[gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Hey list,

I am looking for an as-simple-as-possible setup for local mail delivery.
What I mean by that is: the mail shall go into /var/spool/mail locally,
which is why I deem it overkill to set up and run a complicated smtpd
daemon with its own config file language.

At my previous employer we used mda on our Ubuntu-based machines, but this
is not available in Gentoo. It did extactly what I am looking for: receive
mail (most importantly from cron) via pipe and put it right into the spool
file, so I can see a message upon login and read it with mutt. That’s all
I need, so I can get summary reports of zfs snapshots, smartd messages and
so on.

I was looking through wiki articles, but they all employ the usual beasts
postfix, courier and so on. Do you have any recommendations?

Much obliged.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Alexey Mishustin]

Hello,

вс, 12 дек. 2021 г. в 16:25, Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7@gmx.de>:
>
> At my previous employer we used mda on our Ubuntu-based machines, but this
> is not available in Gentoo. It did extactly what I am looking for...

I have never used mailutils mda; I just noticed that there is a
configuration option
--disable-build-mda for mailutils [1] and thought, maybe, adding
$(use_enable build-mda) \
to the mailutils ebuild [2] will help to get mda in Gentoo.

[1] - https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2020-03/msg00007.html
[2] - https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/tree/net-mail/mailutils/mailutils-3.13.ebuild

-- 
Best regards,
Alex

Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[William Kenworthy]

I thought the gentoo default mail program is nullmailer? Changed from 
smtpd(? or something named similar) some time back.  Simple, reasonably 
versatile and has easy configuration.

BillK


On 12/12/21 21:25, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Hey list,
>
> I am looking for an as-simple-as-possible setup for local mail delivery.
> What I mean by that is: the mail shall go into /var/spool/mail locally,
> which is why I deem it overkill to set up and run a complicated smtpd
> daemon with its own config file language.
>
> At my previous employer we used mda on our Ubuntu-based machines, but this
> is not available in Gentoo. It did extactly what I am looking for: receive
> mail (most importantly from cron) via pipe and put it right into the spool
> file, so I can see a message upon login and read it with mutt. That’s all
> I need, so I can get summary reports of zfs snapshots, smartd messages and
> so on.
>
> I was looking through wiki articles, but they all employ the usual beasts
> postfix, courier and so on. Do you have any recommendations?
>
> Much obliged.
>

Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Peter Humphrey]

On Sunday, 12 December 2021 23:36:33 GMT William Kenworthy wrote:
> I thought the gentoo default mail program is nullmailer? Changed from
> smtpd(? or something named similar) some time back.  Simple, reasonably
> versatile and has easy configuration.

That's a sending program, not receiving.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[William Kenworthy]

True - missed that!

BillK


On 13/12/21 17:36, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Sunday, 12 December 2021 23:36:33 GMT William Kenworthy wrote:
>> I thought the gentoo default mail program is nullmailer? Changed from
>> smtpd(? or something named similar) some time back.  Simple, reasonably
>> versatile and has easy configuration.
> That's a sending program, not receiving.
>

Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[tastytea]

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On 2021-12-12 14:25+0100 Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7@gmx.de> wrote:

> Hey list,
> 
> I am looking for an as-simple-as-possible setup for local mail
> delivery. What I mean by that is: the mail shall go into
> /var/spool/mail locally, which is why I deem it overkill to set up
> and run a complicated smtpd daemon with its own config file language.

mail-client/mailx provides /usr/bin/mail which can be used for looking
at mail in /var/spool/mail/ and for sending it to local users. No
configuration necessary. cron and other software will automatically use
it.

Kind regards, tastytea

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Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/13/21 12:40 PM, tastytea wrote:
> mail-client/mailx provides /usr/bin/mail which can be used for looking 
> at mail in/var/spool/mail/  and for sending it to local users. No 
> configuration necessary. cron and other software will automatically 
> use it.

