LinuxQuestions.org - Mail Quickstart?

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- - Mail Quickstart? (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/mail-quickstart-133309/)

Mail Quickstart?

Any quick setup advice for mail under Slackware?

I've been running Slack from 8.1 to 9.0 as my desktop system and my
firewall/server, and though I've managed to patiently shed gui for
everything else, mail is still being done with netscape. It seems
like Mutt and an MTA (as far as I understand them) would be much more
fun; but setting up mail still seems like quantum physics to me. Is
it actually possible to get mail operating under run level 3?!

I've read through Mail-Administrator-HOWTO, Mail-User-HOWTO, and the
chapter on mail setup in O'Reilly's ``Running Linux'', but these all
refer to different technologies. Slack's /etc/rc.d/ files make it
look like the system wants to run sendmail (as an MTA?) by default.
But how do I configure? If the answer is ``do man sendmail'', then
I think I might put it off another couple of years.

Is mail really as complex as it seems, or have I just missed that
crucial HOWTO? Is there just one configuration file and two commands
that I happen to not know about?

Thanks in advance.

I was like u untill yesterday, not so correct untill half week ago.

Know wut do I do with sendmail ?
cd /var/log/packages
ls -la sendmail*
removepkg sendmail-....

Then I installed postfix from http://www.postfix.com
Get the source-tarball, extract into /usr/local/src
cd /usr/local/src/postfix-...
read the INSTALL
<<need to create user postfix, group postfix,postdrop>>
make makefile
make
make install
<<during make install u can easily let it choose it's defaults>>

With a little configuration on /etc/postfix/main.cf u ll be able to send mail to yahoo account already. See man postfix, how to start, then have a look into /var/log/maillog to see the error u must correct, it won't be hard. after one or todays u ll say bye bye forever to sendmail. I regreted why not do that earlier .. :D

I've modified the rc.sendmail to be rc.postfix, if some body interested:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Code:

#!/bin/sh

# /etc/rc.d/rc.postfix, make a symbolic link from rc.sendmail to it

# Start/stop/restart postfix.



SCRIPT=`basename $0`

PFX=/usr/sbin/postfix



postfix_check() {

  [ -x $PFX ] && postfix check

}



# Force delivery: attempt to deliver every message in the deferred

# mail queue. Normally, delivery of delayed mail happen at regular

# intervals, the interval doubling after each failed attempt.

postfix_flush() {

  [ -x $PFX ] && postfix flush

}



# Reload: reread configuration files. Running processes terminated

# at their earliest convenience.

postfix_reload() {

  [ -x $PFX ] && postfix reload

}



# Start postfix, also do a configuration check

postfix_start() {

  if [ -x $PFX ]; then

    echo "Starting postfix mail system with MAIL_VERBOSE 1"

    $PFX -v start

    # Run each Postfix daemon under a debugger control as specified

    # via the debugger_command parameter, set MAIL_DEBUG environment

    # $PFX -D start 

  fi

}



# Stop postfix orderly, running processes allowed to terminate

# at their earliest convenience

postfix_stop() {

  [ -x $PFX ] && postfix stop

}



# Stop abruptly, running processes signaled to stop immediately

postfix_abort() {

  [ -x $PFX ] && postfix abort

  # killall postfix

}



# Restart postfix:

postfix_restart() {

  postfix_stop

  sleep 1

  postfix_start

}



# This is usefull for filtering the important infos out from /var/log/maillog

postfix_status() {

  echo -e "\n\tegrep '(reject|warning|error|fatal|panic):' /var/log/maillog"

  egrep '(reject|warning|error|fatal|panic):' /var/log/maillog

}



case "$1" in

  'status')  postfix_status ;;

  'check')  postfix_check ;;

  'flush')  postfix_flush ;;

  'reload')  postfix_reload ;;

  'start')  postfix_start ;;

  'stop')    postfix_stop ;;

  'abort')  postfix_abort ;;

  'restart') postfix_restart ;;

  *) echo -e "\n\tUSAGE: $SCRIPT check|flush|reload|start|stop|abort|restart\n"

esac

Thanks guys! It took me a while to get back to the problem, but Postfix built and installed without a hitch (I just love the feeling of getting that 0 return value after the first shot at ``make''!), and I'm underway. The rc.postfix is a really nice idea, dirstyGuy.

The functionality "rc.postfix status" is cool for checking for errors while u r configuring on /etc/postfix/main.cf. Have to feed some informations about ur hostname,domain, create the aliases.db then it should be good supposed ur DNS is already configured with valid MX-records..

To have slack run it at boot time, look at /etc/rc.d/rc.M, I modified it to run rc.postfix:

Code:

at /etc/rc.d/rc.M line 179

# Start the sendmail daemon:

if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.potsfix ]; then

  . /etc/rc.d/rc.postfix start

elif [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.sendmail ]; then

  . /etc/rc.d/rc.sendmail start

fi