weight SMTP server?
All email goes off-box to my ISP for remote delivery, I don't require any local delivery. Things like exim/sendmail/postfix feels like overkill. It would even be enough if all that's available is something like an /usr/lib/sendmail executable. Is there something suitable and light-weight?
/M
Searching the arch packages turned up a few: http://www.archlinux.org/packages/?q=smtp
Caveats:
* haven't used any of these, so can't vouch for how good they are. (Maybe others can chime in?)
* a few of them appear to be unmaintained orphans
BTW, I'd be curious to hear back what you wind up choosing. I'm using my MTA for a similar purpose as you (smart host forwarding to an ISP) and currently using exim for it, but like you said it's way overkill for that. Would happily move to something simpler.
HTH,
DR
yes msmtp! am still not on arch but using it on deb-oriented distros so easy to handle is the bin in arch? On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 08:19:25AM +1000, Mike Sampson wrote:
I have used msmtp. From memory it just consists of a command line utility and a config file containing the mail server you want to use, credentials if used, etc. Worked well for me. There are quite a few tutorials on the web about using it with mutt.
-- '2+ es podcasting http://sarigama.namaste.jp/podcast/rss.xml
'2+ wrote:
yes msmtp! am still not on arch but using it on deb-oriented distros so easy to handle is the bin in arch?
It's in extra: % pacman -Ss msmtp extra/msmtp 1.4.17-1 a mini smtp client I'll give it a go. /M -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe
Mike Sampson wrote:
I have used msmtp. From memory it just consists of a command line utility and a config file containing the mail server you want to use, credentials if used, etc. Worked well for me. There are quite a few tutorials on the web about using it with mutt.
It works beautifully. I especially like the ability to have a per-user configuration together with a system config (that beats ssmtp). After replacing dcron by fcron I can now get the cron-output mailed off the machine as well. Thanks for the help! /M -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe
On Fri, June 5, 2009 6:23 pm, Magnus Therning wrote:
Mike Sampson wrote:
I have used msmtp. From memory it just consists of a command line utility and a config file containing the mail server you want to use, credentials if used, etc. Worked well for me. There are quite a few tutorials on the web about using it with mutt.
It works beautifully. I especially like the ability to have a per-user configuration together with a system config (that beats ssmtp). After replacing dcron by fcron I can now get the cron-output mailed off the machine as well.
Thanks for the help!
/M
-- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnusï¼ therningï¼org Jabber: magnusï¼ therningï¼org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe
Just curious, by the way: msmtp isn't exactly an SMTP "server", correct? It's really just a sendmail replacement, right? (i.e., not a full-fledged SMTP daemon, listening on port 25, etc.) If that's the case, then I don't think I could use it to replace exim. By using exim on my home server (configured to relay mail out to my ISP), I can VPN in to the server from my laptop and then have Thunderbird on the laptop send mail using the SMTP server on 10.1.0.1:25. A simple sendmail executable on the server wouldn't let me accomplish this. Exim works perfectly in this configuration, but it's really overkill for this purpose, and given Exim's large and confusing config file it'd be nice to replace it with something simpler. But I can live with the status quo if I have to. DR
I did something similar but using ssh. Instead of vpn'ing to your home server, you could ssh to it and remote forward a port to your ISP's smtp server, like this: ssh me@home.-R 22025:smtp.isp.com:25 or something like this. You then only need ssh on the server; no vpn (for that) nor stmp relays... It worked perfectly for... N 2009/6/5 David Rosenstrauch <darose@darose.net>
On Fri, June 5, 2009 6:23 pm, Magnus Therning wrote:
Mike Sampson wrote:
I have used msmtp. From memory it just consists of a command line utility and a config file containing the mail server you want to use, credentials if used, etc. Worked well for me. There are quite a few tutorials on the web about using it with mutt.
It works beautifully. I especially like the ability to have a per-user configuration together with a system config (that beats ssmtp). After replacing dcron by fcron I can now get the cron-output mailed off the machine as well.
Thanks for the help!
/M
-- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe
Just curious, by the way: msmtp isn't exactly an SMTP "server", correct? It's really just a sendmail replacement, right? (i.e., not a full-fledged SMTP daemon, listening on port 25, etc.)