For some reason I thought that mailx (and / or nail) relied on a local 
MTA+LDA.  Even if it's only listening on 127.1.  --  I guess I'm wrong.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Am Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 08:40:05PM +0100 schrieb tastytea:
> On 2021-12-12 14:25+0100 Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7@gmx.de> wrote:
> 
> > Hey list,
> > 
> > I am looking for an as-simple-as-possible setup for local mail
> > delivery. What I mean by that is: the mail shall go into
> > /var/spool/mail locally, which is why I deem it overkill to set up
> > and run a complicated smtpd daemon with its own config file language.
> 
> mail-client/mailx provides /usr/bin/mail which can be used for looking
> at mail in /var/spool/mail/ and for sending it to local users. No
> configuration necessary. cron and other software will automatically use
> it.

OK, it looks promising -- very neatly small and tiny. But:

lcars ~ # echo hello | mail root
lcars ~ # mail
No mail for root
lcars ~ #

Using strace, I found out that mail from mailx puts those mail into
/var/spool/clientmqueue/, one file per mail, but not in a maildir structure.
I had similar issues with mailutils’ mda. The ebuild installs no manpage and
the package’s website simply points to debian.org. -_-

In many places I read that system mail—by default—goes into
/var/spool/mail/<user>, but until now I’ve yet to observe this behavior.
It’s becoming a little frustrating by now. This is also not my first attempt
at this; I tried this before in the past years but never reached the goal.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Am Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 10:34:08PM +0100 schrieb Frank Steinmetzger:

> Using strace, I found out that mail from mailx puts those mail into
> /var/spool/clientmqueue/, one file per mail, but not in a maildir structure.

OK, I found out that this is the usual outgoing queue which needs to be
processed by sendmail, probably through another cronjob or a process that
itself checks that directory periodically.

> In many places I read that system mail—by default—goes into
> /var/spool/mail/<user>, but until now I’ve yet to observe this behavior.

It’s really not easy to find a description of the default setup of olden
days (or I’m simply using the wrong search terms). Because when you search
for something like unix local mail setup, most results are about setting up
an SMTP server. In hindsight—perhaps that is simply the way to go. :-/

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Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[tastytea]

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On 2021-12-13 23:12+0100 Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7@gmx.de> wrote:

> Am Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 10:34:08PM +0100 schrieb Frank Steinmetzger:
> 
> > Using strace, I found out that mail from mailx puts those mail into
> > /var/spool/clientmqueue/, one file per mail, but not in a maildir
> > structure.  
> 
> OK, I found out that this is the usual outgoing queue which needs to
> be processed by sendmail, probably through another cronjob or a
> process that itself checks that directory periodically.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure this worked a few years ago. I just tested it on a
system on which I didn't configure mail before. My mails ended up in
/var/spool/nullmailer/queue. :-(

> > In many places I read that system mail—by default—goes into
> > /var/spool/mail/<user>, but until now I’ve yet to observe this
> > behavior.  
> 
> It’s really not easy to find a description of the default setup of
> olden days (or I’m simply using the wrong search terms). Because when
> you search for something like unix local mail setup, most results are
> about setting up an SMTP server. In hindsight—perhaps that is simply
> the way to go. :-/

A lot of packages depend on virtual/mta, including mailx. It seems you
have no choice but to configure one of the MTAs virtual/mta depends on.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/13/21 3:12 PM, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
>> Using strace, I found out that mail from mailx puts those mail into 
>> /var/spool/clientmqueue/, one file per mail, but not in a maildir structure.

Yes, the /var/spool/clientmqueue is the mail queue for outgoing messages 
from clients.  Hence the name "client m(ail) queue".

> OK, I found out that this is the usual outgoing queue which needs to be 
> processed by sendmail, probably through another cronjob or a process that 
> itself checks that directory periodically.

Sendmail is quintessentially a daemon that's running all the time.  As 
such it usually does it's own scheduling and does not depend on external 
scheduling.

>> In many places I read that system mail—by default—goes into
>> /var/spool/mail/<user>, but until now I’ve yet to observe this behavior.

/var/spool/mail/<user> and /var/mail/<user> are the quintessential 
locations for mbox based inbound email storage.

