Kyle Brantley wrote:
First off, I'll ask: would adding an SMTP server (relay, the works, so an MTA
more accurately) be beyond the scope of dbmail completly? Or rather, is dbmail
being developed with 100% reliance on other MTAs and no future plans of having
it's own MTA built-in?
There are no plans to include our own MTA.
After looking over the SMTP protocol (lightly), from what I can see, this could
be done rather easily. All incoming mail is checked if the mailbox exists on
the local system; if so it's delievered (for inbound mail.) As for relay, the
user must authenticate with the same credientals as their POP3/IMAP credientals.
And you must keep a queue
What you'd have in the end: far less dependancy on other software, a
simplistic, yet 100% functional and secure SMTP server, and some more places to
double and triple check for exploits/bugs/buffer overflows/etc.
More places for US to look for exploits etc. It's a lot easier to let
other people, i.e. the Postfix, Exim, QMail and SendMail developers,
check their own software.
I don't know. Perhaps I'm missing something big and stupid here which will blow
this entire concept out of the water, but from what I can see, with the overall
simplicity of the SMTP protocols (RFC 821 and 2821), this is a very feasible
option. Note that the only reason I haven't fired up dbmail here is because I
hate working with other MTAs. Since I find adding lines to random files with
unknown syntax...'agitating' to say the least, and I consider myself at least
competent enough to run a mail server, I think this would be a very good idea.
It would add to dbmail overall, and give people like me more reason to use it ;)
DBMail should be kept (or made to be) small and simple. Adding an SMTP
server does not add anything functionality-wise, because we can already
use an MTA.
Ilja
