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

Sendmail?!

[justinkim]

Just install postfix instead. Secure, easy to set up, right there in Fink. What's not to like?

Re:Sendmail?!

[EvilDrew]

You'll get your wish. The developers release of 10.3 (Panther) uses Postfix by default.

Re:Sendmail?!

[davids-world.com]

Sendmail crashed / stalled / left-to-walk-the-dog all the time on the powerbook, needed to be rebooted. Sometimes I didn't notice and my outgoing email stayed in the outgoing queue for days.

After I installed Postfix, everything works like a breeze. Installing Postfix is quite simple -- because there are one or two pitfalls, I wrote a short step-by-step tutorial.

Why sendmail is good for Apple servers

[Nightlily]

I'm happy to hear some allowed us to enable Sendmail. I know there are other SMTP servers out there (Postfix), but Sendmail is not a horrible mail server. Yes, there are bugs (any product that is used will have bugs reported eventually). Now, Exchange server.... that's a horrible mail server.

The best part about this news is that it gives Mac users more options. Regardless if you like a project or not, the ability to choose between server products helps advance the Apple server platform.

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

actually, m4(1) is in the Developer Tools

[Rich_Morin]

... but you'd still need to grab the Sendmail-specific macro files and such.

Re:Spam Relay Enabler maybe

[good soldier svejk]

It's really nice to be able to use sendmail as a SMTP server on a PowerBook if you move around a lot

No, it isn't.

How about, "I want to send out 15 million spams a day for my home based internet business, but I own a mac, what can I do?"

Seriously, you don't need sendmail to send out your email. That's what mail.app is for. Well, if you're not spammer, that is.

Yes it is. Just add,

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')

to the m4 file before generating your .cf. That will make sendmail listen only on the loopback address. Then you can point Mail.app at your loopback address and relay from any physical location without any fear of becoming a spam relay. This solves problems for me. At work we don't allow external relaying. Likewise comcast won't let me relay from work. But I can relay off myself no matter where I am or what account I am using. The only problem is that recently AOL has started refusing my messages simply because they come froma NATed address. Bastards!!

You also might want to add.

define(`confDONT_BLAME_SENDMAIL', `GroupWritableDirPathSafe')

Otherwise sendmail will break everytime you run Software Update. You can fix it by chmoding / 755. Alternatively you can add a "chmod 755 /" to the the end of your /etc/rc (since most updates seem to require a reboot anyway).

Back in the day (OpenStep) Mail.app let you call sendmail as an app, but AFAIK it now needs to relay off an address. There may be a way around this but I don't know it.