Note:  There are a number of other fancy client mail storage routines 
that don't use files in this path.

> It’s really not easy to find a description of the default setup of olden
> days (or I’m simply using the wrong search terms). Because when you search
> for something like unix local mail setup, most results are about setting up
> an SMTP server. In hindsight—perhaps that is simply the way to go. :-/
You will quite likely need a Mail Transfer Agent to receive the email, 
either via command (mail(x) / sendmail / etc) or read from a queue 
location like /var/spool/clientmqueue and then deliver the messages to 
where they belong.

There /may/ be an alternate "mail" command that does all of this in one 
function.  But I'd be surprised to learn about such.

Most of the surprise is because it would be combining three distinct 
parts of the email flow:  the Mail User Agent (a.k.a. MUA) generating 
the original outgoing message, the Message Transfer Agent (a.k.a. MTA) 
to receive the original message and do something with it, and the Local 
Delivery Agent (a.k.a. LDA) to put the message in the proper location.

The originating MUA can frequently be substituted at will with "mail", 
"mailx", and "nail" being three CLI based that come to mind immediately.

The MTA can frequently be one of many with Sendmail, Postfix, Courier, 
Exim coming to mind.

The LDA can easily be one of the following; procmail, maildrop, Courier, 
  and something super simple I don't remember the name of because I've 
not used it in so long.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

RE: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Laurence Perkins]

>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Grant Taylor <gtaylor@gentoo.tnetconsulting.net> 
>Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2021 3:34 PM
>To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
>Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted
>
>On 12/13/21 3:12 PM, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
>>> Using strace, I found out that mail from mailx puts those mail into 
>>> /var/spool/clientmqueue/, one file per mail, but not in a maildir structure.
>
>Yes, the /var/spool/clientmqueue is the mail queue for outgoing messages from clients.  Hence the name "client m(ail) queue".
>
>> OK, I found out that this is the usual outgoing queue which needs to 
>> be processed by sendmail, probably through another cronjob or a 
>> process that itself checks that directory periodically.
>
>Sendmail is quintessentially a daemon that's running all the time.  As such it usually does it's own scheduling and does not depend on external scheduling.
>
>>> In many places I read that system mail—by default—goes into 
>>> /var/spool/mail/<user>, but until now I’ve yet to observe this behavior.
>
>/var/spool/mail/<user> and /var/mail/<user> are the quintessential locations for mbox based inbound email storage.
>
>Note:  There are a number of other fancy client mail storage routines that don't use files in this path.
>
>> It’s really not easy to find a description of the default setup of 
>> olden days (or I’m simply using the wrong search terms). Because when 
>> you search for something like unix local mail setup, most results are 
>> about setting up an SMTP server. In hindsight—perhaps that is simply 
>> the way to go. :-/
>You will quite likely need a Mail Transfer Agent to receive the email, either via command (mail(x) / sendmail / etc) or read from a queue location like /var/spool/clientmqueue and then deliver the messages to where they belong.
>
>There /may/ be an alternate "mail" command that does all of this in one function.  But I'd be surprised to learn about such.
>
>Most of the surprise is because it would be combining three distinct parts of the email flow:  the Mail User Agent (a.k.a. MUA) generating the original outgoing message, the Message Transfer Agent (a.k.a. MTA) to receive the original message and do something with it, and the Local Delivery Agent (a.k.a. LDA) to put the message in the proper location.
>
>The originating MUA can frequently be substituted at will with "mail", "mailx", and "nail" being three CLI based that come to mind immediately.
>
>The MTA can frequently be one of many with Sendmail, Postfix, Courier, Exim coming to mind.
>
>The LDA can easily be one of the following; procmail, maildrop, Courier,
>  and something super simple I don't remember the name of because I've not used it in so long.
>
>
>
>--
>Grant. . . .
>unix || die
>
>

So one thing that's annoyed me for a while is that there are several things which will pull in nullmailer to accept local mails, but don't pull in anything to do local delivery (And I'm not sure if nullmailer can even pass things to local delivery) so your local delivery mails by default just stack up in the nullmailer outbound queue unless you configure it to pass them off to an external mail system.

