Re: Bug#275685: ITP: msmtp -- smtp client which can be used as a smtp plugin with mutt
Scripsit George Danchev <danchev@spnet.net>
> IMHO a MTA must be capable acts as a client and as a server to transfer
> messages between machines and is responsible for properly routing
> messages to their destination, e.g. RFC 974. msmtp does not do all
> of these, therefor it is not a MTA, and might have nothing to do
> with /usr/sbin/sendmail.
You are wrong. See nullmailer.
The definition of mail-transport-agent is that it provides a
/usr/sbin/sendmail that local software can use to submit emails for
delivery to arbitrary addresses with some reasonable expectation that
it will actually be delivered.
It is *not* required that the package that provides
mail-transport-agent must itself do any particular part of the
delivery process, as long as its /usr/sbin/sendmail will *somehow*
arrange for delivery.
It would be perfectly good to have a package airgap-mailer whose
/usr/sbin/sendmail will just *print* hardcopies of its input on a
configured printer, with instructions to the human operator to type
the email into the machine at the Internet-connected side of the air
gap. This package would provide mail-transport-agent because it
implements the policy-defined API for shipping email for delivery.
> Note that telnet does know nothing about smtp protocol.
Neither does airgap-mailer.
> > Note that a MTA isn't required to know ANYTHING about smtp. Suppose a
> > package provides an sendmail that is an alias for 'ssh mailhub
> > /usr/sbin/sendmail', then that package is a MTA.
> Such a package will require a dependency of ssh (at least) on the remote
> machine and you will be in a little trouble hacking your control file to
> satisfy things like that ;-)
That is up to the system administrator to arrange. If it provides a
/usr/sbin/sendmail, then it is an MTA. It does not make it any less an
MTA that it requires some manual configuration before its
/usr/sbin/sendmail can do anything useful with its input. Most MTA's
do, actually.
> I think ssmtp is incorretly described as a MTA
That must be because you don't understand what an MTA is.
> WARNING: the above is all it does; it does not receive mail, expand aliases
> or manage a queue. That belongs on a mail hub with a system administrator.
Neither of these are necessary tasks for an MTA.
--
Henning Makholm "The spirits will have to knit like
banshees, but with enough spirits it *can* be done!"
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