[lug] MTAs MUAs and DNS, oh my!

[Wayde Allen]

On Wed, 7 Jun 2000, Chris Riddoch wrote:

> Most MUAs (except the most user-friendly/less functional) seem to pref
> er sending mail a local MTA rather than a remote server. (Mutt's FAQ c
> learly states that it's not an MTA)
> 
> Most MTAs seem to like having a fully-qualified domain name to use. Se
> ndmail, qmail, exim, and smail complain and refuse to send mail along 
> unless they can resolve the DNS of their host.
> 
> Fetchmail slurps mail from another server to the local system, but it 
> works with the local MTA to send messages  into the user's local mail 
> spool. (I mention this because the last time I asked someone about my 
> setup they wanted to know why I felt I needed a local MTA at all)  Bes
> ides, I want to be able to compose and read mail offline - it's easier
>  to have it end up on localhost anyway, via fetchmail.
> 
> This certainly suggests the need for anyone on dialup, without a DNS e
> ntry for their host, using a program like fetchmail, to have an MTA in
>  the system for being able to recieve and send email.
> 
> Yet if the user wants to send mail, and the host has no DNS entry, and
>  the mail client is not an MTA (mutt), and the ISP's mail server compl
> ains when it is asked to send along mail because the mail client is gi
> ving the info from its own system instead of the ISP's info, (username
> @localhost isn't a what I want in my From: field, of course)...
> 
> What am I supposed to tell mutt/gnus/miscellaneous perl/python scripts
>  to do, when they send mail? How do *you* set up a dialup system for h
> andling email?

I was hoping that someone more knowledgeable than I would answer this one,
but it looks like that isn't going to happen.

I typically use Pine, which has an entry telling it which SMTP server to
hand the message to.  However, like you pointed out the Mutt FAQ
<http://www.mutt.org/> says: 

   How can I make Mutt use a SMTP server to send email, like Pine or
   [insert favorite Windows-based email client here)? 

   answer from Mikko Hänninen

      You can't. Mutt is a MUA (Mail User Agent), not a MTA (Mail
   Transport Agent). Other email programs include MTA functionality but
   the Mutt way is to use the proper tool for each task, instead of making
   a giant program that does everything. In short, it's not Mutt's job to
   get the mail to a remote SMTP server.

So it looks like you'll need to setup a mail transport agent on your
system.  They list several possibilities in the FAQ, but I don't think you
could go very wrong with Qmail.  

As far as how you tell Qmail how to set the outgoing addresses, this is
pretty well covered in the Qmail manual.  I'd take a look at the Qmail FAQ
located at <http://cr.yp.to/qmail/faq.html>.  In particular, check out the
sections on "Controlling the appearance of outgoing messages" and "Routing
outgoing messages".  Of particular interest would be the section on "How
do I send local messages to another host?", and/or the section on "How do
I set up host masquerading?".

Since Mutt appears to be POP aware, you probably don't really need
anything else to get your mail off of the remote machine, but if you want
to use something like procmail for filtering you may want to consider
installing fetchmail too.  Fetchmail would pop your mail off of the remote
server and inject it into the local MTA system that you'll need to have
running anyway.

- Wayde
  (wallen at boulder.nist.gov)