[gentoo-user] Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[gentoo-user] Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[Tom Eastman]

Hey guys,

I know there must be a bunch of these out there, but there's always a problem 
with signal-to-noise for this kind of question.

I have a laptop, from which I would like to be able to send mail whenever I feel 
like it.  This laptop is only occasionally connected to the internet, and has 
very low resources (so memory resident daemons are less favourable).

So what I'm looking for is a program that acts like 'sendmail' (so that I can 
send email from mutt), and when it gets mail to send it stores it in a queue.

When I'm connected to a network, I can then manually dump the queue onto the 
smtp server *of my choice*, since the server would very depending on where I'm 
plugged into.

Some kind of command like:

	$ sudo dump_all_mail_to   smtp.wherever.i.am.net

Does such a program exist?  Really I'm just looking for something like ssmtp, 
but with a queue.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

	Tom

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Re: [gentoo-user] Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[John Jolet]

On Oct 25, 2005, at 4:51 PM, Tom Eastman wrote:

> Hey guys,
>
> I know there must be a bunch of these out there, but there's always  
> a problem with signal-to-noise for this kind of question.
>
> I have a laptop, from which I would like to be able to send mail  
> whenever I feel like it.  This laptop is only occasionally  
> connected to the internet, and has very low resources (so memory  
> resident daemons are less favourable).
>
> So what I'm looking for is a program that acts like 'sendmail' (so  
> that I can send email from mutt), and when it gets mail to send it  
> stores it in a queue.
>
> When I'm connected to a network, I can then manually dump the queue  
> onto the smtp server *of my choice*, since the server would very  
> depending on where I'm plugged into.
>
> Some kind of command like:
>
>     $ sudo dump_all_mail_to   smtp.wherever.i.am.net
>
> Does such a program exist?  Really I'm just looking for something  
> like ssmtp, but with a queue.
>
most mtas (postfix, sendmail, and exim for sure) have multiple ways  
of being called.  One of which is a "send your queue and die" mode.   
pick an mta and read the docs.
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks!
>
>     Tom
>
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>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[Stroller]

On Oct 26, 2005, at 12:27 pm, John Jolet wrote:
>> ...
>> So what I'm looking for is a program that acts like 'sendmail' (so 
>> that I can send email from mutt), and when it gets mail to send it 
>> stores it in a queue....
>>
>> Some kind of command like:
>>
>>     $ sudo dump_all_mail_to   smtp.wherever.i.am.net
>>
>> Does such a program exist?  Really I'm just looking for something 
>> like ssmtp, but with a queue.
>
> most mtas (postfix, sendmail, and exim for sure) have multiple ways of 
> being called.  One of which is a "send your queue and die" mode.  pick 
> an mta and read the docs.

Postfix would be _ideal_ except that "relayhost" is static. I don't 
believe there is any way to define "relayhost" to change according to 
your current ISP.

So if he runs `postfix flush`:
- and he has no "relayhost" defined then some ISPs will reject his mail 
because it comes from dial-129.crummy.isp.net  (AOL like to do this)
- and he has his home ISP's SMTP server listed then it will likely fail 
when sending mail from his office.

Apple's email program handles this pretty well, accepting a list of 
SMTP servers that it'll try in turn, but I don't know about any of the 
Linux email programs. I would have thought that the ideal solution for 
the original poster would be to find an SMTP server that he can access 
from anywhere, probably using authenticated SMTP. If he wants a queue 
for when his laptop is offline then he uses Postfix locally & sets the 
authenticating SMTP server as "relayhost" - all messages will be 
delivered that way when he runs `postfix flush`.

I believe that Yahoo! & GMail offer outgoing authenticated SMTP 
services, and if you have a Yahoo.co.uk address this is free. 
Alternatively he could set up Postfix on his home server & relay 
through that.

The final solution (that i can think of) would be to write a 
dump_all_mail_to script that takes $1 and edits it into the "relayhost" 
line of /etc/postfix/main.cf but I'm inclined to think that the other 
solutions are "better" because they're more "standardised".

