Re: ssmtp and cron

[Jason Tishler <jason at tishler dot net>]

Matthias,

On Fri, Jan 03, 2003 at 06:43:01PM +0100, Matthias Bobzien wrote:
> Mark and Jason, thanks for the quick responses!

You are welcome.

> Jason Tishler wrote:
> > I have found that some SMTP servers do not accept mail with
> > unqualified domain names.  This may be your problem.
> >
> > In the past, I have patched cron to "send mail" via procmail.  Now,
> > I just use exim and configure it to accept unqualified domain names
> > from localhost.
> 
> I'm not sure if I understand that correctly - can I use exim to run as a
> SMTP-server on my machine?

Yes.

> So could I change my ssmtp.conf to use my machine as a SMTP-server

Yes.

> and exim forwards it to the machine where my mail is collected (a
> POP-server)?

Maybe, see below...

This is my setup.  I configure:

1.  cron to deliver mail to $LOGNAME@$HOSTNAME (e.g., jt@althea) via
    MAILTO
2a. exim to allow relaying from localhost (and my Linux box)
2a. exim to accept mail with unqualified domain names from any host
2b. exim to deliver non-local mail to my ISP's SMTP server
2c. exim to deliver local mail to the user's mailbox or via their
    ~/.forward file (e.g., for procmail)
3.  ssmtp to deliver mail to localhost

See attached for my exim.conf file.

> I'm a bit confused here. Usually I use two servers to handle my mail:
> mailout.uni-bonn.de as SMTP-server for outgoing mail and
> mail.ikg.uni-bonn.de as POP-server for incoming mail.  So is it
> possible to configure exim that way that I use it between cron (or
> whatever) and the SMTP-server?

Possibly, but I never tried because I read my mail with mutt so it
seemed more natural to just deliver cron mail directly to my (local)
mailbox.

> I thought the problem lies in the combination of cron and ssmtp. Both of
> them work fine separately. For example the following command entered on
> the command line
> /usr/sbin/ssmtp.exe -fbobzien@ikg.uni-bonn.de bobzien@ikg.uni-bonn.de <
> input.txt
> with input.txt as an empty file sends an empty mail to myself. Putting
> that line into crontab results with the errors
> (can't open the smtp port (25) on mailout.uni-bonn.de..) and (unable to
> connect to "mailout.uni-bonn.de" port 25..) in the event log.

Hmm...I don't know what to make of the above.

Jason

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Attachment: exim.conf
Description: Text document

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