Re: emacs, Gnus, sendmail ?

[Tim X]

>> news@absamail.co.za writes:
>>> Also emacs apparently uses sendmail to send mail.
>>
>> It only uses sendmail if you've set up sendmail (the Unix program).
>> Otherwise it uses sendmail.el (`slocate sendmail.el`)
>
>
>>> But the 'return-path/from' fields are not configured.
>>> And sendmail.cf is a 57K monster !
>
> Even when using the traditional sendmail.(com|org) program, you don't
> need to edit the sendmail.cf file directly.
>
>> Configure -> play around -> configure -> play around -> configure ->
>> testing (this used to be called playing around but now you've found a
>> systematic way to do it)
>>
>> Or, the alternative:
>>
>> configure -> play around -> throw hands up -> configure -> lose
>> mail -> configure -> throw hands way up -> lose more mail -> use Thunderbird.

This all sounds like the all too common frustration experienced when people try
to cut corners and setup a system without first having done their homework.
While there are a lot of things that will work with only minor tweaks 'out of
the box' and while these systems can eliminate the need to read docs and
understand, often things only appear to be working properly - weird behavior
can be lurking just under the surface which is easily overlooked. 

>From some of the comments, I'd suggest a bit more research and yo will save
hours of frustration. some points that may help -

- Be careful about how the term 'sendmail' is used. As the software 'sendmail'
  was one of the earliest mail transport agents, it has sort of become the
  defacto name used in many contexts to refer to the MTA (mail transport
  agent). For example, you will find many other MTAs have a compatibility
  layer/program called sendmail (i.e. postfix, qmail etc), which allows the MTA
  to be invoked as if it was sendmail. This is largely because back when
  sendmail was pretty much the default MTA on Unix systems, many scripts used
  calls to the sendmail binary to dispatch mail. Having compatibility layers
  meant that you could drop in a new MTA without breaking all those scripts
  etc. 

- Nobody configures sendmail by hand unless they are doing it for an exercise
  or to gain increased knowledge of the system. Sendmail is configured using m4
  macros. If you read the documentation, you will find that all you need to do
  is set a handful of config lines in an input file, run the m4 stuff and you
  get a customized sendmail.cfg. The trick is to actually read the installation
  docs for sendmail. However, few people run sendmail anymore and unless you
  need to, don't! There are many other MTAs out there. If you just need a
  system for your Linux box and it is a single user box, I'd suggest looking at
  something like Exim. For larger numbers of users, postfix or qmail are quite
  popular (I personally never liked qmail though). However, my recommendation
  to most (especially Linux users) is to use your ISPs mail server or the mail
  server used at work by everyone else. For a typical single user Linux box, it
  is unnecessary to run a mail server at all or you can do a minimal
  'smarthost' config, which involves setting up your local MTA to just relay
  mail to another server that does all the work (i.e. ISP or works server).
  Maintenance and administration of any network based access to a computer
  should not be done by anyone who doesn't know what they are doing or doesn't
  have the time or want to spend the time maintaining it as this is a common
  source of security problems or a source for spammers to use etc. 

- If all you need is to be able to send mail from within emacs, I would
  recommend looking at something like smtp.el (or one of the other similar
  elisp packages). Using this approach, I have configured my system with about
  7 lines in my .emacs file and two environment variables. This provides
  everything I need to send mail or post to newsgroups. 

- You don't need to run an MTA daemon unless you are going to recieve mail
  directly to that host. In many cases, its far simpler to use something like
  fetchmail or getmail. 

- Actually configuring a stand alone MTA can be useful if you have multiple
  applications you like to use to send mail as you often won't need to
  individually configure each application. Likewise, if you have multiple
  users. However, if you just use a couple of apps, like emacs and maybe
  thunderbird, I'd avoid the hassle and additional maintenance overhead.

- There are a number of environment variables that can be used to set things
  like default reply address. For example, Emacs 22 will honor the EMAIL and
  ORGANIZATION environment variables for setting specific mail headers, such as
  the from and x-organization headers. I beleive there is also a REPLY_TO env
  variable used by many apps. See the emacs manual for full details.

Tim


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au