Stroller.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[John Jolet]

On Oct 26, 2005, at 3:22 PM, Stroller wrote:

>
> On Oct 26, 2005, at 12:27 pm, John Jolet wrote:
>
>>> ...
>>> So what I'm looking for is a program that acts like  
>>> 'sendmail' (so that I can send email from mutt), and when it gets  
>>> mail to send it stores it in a queue....
>>>
>>> Some kind of command like:
>>>
>>>     $ sudo dump_all_mail_to   smtp.wherever.i.am.net
>>>
>>> Does such a program exist?  Really I'm just looking for something  
>>> like ssmtp, but with a queue.
>>>
>>
>> most mtas (postfix, sendmail, and exim for sure) have multiple  
>> ways of being called.  One of which is a "send your queue and die"  
>> mode.  pick an mta and read the docs.
>>
>
> Postfix would be _ideal_ except that "relayhost" is static. I don't  
> believe there is any way to define "relayhost" to change according  
> to your current ISP.
>
hadn't thought of that, since my home mail server allows  
authenticated smtp.  darn.

> So if he runs `postfix flush`:
> - and he has no "relayhost" defined then some ISPs will reject his  
> mail because it comes from dial-129.crummy.isp.net  (AOL like to do  
> this)
> - and he has his home ISP's SMTP server listed then it will likely  
> fail when sending mail from his office.
>
> Apple's email program handles this pretty well, accepting a list of  
> SMTP servers that it'll try in turn, but I don't know about any of  
> the Linux email programs. I would have thought that the ideal  
> solution for the original poster would be to find an SMTP server  
> that he can access from anywhere, probably using authenticated  
> SMTP. If he wants a queue for when his laptop is offline then he  
> uses Postfix locally & sets the authenticating SMTP server as  
> "relayhost" - all messages will be delivered that way when he runs  
> `postfix flush`.
>
> I believe that Yahoo! & GMail offer outgoing authenticated SMTP  
> services, and if you have a Yahoo.co.uk address this is free.  
> Alternatively he could set up Postfix on his home server & relay  
> through that.
>
> The final solution (that i can think of) would be to write a  
> dump_all_mail_to script that takes $1 and edits it into the  
> "relayhost" line of /etc/postfix/main.cf but I'm inclined to think  
> that the other solutions are "better" because they're more  
> "standardised".
>
> Stroller.
>
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>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[Stroller]

On Oct 26, 2005, at 9:35 pm, John Jolet wrote:
>>
>> Postfix would be _ideal_ except that "relayhost" is static. I don't 
>> believe there is any way to define "relayhost" to change according to 
>> your current ISP.
>>
> hadn't thought of that, since my home mail server allows authenticated 
> smtp.  darn.

Set "relayhost" on the laptop to be your home mail server, then. You'll 
need to setup Postfix on the laptop to authenticate & do SSL but it's 
easily done.

Stroller.

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[gentoo-user] Re: Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[Tom Eastman]

Stroller wrote:
> Set "relayhost" on the laptop to be your home mail server, then. You'll 
> need to setup Postfix on the laptop to authenticate & do SSL but it's 
> easily done.
> 
> Stroller.
> 

Hmm some interesting ideas, thanks!  I also found something called 'nullmailer' 
which sounds like it works in a way similar to Stroller's description of the 
apple mailer.  But I think it's a daemon, which wants to be running.

I *do* have a home server which is running SMTP, it accepts email from my LAN, 
but not the outside world.  Running postfix but haven't looked into learning how 
to set up SMTP authentication.

Unfortunately, that wouldn't help anyway since at work, where I tend to plug my 
laptop in, I'm firewalled off from my home server.

Ah, well, I'll keep digging :-)

	Tom

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[Nick Rout]

Hey there, you could try postix:

1. use it's sendmail binary so you don't have a daemon ruuning

2. take a look here about how to configure postfix to defer delivery:

http://www.postfix.org/faq.html#dialup

3. write a short script, call it, say, dumpmail, called with 

dumpmail ispname

dumpmail does the following:

1. looks up ispname in a table and from that table discovers the smtp
server to use (ispname doesn't have to be an isp of course, it could be
office, bills_office, clientx_office etc)

2. runs postconf to change the  "relayhost" in /etc/postfix/main.cf then runs postfix reload to load the new config

3. runs sendmail -q to dump the mail to the smtp server of choice.

You can run it manually when you plug into a network, or with a bit more
work you can make it run automatically when your interface comes up.