Since the most commonly used of these programs are things like cron where local delivery is probably the only thing most users would care about it might be nice if the default configuration were one that does that, and then those who want local mail relayed elsewhere still don't have any significant extra setup work to do.

LMP

Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/15/21 1:21 PM, Laurence Perkins wrote:
> So one thing that's annoyed me for a while is that there are several 
> things which will pull in nullmailer to accept local mails, but don't 
> pull in anything to do local delivery (And I'm not sure if nullmailer 
> can even pass things to local delivery) so your local delivery mails 
> by default just stack up in the nullmailer outbound queue unless you 
> configure it to pass them off to an external mail system.
> 
> Since the most commonly used of these programs are things like cron 
> where local delivery is probably the only thing most users would 
> care about it might be nice if the default configuration were one 
> that does that, and then those who want local mail relayed elsewhere 
> still don't have any significant extra setup work to do.

The idea of having a default mail configuration that would deliver 
locally originated messages (e.g. from cron) to local user's mailboxes 
(mbox) in /var(/spool)/mail makes sense to me.

I don't think I'd /personally/ us it b/c I run full MTAs on all my 
systems.  But that's /me/.  I realize that I'm atypical.

But I would +1 a simple config that does local delivery from "<foo> | 
mail ${USER}" to end up in "/var/spool/mail/${USER}".



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Ralph Seichter]

* Frank Steinmetzger:

> I am looking for an as-simple-as-possible setup for local mail
> delivery.

See http://www.postfix.org/STANDARD_CONFIGURATION_README.html as a
starting point. Using Postfix for the purposes you described is an
easy-to-setup, robust option which can (but does not have to) grow with
possible future demands.

-Ralph

Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Am Sun, Dec 12, 2021 at 02:25:09PM +0100 schrieb Frank Steinmetzger:
> Hey list,
> 
> I am looking for an as-simple-as-possible setup for local mail delivery.
> What I mean by that is: the mail shall go into /var/spool/mail locally,
> which is why I deem it overkill to set up and run a complicated smtpd
> daemon with its own config file language.
> 
> At my previous employer we used mda on our Ubuntu-based machines, but this
> is not available in Gentoo.

Just for the record and completeness’ sake: I just cleaned out old browser
tabs (many months old) and from one of them I found out that the program was
actually called dma -- the DragonFly BSD mail transport agent, not mda. The
tab still stemmed from my last attempt at this whole topic.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/18/21 4:00 PM, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Just for the record and completeness’ sake: ... I found out that the 
> program was actually called dma -- the DragonFly BSD mail transport 
> agent, not mda.

Thank you for sharing your find Frank.

The DragonFly BSD MTA looks interesting.  I'll have to check it out. 
Especially if it's small and intended for local delivery and / or 
getting messages off of box all the while without exposing an SMTP port.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Am Sat, Dec 18, 2021 at 07:19:19PM -0700 schrieb Grant Taylor:
> On 12/18/21 4:00 PM, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> > Just for the record and completeness’ sake: ... I found out that the
> > program was actually called dma -- the DragonFly BSD mail transport
> > agent, not mda.
> 
> Thank you for sharing your find Frank.
> 
> The DragonFly BSD MTA looks interesting.  I'll have to check it out.
> Especially if it's small and intended for local delivery and / or getting
> messages off of box all the while without exposing an SMTP port.

I actually managed to get it going yesterday on both my laptop and PC. :)

Just install dma, remove /var/spool/mail/* from previous attempts (due to
wrong permission), and `echo test | mail root` worked like a charm both for
root and my user. But for some reason, when root mails to my user, the mail
remains stuck in the queue in /var/spool/dma. But that’s not really a
problem because it’s an irrelevant use case.

