Sendmail Enabler for Mac OS X

gulker writes "It's really nice to be able to use sendmail as a SMTP server on a PowerBook if you move around a lot. But enabling sendmail on OS X is non-trivial, and while a good tutorial exists, the stock Mac OS X 10.2 package is missing the m4 macro processor needed to regenerate sendmail.cf. So it was great news to hear about Bernard Teo's Sendmail Enabler, a cool Aqua-GUI-interface sendmail 'configurator' for Mac OS X."

Comments

It also might not work..

[mmontano]

Turning your own computer into a sendmail server only works if the recipient server trusts you and your machine.

A machine attached to a dial-up Earthlink account that is trying to sendmail through to an AOL email account looks a lot like a setup for spam.

As a result, many SMTP servers won't accept SMTP connections from unknown SMTP servers attached to unknown networks.

(I used to have a similar setup on my PB and used a variety of dial-up/wi-fi internet access and it rarely worked. I setup a private secure SMTP server for me and my friends and it works great.)

Re:It also might not work..

[mmontano]

I've set up a private SMTP server that's attached to a cable-modem and it works flawlessy, yet my Internet IP address is dynamically assigned through DHCP.

For the major dial-up networks, JoiNet/UUNET/NetZero/EarthLink and so on, they probably assign an advertised (and therefore known) block of IP addresses to dial-up connections.

There are numerous settings in postmail/sendmail/qmail etc that control who can send mail through SMTP servers. From experience, many of these are enabled to prevent 'random' SMTP servers from relaying mail through them.

That's why I feel the Sendmail Enabler for Mac OS X could not be the magic elixir that it is tempting to make out of it.

Re:It also might not work..

[diverman]

I have been running an SMTP server from my house for a number of years now. Few (if any) mail servers are configured to block delivery from a "suspicious" hostname/address.

The way it works is that a mail server will only allow relaying (sending mail to a user that that particular server doesn't manage) from a source address that is within it's network/subnet (or other allowed subnets). A server almost always accepts a connection for email to be delivered to an address that it handles (ie. where it's the end of the line).

Running sendmail (or other SMTP servers) on your local machine will only enable you to queue up your mail. Sendmail (by default configurations) does not attempt to relay the mail through another server. It tries to go directly to the mail server responsible for handling the mail. Essentially, you would have your local sendmail only allow relaying from your local host (or other home machines), and the sendmail server would deliver it to where it has to go.

THese are not likely to be blocked because they are on dialup. Few people put a system in place that it going to try and "determine" if it's a dynamic or dialup IP address. There's no real way for the sendmail server to know, unless it subscribes to a maintained list. And that would likely result in many failed deliveries, as many lists are not terribly accurate (I've dealt with some for other purposes).

So, if it doesn't work, it will be for a small minority or emails to be delivered.

So, maybe you did something wrong. Maybe you had open relaying enabled. THAT is something mail servers will refuse connections for.

Just my $0.02 on a post I think was mod'd up too much. :)

-Alex

What about Exim?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think exim is the best SMTP server for laptops, because it uses very little resources, is a snap to install, and is still highly configurable and very powerful. I use it on my PB12, and I'm very happy with it.

Use smtp.mac.com instead...

[mactari]

I tend to agree with the assertion that you don't need sendmail on OS X; that's what Mail.app is for.

The only time I've had a problem with my ISP's own smtp server, Mail.app automatically asked if I didn't want to use smtp.mac.com to send my mail. I don't have a .Mac account, so I was awfully impressed with OS X's desire to get my mail through, rain, sleet, hail, or whatever the bytes were doing today.

That said, Commando-ing the command line is nearly always a good thing. Setting up a sendmail server is pretty neat for people who might not use Mail.app (wacky mutt users!) or are Darwin diehards -- or just command-line curious. Between Fink and apps like this, you can do what you used to have to be a BSD expert to achieve.

But check Mail.app out again if you're using something else now. It's a much better app now than it was in OS X 10.0, when it was a pretty simple tech preview of the Address Book and spellcheck Cocoa textareas. And with Panther, the app seems to only be getting better.