On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 15:15:08 +1300
Tom Eastman wrote:

> Stroller wrote:
> > Set "relayhost" on the laptop to be your home mail server, then. You'll 
> > need to setup Postfix on the laptop to authenticate & do SSL but it's 
> > easily done.
> > 
> > Stroller.
> > 
> 
> Hmm some interesting ideas, thanks!  I also found something called 'nullmailer' 
> which sounds like it works in a way similar to Stroller's description of the 
> apple mailer.  But I think it's a daemon, which wants to be running.
> 
> I *do* have a home server which is running SMTP, it accepts email from my LAN, 
> but not the outside world.  Running postfix but haven't looked into learning how 
> to set up SMTP authentication.
> 
> Unfortunately, that wouldn't help anyway since at work, where I tend to plug my 
> laptop in, I'm firewalled off from my home server.
> 
> Ah, well, I'll keep digging :-)
> 
> 	Tom
> 
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-- 
Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[W.Kenworthy]

I get around this problem by running a zebedee tunnel on the laptop to
my home server using imap: the tunnel surfaces inside my home LAN which
is heavily firewalled, but unauthenticated internally.

Avoids a whole lot of issues running public servers, as well as
simplifying laptop setup.

BillK

On Thu, 2005-10-27 at 15:15 +1300, Tom Eastman wrote:
> Stroller wrote:
> > Set "relayhost" on the laptop to be your home mail server, then. You'll 
> > need to setup Postfix on the laptop to authenticate & do SSL but it's 
> > easily done.
> > 
> > Stroller.
> > 
> 
> Hmm some interesting ideas, thanks!  I also found something called 'nullmailer' 
> which sounds like it works in a way similar to Stroller's description of the 
> apple mailer.  But I think it's a daemon, which wants to be running.
> 
> I *do* have a home server which is running SMTP, it accepts email from my LAN, 
> but not the outside world.  Running postfix but haven't looked into learning how 
> to set up SMTP authentication.
> 
> Unfortunately, that wouldn't help anyway since at work, where I tend to plug my 
> laptop in, I'm firewalled off from my home server.
> 
> Ah, well, I'll keep digging :-)
> 
> 	Tom
> 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[Willie Wong]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2005 at 03:15:08PM +1300, Tom Eastman wrote:
> I *do* have a home server which is running SMTP, it accepts email from my 
> LAN, but not the outside world.  Running postfix but haven't looked into 
> learning how to set up SMTP authentication.
> 
> Unfortunately, that wouldn't help anyway since at work, where I tend to 
> plug my laptop in, I'm firewalled off from my home server.
> 

Do you have sshd listening on your home server? 

Does the corporate firewall at work allow outgoing ssh traffic?

If you answer yes to both, you can just bounce an ssh tunnel between
your laptop and your ssh gateway....

W
-- 
"Unfamilliarity does bring terror, so I sympathize with those of you who 
aren't."
~DeathMech, S. Sondhi. P-town PHY 205
Sortir en Pantoufles: up 4 days, 21:13
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 15:15:08 +1300, Tom Eastman wrote:

> Hmm some interesting ideas, thanks!  I also found something called
> 'nullmailer' which sounds like it works in a way similar to Stroller's
> description of the apple mailer.  But I think it's a daemon, which
> wants to be running.

The nullmailer web page doesn't say anything about queueing, but then it
doesn't say much about anything. It looks like nullmailer is an
equivalent to ssmtp. If it does do queueing and you don't want to run
a daemon, what's wrong with using a script that starts the daemon before
your mailer and stops it after?


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Eye of newt, toe of frog, regular Coke and fries to go, please.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[Richard Fish]

Stroller wrote:

>
> On Oct 26, 2005, at 12:27 pm, John Jolet wrote:
>
>>> ...
>>> So what I'm looking for is a program that acts like 'sendmail' (so 
>>> that I can send email from mutt), and when it gets mail to send it 
>>> stores it in a queue....
>>>
>>> Some kind of command like:
>>>
>>>     $ sudo dump_all_mail_to   smtp.wherever.i.am.net
>>>
>>> Does such a program exist?  Really I'm just looking for something 
>>> like ssmtp, but with a queue.
>>
>>
>> most mtas (postfix, sendmail, and exim for sure) have multiple ways 
>> of being called.  One of which is a "send your queue and die" mode.  
>> pick an mta and read the docs.
>
>
> Postfix would be _ideal_ except that "relayhost" is static. I don't 
> believe there is any way to define "relayhost" to change according to 
> your current ISP.


If you use dhclient as your dhcp client, you can write up a 
/etc/dhcp/dhclient-exit-hooks to read the smtp-server option given by 
the DHCP server, and modify any necessary configuration files as 
necessary with sed/grep/etc...

I do this currently to modify my samba configuration to dynamically take 
advantage of WINS servers.

Of course, if the DHCP server doesn't provide the smtp-server option, 
well, you can always set it based on the domain-name option...

