On Tue, October 12, 2010 7:18 pm, Frank D wrote: > ---- Allen <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Fri, 2010-10-08 at 04:12 +0000, Frank D wrote: >> > >> > - >> > > >> > >> > If I understand you right, you want to recieve mail on one of the >> machines? Or are they going outside of your network? I'm pretty sure >> you don't even need a MTA (mail transfer agent, ie sendmail) with >> smartd, etc. if it's going to another machine. Though I've never had a >> machine without an MTA, or looked to see exactly how they send mail.. >> so I couldn't say for certain. >> > >> > >> > Frank DiMitri >> >> Frank, it looks like you're correct. I happened to be reading today an >> article called "Pernicious Ports" >> http://www.berghel.net/col-edit/digital_village/dec-05/dv_12-05.php >> >> =========================================================================================================================================================== >> >> (2) Unix-Centric >> >> Most UNIX systems, regardless of brand, offer SMTP mail services through >> TCP port 25. If the system is not actually a mail relay or server, then >> you likely do not need this service running at all. The main exposure >> lies in the failure to continuously patch the system. By the way, it is >> a common misconception that an SMTP server must be running for a local >> user or service to send email out of a UNIX box. This is simply not >> true. The recommended solution is to block TCP 25 at the firewall. > > SMTP is very simple, you don't need an SMTP server to SEND a message. Lots > of programs/scripts will just do this themselves. Opening a TCP connection > and setting up some basic stuff to send to a destination SMTP server is > not > hard. SMTP is a plain-text protocol. > > Some will pipe their output to a common program (I think 'mail' is used > for this a lot) in order to send a message to another machine. I could be > wrong about the program that's used.
Yes 'mail' is one of the programs you can use to send an email; I've occasionally used it to send an email within a script. However, don't think that just because you CAN send an email without an MTA installed that it's necessarily a good idea -- because without a 'real' MTA, there's no retrying so on any error the email simply gets lost. If you need to send an email and have the option of using a local MTA, do so. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Nov 3 - Open Source Hardware: Bugs, Beagles and Beyond Dec 1 - IBM's Open Client Deployment Jan 5 - Building a Comunity Site with Drupal