Now I finally have smartd messaging, and getting it into my mutt sidebar was
only one line away in muttrc. Coincidentally, I found out that I seem to
have smart monitoring included in KDE already. But that doesn’t help me on
the NAS, of course.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Am Sat, Dec 18, 2021 at 07:19:19PM -0700 schrieb Grant Taylor:
> On 12/18/21 4:00 PM, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> > Just for the record and completeness’ sake: ... I found out that the
> > program was actually called dma -- the DragonFly BSD mail transport
> > agent, not mda.
> 
> Thank you for sharing your find Frank.
> 
> The DragonFly BSD MTA looks interesting.  I'll have to check it out.
> Especially if it's small and intended for local delivery and / or getting
> messages off of box all the while without exposing an SMTP port.

A little update report. After the setup of dma went so smoothly on my Arch
installations, I wanted to recreate it on my Gentoo-based NAS over the
weekend:

- cloned the dma repo¹ and installed everything
- removed everything from /var/spool/mail and any leftover queues for a
  clean start
- changed the sendmail path in fcron.conf from usr/bin to usr/local/bin
- had to amend /etc/mailutils.conf, because it sets up the root mailbox as
  a maildir called .maildir (according to the comment, that is Gentoo-
  specific). So I just commented out that block to (hopefully) get GNU
  maildir default behavior

Now I finally get mails from cron et al on my NAS and can read them with
mail or mutt. I can sleep better now, knowing that it will monitor its four
6 TB disks and notify me at the first sign of trouble, including “there is
new mail” on the console. \o/

There is one last niggle: after I read a message with the mail tool, it
saves those messages in /root/mbox. It does not do this on Arch, but keeps
them in /var/spool/mail/root instead. So far I haven’t found out why it does
that and where that might be configured. Perhaps some leftover config from
previous experiments with different mail packages.


¹ https://github.com/corecode/dma

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Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Am Mon, Dec 20, 2021 at 08:08:21PM +0100 schrieb Frank Steinmetzger:

> There is one last niggle: after I read a message with the mail tool, it
> saves those messages in /root/mbox.

Which is actually a maildir directory. :D

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Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/20/21 12:08 PM, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> There is one last niggle: after I read a message with the mail tool, 
> it saves those messages in /root/mbox. It does not do this on Arch, 
> but keeps them in /var/spool/mail/root instead.

This sounds like the doing of your mail user agent.

The MTA+LDA receive and deliver the mail (respectively) to the user's 
mailbox.

The MUA is what reads / modifies the mailbox.

So ... compare the email client that you're using between the two systems.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Am Mon, Dec 20, 2021 at 01:00:13PM -0700 schrieb Grant Taylor:
> On 12/20/21 12:08 PM, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> > There is one last niggle: after I read a message with the mail tool, it
> > saves those messages in /root/mbox. It does not do this on Arch, but
> > keeps them in /var/spool/mail/root instead.
> 
> This sounds like the doing of your mail user agent.
> 
> The MTA+LDA receive and deliver the mail (respectively) to the user's
> mailbox.

Delivery works on both systems (with a little caveat, see second-last
paragraph).

> The MUA is what reads / modifies the mailbox.
> So ... compare the email client that you're using between the two systems.

At first I believed that both systems used mail from GNU mailutils.
But I erred:

My Gentoo NAS only has mailutils installed. But while I have that also
installed on Arch, I was in fact using s-nail’s mail program there.
Mailutils installs its mail as /usr/bin/gnu-mail instead, which allows both
packages to co-exist (which Gentoo does not). So I tried gnu-mail on Arch,
but this does not move read mail away upon exit like its Gentoo cousin.

I did more trials, wrote a lengthy description of it into this message and
threw them away again, so I wouldn’t bore you. In the end I gave up, removed
Gentoo’s mailutils and went with s-nail. And now it works. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Maybe building dma from source broke some stuff, because it installed into
/usr/local. `echo foo | mail root` (mail from mailutils) produces mail that
remains in dma’s queue, whereas `echo bar | sendmail root` (/usr/local/sbin/
sendmail from dma) gets the mail delivered to the spool file. But the latter
mails were missing vital headers and thus mail had a problem displaying
them properly.

