Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mail cannot send emails (trying to use it with smartd)

[Grant Taylor]

On 4/2/20 6:26 PM, Caveman Al Toraboran wrote:
> though i'm a bit curious about sendmail (if your time allows).

Feel free to ask questions about sendmail.  I'll do my best to answer.

> do you mean the ebuild "sendmail"? or the command "sendmail"?

In this context, ebuild as a reference to the MTA known as Sendmail.

> i used to think it's a swiss-army kind of tool (used to call
> "sendmail" in my cgi scripts decades ago without any infrastructure;
> by just directly zapping recipient's smtp gateway).

Yes, Sendmail can e a Swiss Army knife.  That's one of it's advantages. 
  That's also one of it's disadvantages.

Your historic use of Sendmail is an example of using a local queuing 
MTA.  Your CGI scripts passed the message off to the queuing MTA and 
didn't need to worry about what to do if the remote mail server couldn't 
be reached.  You didn't have to bother with detecting the error and 
reporting it to the end user via the web form.  You didn't have to 
bother with storing information for later retry.  The local queuing MTA 
did all of that for you.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die