Re: Mailutils+nullmailer: sender full name
Op 17-10-2023 om 23:20 schreef Greg Wooledge:
On Tue, Oct 17, 2023 at 09:50:13PM +0200, Gertjan Klein wrote:
I do appreciate it. If I switch to bsd-mailx I have something that should
work. Although I'm concerned by the statement (on the Debian package page)
that it doesn't speak SMTP. This is how I send the mail on to my internet
provider with mailutils. I wouldn't know how else to do it.
The way Unix mail works is by dividing the workload between an MUA and
an MTA.
The MUA (Mail User Agent) provides the user interface. It's the program
you use to send and/or read mail. Examples include elm, pine, mutt, mailx,
Thunderbird, and so on.
The MTA (Mail Transport Agent) (or Transfer) is the back end. It's the
part that does the actual deliveries, including sending and receiving
messages over the Internet.
[...]
Thanks for this explanation. I should have realized this, but got
confused by that above statement. If a MUA uses a MTA for transport, the
MUA doesn't need to speak SMTP, I'd say, so why emphasize that it indeed
doesn't?
A command-line MUA like mailx sends mail to the MTA by invoking the
/usr/sbin/sendmail (traditionally /usr/lib/sendmail) program, which is
a hook provided by the MTA.
I'm configuring bookworm; nullmailer on it provides both.
So, it's not *expected* that your MUA will speak SMTP directly. That's
not its job.
Indeed. But:
[...] This is different
from when an MTA accepts a message directly from a MUA. That's usually
called a "submission", and can use either SMTP or /usr/sbin/sendmail.
So a submission from a MUA can use SMTP as well... The MTA could then be
bypassed. I suppose e.g. Thunderbird would do this. So it does perhaps
make sense that a MUA explains whether it needs a MTA.
(More extensive explanation deleted -- thanks!)
I skimmed parts of it. It appears to read ~/.mailrc if it exists.
You could try putting commands in there and seeing what happens.
The Debian package comes with an example configuration file, which I
copied to .mailrc. I added the line you suggested; it made no
difference. The configuration documentation (*), BTW, uses a completely
different syntax, resembling JSON.
I got fed up. I installed bsd-mailx and purged mailutils. That didn't
work out of the box either. I don't understand why not, but there's a
lot I don't understand. But the setting from your earlier message did
the trick. Now the From header looks like I believe it should look by
default, and I can move on to the next problem.
Thanks again, kind regards,
Gertjan.
*) https://mailutils.org/manual/html_section/mail.html
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