[Techtalk] easy SMTP authentication with any MTA

[Mary]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2003, Carla Schroder wrote:
> Now I'm confused. Can't you configure mutt to connect directly to your 
> school's SMTP server? I'm not a mutt user, any other email client can do 
> this, so I assume mutt can too.

No you can't. mutt doesn't talk SMTP, it just calls the sendmail binary
on the command line. Mutt claims to be a UNIX-style "tool for one task"
program and the lack of direct SMTP support is very much a matter of
policy.

This makes sense on a lot of traditional
remote-we-run-everything-on-this-box type servers - they need a MTA
installed anyway to *receive* the mail after all. It makes much less
sense on a desktop where there's normally not a need for an MTA.

I like to use nullmailer: http://untroubled.org/nullmailer/ which is a
pretty simple MTA - it just accepts mail and forwards it to an upstream
SMTP server as specified by a single line in a single config file.

Unfortunately, I don't think it will be able to authenticate by
password so in Morgan's case it is not a solution. I'm told it is very
easy to configure Postfix as a smart relay, but I don't know how :/

-Mary