It’s all a bit voodoo-esque to my simple-minded user’s point of view;
confusion over many implementations of the same standard; they should
interoperate, but maybe don’t, or maybe I did not configure them properly.
plus the overly complex configs and info documentation on GNU’s side which
keeps me away. It must have been great days back in the 80s. I wish I had
experienced those times and machines.

-- 
Grüße | Greetings | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

What lies on the bottom of the ocean and shivers? - A nervours wreck.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/20/21 3:09 PM, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Delivery works on both systems

:-)

> (with a little caveat, see second-last paragraph).

;-)

> At first I believed that both systems used mail from GNU mailutils. 
> But I erred:

Ya.  Determining /which/ implementation of a command is being used can 
be ... difficult at times.

> My Gentoo NAS only has mailutils installed. But while I have that also 
> installed on Arch, I was in fact using s-nail’s mail program there. 
> Mailutils installs its mail as /usr/bin/gnu-mail instead, which allows 
> both packages to co-exist (which Gentoo does not).

Yep.  That could be an issue.  It's not bad if you are aware of it and 
can account for it.

> So I tried gnu-mail on Arch, but this does not move read mail away 
> upon exit like its Gentoo cousin.

That might be a default configuration / rc file in somewhere in /etc.

> I did more trials, wrote a lengthy description of it into this message 
> and threw them away again, so I wouldn’t bore you.

/me chuckles mildly.

I doubt that you would bore me.  I might also learn something about Arch 
and possibly even Gentoo.  But those bits have already gone through the 
circuit.  (Portmanteau of "water under the bridge"?)

> In the end I gave up, removed Gentoo’s mailutils and went with 
> s-nail. And now it works. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It sounds like you've achieved your goal /and/ that we (at least you and 
I) learned some things along the way.  :-D

> Maybe building dma from source broke some stuff, because it installed 
> into /usr/local. `echo foo | mail root` (mail from mailutils) produces 
> mail that remains in dma’s queue, whereas `echo bar | sendmail root` 
> (/usr/local/sbin/ sendmail from dma) gets the mail delivered to the 
> spool file.

I would expect the `mail` and `sendmail` commands (binaries / scripts) 
to do slightly different things.  Both should accept messages on STDIN. 
But what they do with them might be different.

Leaving the message in the spool makes me think that there is 
expectation that something else, maybe even another part of DMA, will do 
something with the spooled message(s).  Maybe DMA is expecting some sort 
of cron job to work the mail queue.

> But the latter mails were missing vital headers and thus mail had a 
> problem displaying them properly.

That sounds like raw, unprocessed email to me.

> It’s all a bit voodoo-esque to my simple-minded user’s point of 
> view; confusion over many implementations of the same standard;

The wonderful thing about standards is that we have so many to choose 
from.  }:-)

> they should interoperate,

Ideally.

> but maybe don’t, or maybe I did not configure them properly.

See above comment about cron et al.

> plus the overly complex configs and info documentation on GNU’s 
> side which keeps me away. It must have been great days back in the 
> 80s. I wish I had experienced those times and machines.

Email is ... non-trivial, to put it mildly.  There are many different 
things that interact and each behaves slightly differently while doing a 
different part of the job.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Wol]

On 20/12/2021 22:28, Grant Taylor wrote:
>> But the latter mails were missing vital headers and thus mail had a 
>> problem displaying them properly.
> 
> That sounds like raw, unprocessed email to me.

You mean the body sans envelope?

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] Local mail delivery agent (MDA) wanted

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/20/21 3:37 PM, Wol wrote:
> You mean the body sans envelope?

Kinda, sorta, yes, no, maybe.

I'd have to compare the two formats to be able to say more definitively, 
or with any certainty.  But, ya, that's the /type/ of difference that 
I'm thinking of.

Aside:  What /actually/ is the body vs envelope?  In SMTP it's simple, 
it, everything between the DATA and the trailing <CR><LF>.<CR><LF> is 
the body the MAIL FROM: and RCPT TO(s) are envelope.  But RFC 822 
messages on disk, that's a bit of a horse of a different color.  It's 
easy to differentiate body from headers, but envelope???



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die