On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 01:54:34PM -0700, Scott Taylor wrote > The "ssmtp" package sets up a simplistic mail relay that'll allow > local apps to send mail to localhost and ssmtp just forwards it to > a real mail server somewhere else. But you'll need to tell even it > where to send your "root" emails.
Booby trap alert. ssmtp can install a symlink as /usr/sbin/sendmail which points back to /usr/sbin/ssmtp. I did that once... and chatty cron jobs sent their emails to "root". "sendmail" forwarded them to my "smarthost", i.e. my ISP's MTA. It in turn forwarded the emails to root@ my ISP. I got a polite email from my ISP asking me to stop that<g>. That's been my most embarressing moment as a user. I solved that by setting root=waltdnes. As a safety measure, I also deleted the "sendmail" symlink. This is where I learned about apps that *WILL NOT BUILD* if they can't find "sendmail". Surprisingly, mutt builds OK, and I point it to /usr/sbin/ssmtp. The surprises were gnupg and slrn refusing to build when they couldn't find "sendmail". In frustration, I went and did... touch /usr/sbin/sendmail chmod 755 /usr/sbin/sendmail chattr +i /usr/sbin/sendmail The presence of a zero-byte "executable" called "/usr/sbin/sendmail" gave gpg and slrn the necessary "warm fuzzies" to build on my system. While we're on the subject of ssmtp, I own my personal domain, and use several names @waltdnes.org (including postmaster and abuse) which are forwarded to my waltdnes account. It seems that ssmtp absolutely *INSISTS* on setting the "From:" to useraccount@, regardless of what I set the "From:" to in mutt. The only override I've managed to find is revaliases. It's somewhat clunky having to su - and edit revaliases to answer an email to one of my other aliases. Is there a glaringly obvious easier way that I've missed somewhere? -- Walter Dnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> An infinite number of monkeys pounding away on keyboards will eventually produce a report showing that Windows is more secure, and has a lower TCO, than linux. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
