most of what you want is already setup in a default install of most distributions of linux. sendmail or qmail or postfix are some of the most common smtp servers. That's called a Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) it runs locally on your system and listens on port 25. Fetchmail usually retrieves mail remotely and passes the mail to the local MTA for delivery to your local user accounts. The MTA can also accept smtp connections from a Mail User Agent (MUA) like pine , mutt, kmail, etc, and then deliver the mail to it's destination. If an email is addressed to a remote site, the MTA will look up the MX record and attempt to deliver the message remotely (to a listening MTA). For you to receive mail directly to your MTA you need a static ip address and a domain name with a proper MX record. (you don't seem to want this)
This really depends mostly on a properly setup network connection and dns services. The MTA will do most of the rest. You probably should setup a proper host name for the computer. Some remote MTA's will refuse your mail if your host is not setup correctly. The other issue is that a lot of isp's don't let you send email directly out on port 25, they force you to use thier MTA. This is to prevent spammers from using a local MTA to send spam. You can still use an MTA locally you just have to forward all email to your ISP's MTA for final delivery.. this is a configuration option. > I have spent the afternoon in search of information regarding setting up a > mail server, but I have only been successful in confusing myself. The > problem is I am not sure if I would actually be setting up a server or if I > would be using sendmail. Typically my email is sent using my DSL ISP's SMTP > server. I would like to bypass this set and send the email out directly. > Based on this, what is the best option? Thanks for any suggestions anyone > might have regarding this matter. > -- ================================= Paul Rushing [EMAIL PROTECTED] =================================
