[lug] "Simple" mail MTA setup?

[Andrew Diederich]

Hello Phil,

Friday, January 5, 2007, 8:43:07 AM, you wrote:

<snip>

> I want to configure an MTA that does the following:

> 1) accepts mail only from localhost
> 2) forwards the mail on to an smtp server which I will call the
>    smarthost for the rest of this email.
> 3) uses SSL or TLS to encrypt the transactions
> 4) can supply a password and username to the smarthost for verification.
> 5) DOES NOT INDICATE THE IP NUMBER THAT THE MAIL ORIGINATES FROM IN
>    THE HEADER BUT IDENTIFIES IT AS ORIGINATING FROM THE SMARTHOST.
> 6) is fully configured in 5 minutes
> 7) supports queueing of mail

Do you control the smarthost in 2)? Servers like postfix can
masquerade or rewrite as anything, but that doesn't mean that the
smarthost doesn't look at the IP the mail comes from (you) and put
that right back in.

6) is a rough one. I'd use postfix, myself, because it's been around a
long time, has good online documentation, and is easy to find packages
for.  Your configuration looks a lot like the null client and dialup
examples at http://www.postfix.org/STANDARD_CONFIGURATION_README.html

> A bit of explanation of the requirements is in order.

> I want this for home machines and particularly a laptop I travel
> with.

> I need item 5 because a number of groups that I mail to use blacklists,
> and my broadband provider for my house is comcast. My mail is
> occasionally trashed because of my mail originating from a
> number in the comcast ip block.

That stinks. I stopped using blacklists because I rejected too much
legitimate email.

> I have tried many of the standard MTA software (postfix, exim,
> sendmail, qmail) etc. I have spent hours trying these, only to find
> that the IP number gets encoded in the headers, and my mail is
> rejected by some small number of destinations. It is definitely not
> trivial to set them up anyway.

> My current solution is to use msmtp or esmtp, which are truely trivial
> to get working. The only problem with them is the queuing issue.

I don't know anything about these two mail clients, unfortunately.

> The transaction takes place in real time. So I can't do mail while the
> laptop is disconnected, and need to wait while the transaction is
> negotiated even when it is connected, which is occasionally 
> mildly annoying.

> Of course I can avoid all of this if I use an MUA that works with the
> smarthost directly (thunderbird, kmail, etc). But I like to use mutt,
> and even occasionally mailx, or formail, and also I want system
> notifications, and various PHP scripts looking for sendmail to work as
> well.

> There is probably some magic incantations of one of the sophisticated
> MTAs I mention above, but there is no way that I can get it without 
> a lot of work. Maybe one of you can give me the incantation? Or make
> another suggestion?

I think postfix is the way to go, but unless you control the
smarthost, it's going to tell everybody who you really are, anyway, no
matter what solution you use.

-- 
Best regards,
 Andrew