[lug] "Simple" mail MTA setup?

[Daniel Webb]

On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 04:15:24PM -0700, Phil Rasch wrote:

> Can I just ask one more thing?
> 
> I really would like it if I could set up a powerful MTA like postfix or exim
> or something with 5 minutes of work. But it never seems to work out that way.
> 
> I usually fuss around for 30 minutes to a couple of hours. Am I just slow on
> this stuff, or is it truely a hassle?
> 
> I never have any trouble with the simple tools I mentioned before
> (either msmtp, esmtp, kmail, thunderbird, etc), but I have never found
> a simple set of instructions (like 10 bullets or so) that help me
> through it for the powerful ones. It usually requires mucking about in
> 3 or 4 files, and choosing a few of many options, and running seperate
> passwd encrypting codes, etc.
> 
> Anybody want to point me to a simple tutorial? Remember, I want to use
> SSL or TLS, and need to send a username and password for verification to 
> the smarthost.

I've always had the most hassle with authentication issues.  Now I use openvpn
and don't worry about authentication beyond "allow from LAN" type
authentication, and postfix was very easy to setup for the
travelling-with-laptop situation, even having never used it before.  It wasn't
5 minutes though, more like an hour because it took me that long to figure out
that postfix won't use the nsswitch.conf hostname lookup unless you tell it
too (at least with Debian Etch).  

Using openvpn of course assumes you have access to the smarthost to put
openvpn on it.