If that's the case, then I don't think I could use it to replace exim. By using exim on my home server (configured to relay mail out to my ISP), I can VPN in to the server from my laptop and then have Thunderbird on the laptop send mail using the SMTP server on 10.1.0.1:25. A simple sendmail executable on the server wouldn't let me accomplish this.
Exim works perfectly in this configuration, but it's really overkill for this purpose, and given Exim's large and confusing config file it'd be nice to replace it with something simpler. But I can live with the status quo if I have to.
DR
Just curious, by the way: msmtp isn't exactly an SMTP "server", correct? It's really just a sendmail replacement, right? (i.e., not a full-fledged SMTP daemon, listening on port 25, etc.)
DR
Correct. It is just a command line tool that talks to an smtp server. That was all I needed. If you need an actual mail server you would need exim, postfix or similar. Regards, Mike
David Rosenstrauch wrote:
On Fri, June 5, 2009 6:23 pm, Magnus Therning wrote:
Mike Sampson wrote:
I have used msmtp. From memory it just consists of a command line utility and a config file containing the mail server you want to use, credentials if used, etc. Worked well for me. There are quite a few tutorials on the web about using it with mutt. It works beautifully. I especially like the ability to have a per-user configuration together with a system config (that beats ssmtp). After replacing dcron by fcron I can now get the cron-output mailed off the machine as well.
Just curious, by the way: msmtp isn't exactly an SMTP "server", correct? It's really just a sendmail replacement, right? (i.e., not a full-fledged SMTP daemon, listening on port 25, etc.)
That is correct.
If that's the case, then I don't think I could use it to replace exim. By using exim on my home server (configured to relay mail out to my ISP), I can VPN in to the server from my laptop and then have Thunderbird on the laptop send mail using the SMTP server on 10.1.0.1:25. A simple sendmail executable on the server wouldn't let me accomplish this.
No, it's not a drop-in replacement for exim, or any other SMTP _server_. The one thing I realised a while back was that I didn't really _need_ a full-fledged server. I read all my email via IMAP and send via my ISP's server. However, some tools I use (e.g. cron and darcs) make use of a command line too to send email (something like /usr/sbin/sendmail). Why do you _need_ an SMTP server? From the sounds of it you could use your ISP's server directly from the laptop via the VPN connection. Either that, or as another poster suggested, use SSH port forwarding to get to the SMTP server. /M -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe
On Sat, June 6, 2009 7:01 am, Magnus Therning wrote:
Why do you _need_ an SMTP server? From the sounds of it you could use your ISP's server directly from the laptop via the VPN connection. Either that, or as another poster suggested, use SSH port forwarding to get to the SMTP server.
/M
-- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnusï¼ therningï¼org Jabber: magnusï¼ therningï¼org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe
Well, the way I have my setup configured is that all my email - both in and out - goes through my home server. My server uses fetchmail to grab incoming mail from the ISP, dovecot to provide IMAP capabilities on my server, and exim with smart host forwarding to send mail out. A bit complicated, I know, but this way all my mail is on my home server, not at my ISP, automatically gets backed up, etc. The reason I use VPN is because I need to access both SMTP port and IMAP port from the server (as well as SSH). It starts to get to be a pain to set up multiple SSH tunnels. DR
David Rosenstrauch wrote:
On Sat, June 6, 2009 7:01 am, Magnus Therning wrote:
Why do you _need_ an SMTP server? From the sounds of it you could use your ISP's server directly from the laptop via the VPN connection. Either that, or as another poster suggested, use SSH port forwarding to get to the SMTP server.
Well, the way I have my setup configured is that all my email - both in and out - goes through my home server. My server uses fetchmail to grab incoming mail from the ISP, dovecot to provide IMAP capabilities on my server, and exim with smart host forwarding to send mail out. A bit complicated, I know, but this way all my mail is on my home server, not at my ISP, automatically gets backed up, etc.
Still sounds like you don't necessarily _need_ a full-fledged SMTP server at home. You can configure fetchmail to use `deliver`, which comes with dovecot, for the local delivery, at least if you are using per-user fetchmail configs. Then you have to configure all your MUAs to use your ISP's SMTP. I assume you already have all MUAs configured to use your dovecot instance, including saving a copy of sent emails to a folder on it.
The reason I use VPN is because I need to access both SMTP port and IMAP port from the server (as well as SSH). It starts to get to be a pain to set up multiple SSH tunnels.
