[plug] Smallest MTA (Sendmail/SMTP) for Ubuntu

[Daniel Pittman]

Bernd Felsche <berfel at innovative.iinet.net.au> writes:
> Tim <weirdit at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>So all I want basically is cron jobs, and database backups sent to my
>>email. But, I don't want to setup a full MTA (SMTP server) and I don't
>>want to relay through another SMTP server as I have no idea where my
>>clients machines are going to be.
>>So... What's the smallest MTA/SMTP server people know for Ubuntu, and
>>easiest to configure for just basic sending only?
>
> Do you need the SMTP server to cache?

I think you mean "queue" rather than "cache".

> You can write your own easily enough in Python; if you speak Python.
> <http://docs.python.org/library/smtpd.html> It would only be _small_
> if you already have Python installed for another reason.

If you forgive me saying so, that is taking masochism to extremes that
/I/ wouldn't want to visit. ;)

Writing an MTA is a lot harder than it sounds, even a simple one.  The
most basic level (submission to an existing SMTP server) is simple
enough[1], but once you start adding features like SASL, MX lookup or
other "easy" features of SMTP it gets hard.

If you actually want it to be both safe and effective things get even
harder, and the SMTP RFCs might as well be comprised mostly of rusty,
sharp edge cases to cut yourself on.


Friends don't let friends reinventing the SMTP MTA wheel.


> Postfix is not a big install. Postfix can be set up for simple caching
> and forwarding (relay);

Forwarding and relaying are different things, and neither is about just
delivering locally generated email to another host.  You can end up
confusing people quite a bit by using the wrong terms.

[...]

> Obtuse used to offer a simple SMTP forwarding daemon (smtpfwdd) as
> part of the Juniper firewall toolkit. It still appears to be
> available on *BSD distributuions but slipped off the Linux distros
> about 4 to 5 years ago.

That would require an upstream smarthost, which the OP already
established that he didn't want.

Regards,
        Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  ...as long as you have libraries that deal with MIME for you.