Send-only recommendation

@gregr:

To do this, I installed sendmail, and it pretty much just worked; I didn't change any configuration settings, or even learn where those settings are…I just noted that it now sends mail. :-)

My question is, when I was perusing the Linode library, I didn't see any mention at all of sendmail, and I also read things on the net that say it's a huge behemoth and it's to be avoided. So…any recommendations for what I need to do? Is sendmail fine, or should I be using Exim or something else?

I would switch to exim. sendmail is a beast and the last thing you want right after you go live is to get shut down because you didn't configure sendmail correctly and its acting as an open relay.

@glg:

I would switch to exim. sendmail is a beast and the last thing you want right after you go live is to get shut down because you didn't configure sendmail correctly and its acting as an open relay.

Ok - done.

That was painless enough…once I figured out how to remove sendmail and its dependencies, exim was an easy install and setup. I removed sendmail with:

sudo apt-get remove sendmail

sudo apt-get autoremove

then installed exim4 per the Linode library article at

http://library.linode.com/email/exim/se … 0-maverick">http://library.linode.com/email/exim/send-only-mta-ubuntu-10.10-maverick

Made sure email was being sent ok (which it was)…and then just to be sure the setup was as expected, I verified with netstat -an that it was only listening on port 25 for the local 127.0.0.1 interface:

Active Internet connections (servers and established)

Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:22 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN

tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN

tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:3306 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN

tcp 0 0 192.168.1.196:22 192.168.1.103:59247 ESTABLISHED

tcp6 0 0 :::22 :::* LISTEN

udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:68 0.0.0.0:*

Thanks again!