Using a VPN is arguably easier when you need many to "tunnel" many connections via the same network/computer. However, if your clients have SOCKS support then it might be worth knowing that SSH can act as a SOCKS proxy. Note that I'm not saying you should modify your setup in any way, if it's working and you're happy with it then why "fix" it? It's always good to know about the option though, right? /M -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe
Magnus Therning wrote:
David Rosenstrauch wrote:
Well, the way I have my setup configured is that all my email - both in and out - goes through my home server. My server uses fetchmail to grab incoming mail from the ISP, dovecot to provide IMAP capabilities on my server, and exim with smart host forwarding to send mail out. A bit complicated, I know, but this way all my mail is on my home server, not at my ISP, automatically gets backed up, etc.
Still sounds like you don't necessarily _need_ a full-fledged SMTP server at home. You can configure fetchmail to use `deliver`, which comes with dovecot, for the local delivery, at least if you are using per-user fetchmail configs. Then you have to configure all your MUAs to use your ISP's SMTP. I assume you already have all MUAs configured to use your dovecot instance, including saving a copy of sent emails to a folder on it.
Using a VPN is arguably easier when you need many to "tunnel" many connections via the same network/computer. However, if your clients have SOCKS support then it might be worth knowing that SSH can act as a SOCKS proxy.
Note that I'm not saying you should modify your setup in any way, if it's working and you're happy with it then why "fix" it? It's always good to know about the option though, right?
/M
Good to know about the dovecot deliver thing - I hadn't been aware of that before. I'll probably just leave things the way they are for now though. Everything's working perfectly, and there's not really anything to be gained by changing my setup. I was just hoping for a simpler, drop-in replacement for exim, but it doesn't sound like there is one. Thanks, DR
On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 3:32 PM, David Rosenstrauch<darose@darose.net> wrote:
Magnus Therning wrote:
David Rosenstrauch wrote:
Well, the way I have my setup configured is that all my email - both in and out - goes through my home server. My server uses fetchmail to grab incoming mail from the ISP, dovecot to provide IMAP capabilities on my server, and exim with smart host forwarding to send mail out. A bit complicated, I know, but this way all my mail is on my home server, not at my ISP, automatically gets backed up, etc.
Still sounds like you don't necessarily _need_ a full-fledged SMTP server at home. You can configure fetchmail to use `deliver`, which comes with dovecot, for the local delivery, at least if you are using per-user fetchmail configs. Then you have to configure all your MUAs to use your ISP's SMTP. I assume you already have all MUAs configured to use your dovecot instance, including saving a copy of sent emails to a folder on it.
Using a VPN is arguably easier when you need many to "tunnel" many connections via the same network/computer. However, if your clients have SOCKS support then it might be worth knowing that SSH can act as a SOCKS proxy.
Note that I'm not saying you should modify your setup in any way, if it's working and you're happy with it then why "fix" it? It's always good to know about the option though, right?
/M
Good to know about the dovecot deliver thing - I hadn't been aware of that before. I'll probably just leave things the way they are for now though. Everything's working perfectly, and there's not really anything to be gained by changing my setup. I was just hoping for a simpler, drop-in replacement for exim, but it doesn't sound like there is one.
Yes, I stumbled on it when I looked into server-side filtering. The one thing I really wanted, but wich procmail didn't support was setting tags on emails as they are delivered. Dovecot has support for Sieve[1], and in version 1.2 they will have support for setting tags using it (I am currently running a slightly old RC). /M [1]: http://wiki.dovecot.org/LDA/Sieve -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe
Magnus Therning wrote:
Any good suggestions for a light-weight SMTP server?
All email goes off-box to my ISP for remote delivery, I don't require any local delivery. Things like exim/sendmail/postfix feels like overkill. It would even be enough if all that's available is something like an /usr/lib/sendmail executable. Is there something suitable and light-weight?
/M
I'd use postfix. Use this basic main.cf for sending only: queue_directory = /var/spool/postfix command_directory = /usr/sbin daemon_directory = /usr/lib/postfix myhostname = CHANGE.THIS.TO.SOME.RESOLVABLE.FQDN mynetworks_style = host home_mailbox = Maildir/ alias_database = $alias_maps alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/aliases # relayhost = [my.relay.host] Comment out relayhost if you want to relay your e-mail via another server (for example your ISP's SMTP server). Glenn
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