[CLUE-Tech] mail from a box without a mail server

[Timothy C. Klein]

* David Anselmi (anselmi at americanisp.net) wrote:
> Keith Hellman wrote:
> [...]
> 
> >Jason:  I'm not a mail guru but I'm pretty sure you don't HAVE to have a
> >mail server running to SEND mail.  I've sent mail via telnet before (
> >although only for debugging purposes).  Whenever I want to mail some
> >thing directly from a program I use the /bin/mail command.
> 
> AFAIK, some programs require an MTA to send mail--that way they don't 
> have to know SMTP, just pass the mail in to the MTA program.  But having 
> an MTA (like sendmail) installed to send doesn't mean it listens to receive.
> 
> Or that it listens to anything besides localhost.
> 
> Or that the firewall rules don't block all unwanted connections (in or out).
> 
> Or that I know what I'm talking about ;-)
> 

Not having a MTA installed can be a pain.  You might consider programs
like nullmailer that implement only a limited set of SMPT stuff to get
mail from you machine to the outside world.  Then you can firewall the
outside connections for SMTP.  This won't lose much in the way of
security, but will gain a nice amount in usability.

And you won't have to hope your black-magic incantation, er, I mean
Sendmail config file doesn't have any nasty security holes lurking
therein.

Tim
--
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== Timothy Klein || teece at silverklein.net   ==
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== "Hello, World" 17 Errors, 31 Warnings... ==
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