Re: [Phpgroupware-users] Setting up local mail delivery

[Chris Weiss]

On 6/13/05, James Mohr <address@hidden> wrote:
> The difference is exactly the point. IMAP and POP3 are *part* of what I would
> term an email "server" in that they are "serving" the email. Whereas SMTP is
> simply the transport, which is all I need.
> 
> In not an issue of being of a "small footprint" or "fancy". It is an issue of
> not wanting to go through the effort of configuring postfix. Searching
> freshmeat, sourceforge or anything else looking for a some other "small
> memory footprint" email server, downloading it, learning how to configure it,
> and then finally configuring it, is the exact same problem, only with a
> different color.

"apt-get install postfix"  done.  It comes by default in most distro
already setup to accept smtp and deliver localy.

> 
> > IIRC, for php mail() to deliver, you still need an MTA server process
> > running unless you suid the sendmail binary. (can you say "security
> > hole"?)  I'd bet your MTA server process will incur minimal overhead
> > to enable it's port 25.
> 
> Actually, postfix is already enabled for local delivery by default and other
> applications have no problem sending email as they send it all locally, phpgw
> does have a problem. It seems that all that is necessary is to configured
> postfix to accept the "local" connection from phpgw.
> 

if postfix is on the same box as your mail server then it is "local",
unless you've firewalled it or added/removed some default setting from
postfix.

I think the issue is that you are over-estimating what it takes to run
SMTP, and imap/pop3 for that matter.  Delivering and serving email to
system users is blindingly simple on modern linux distros, even with a
learning curve I'd give it 30 minutes tops.  However, rewritting phpgw
to do something that only you want to do could take hours and a much
larger learning curve, and you only want to do it because you are
scared(?) of learning how to enable smtp.

I can understand wanting things your own way, especialy whan it seems
so simple.  The fact is that smtp is standard, calling a sendmail
binary, as php's mail() does, is not standard.  Most dedicated web
servers don't even have a local mail server installed and using smtp
will work if the mail server is local or not.  It will even work if
the mail server is on Windows, Solaris, Commodore64, or a toaster. 
It's standard, flexible, and not as hard to setup as you think.  Join
the masses and setup SMTP :D

(a hint:  in phpgw tell it that you are using pop3, you don't have to
have pop3 setup but if you leave as the default imap it will try to
save the "Sent Item" to your imap account.  with pop3 it won't bother
because pop3 doesn't have sent items or any other folders)