-Richard

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[gentoo-user] Re: Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[James]

Tom Eastman <tom <at> cs.otago.ac.nz> writes:


> So what I'm looking for is a program that acts like 'sendmail' (so that I can 
> send email from mutt), and when it gets mail to send it stores it in a queue.

> When I'm connected to a network, I can then manually dump the queue onto the 
> smtp server *of my choice*, since the server would very depending on where I'm 
> plugged into.

> Some kind of command like:

> 	$ sudo dump_all_mail_to   smtp.wherever.i.am.net

YES it exist, but, some of the 'old timers' on the list are likely
to fall into deep laughter....

The original *Mail* tool. Note not mail but 'Mail'

for example:

Mail -s <subject> $USER < <body-file>          body-file to all usernames
                                               in the file user-list-file

For example:

Mail -s paychecks -vt   looser@mycompany.com   < /var/spool/mail/paycheck_stub


It's command line based and very friendly with shell scripts.

  'man Mail' should get you started. Lots of newer more 
sophisticated things exist:

'eix mail'  will lists reems of possibilities, but, 
'Mail' is dirt simple to use.  

HTH,

James


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[Stroller]

On Oct 26, 2005, at 2:51 pm, James wrote:
>
>> So what I'm looking for is a program that acts like 'sendmail' ...I 
>> can then manually dump the queue onto the
>> smtp server *of my choice*, since the server would very depending on 
>> where I'm
>> plugged into.
>
>> Some kind of command like:
>
>> 	$ sudo dump_all_mail_to   smtp.wherever.i.am.net
>
> YES it exist, but, some of the 'old timers' on the list are likely
> to fall into deep laughter....
>
> The original *Mail* tool. Note not mail but 'Mail'
> ...
>   'man Mail' should get you started. Lots of newer more
> sophisticated things exist:

I don't see how that permits the OP to choose his mailserver. Either 
I'm reading the original posting quite wrongly (and I concede that this 
could easily be the case) or you haven't read it at all.

Stroller.

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[gentoo-user] Re: Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[Tom Eastman]

James wrote:
> YES it exist, but, some of the 'old timers' on the list are likely
> to fall into deep laughter....
> 
> The original *Mail* tool. Note not mail but 'Mail'
> 
> for example:
> 
> Mail -s <subject> $USER < <body-file>          body-file to all usernames
>                                                in the file user-list-file

Not sure... do you just mean 'mail' from the mailx package?

I like 'mail' for quickly throwing off emails from programs and such, but I 
don't think it fills this particular niche.

  - something that emulates 'sendmail', so that mutt, pine, or any other email 
client that doesn't do SMTP can use it.
  - dumps the email into a queue to be flushed next time I'm online.
  - I can flush the email to whatever SMTP is appropriate when I plug in.

In fact, looking at the man page, it would appear that 'mail' *uses* 'sendmail' 
to deliver.  So I don't think it can replace it.  Or are you speaking of a 
different program?

	Tom

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[gentoo-user] Re: Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[James]

Tom Eastman <tom <at> cs.otago.ac.nz> writes:


The old berkely Mail.   

> Not sure... do you just mean 'mail' from the mailx package?

> In fact, looking at the man page, it would appear that 'mail' 
> *uses* 'sendmail' 
> to deliver.  So I don't think it can replace it.  
> Or are you speaking of a 
> different program?

Sorry, I thought that you *had sendmail* running.  Yes you'll need sendmail
or an equivalent package.

James



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Re: [gentoo-user] Simple SMTP queue for a laptop

[Oliver Friedrich]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Tom Eastman wrote:

> Hey guys,
>
> I know there must be a bunch of these out there, but there's always
> a problem with signal-to-noise for this kind of question.
>
> I have a laptop, from which I would like to be able to send mail
> whenever I feel like it. This laptop is only occasionally
> connected to the internet, and has very low resources (so memory
> resident daemons are less favourable).
>
> So what I'm looking for is a program that acts like 'sendmail' (so
> that I can send email from mutt), and when it gets mail to send it
> stores it in a queue.
>
> When I'm connected to a network, I can then manually dump the queue
> onto the smtp server *of my choice*, since the server would very
> depending on where I'm plugged into.
>
> Some kind of command like:
>
> $ sudo dump_all_mail_to smtp.wherever.i.am.net
>
> Does such a program exist? Really I'm just looking for something
> like ssmtp, but with a queue.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Tom
>
Just found... look at "mail-mta/esmtp"

http://esmtp.sourceforge.net/

It will do deliver on user based configuration,queueing for
dial-up-connections and local delivery via MDA.

Greets BeowulfOF
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