configuring /usr/bin/mail

In article <47B09E7C.3070902 RemoveThis @earthlink.net>,
John <jhy001 RemoveThis @earthlink.net> wrote:

> Is there a "dummies" guide for configuring /usr/bin/mail for a
> Leopard system behind a DSL broadband router? e.g. after configuring
> sendmail, do I have to poke a hole for port 25 in the router, and...
> or...
>
> I'd like to cron automate some notification emails.

Unless you're setting up a mail server there's no need to configure that
stuff. This ain't Linux, after all. We got all kinds of handholding.

OS X uses PostFix not sendmail, unless for some reason you really want
to go through installing and then configuring sendmail. Some people
like doing those things. There's a shareware program called PostFix
Enabler that will get PostFix up and running an about a minute, if you
really need a Unix-y mail transfer agent.

Here's some of the available tools from various vendors in an
easy-to-search presentation:

http://www.pure-mac.com/email.html

Or you can check www.versiontracker.com, of course.
 >> Stay informed about: configuring /usr/bin/mail 

Tim McNamara wrote:
> Unless you're setting up a mail server there's no need to configure that
> stuff. This ain't Linux, after all. We got all kinds of handholding.
>
> OS X uses PostFix not sendmail, unless for some reason you really want
> to go through installing and then configuring sendmail. Some people
> like doing those things. There's a shareware program called PostFix
> Enabler that will get PostFix up and running an about a minute, if you
> really need a Unix-y mail transfer agent.
>
> Here's some of the available tools from various vendors in an
> easy-to-search presentation:
>
> http://www.pure-mac.com/email.html
>
> Or you can check www.versiontracker.com, of course.

Hmm. PostFix enabler seems to do much more than I need. I only need
to make "mail" send out messages with my return address being my
ISP's address. Any replies would come to my ISP and be read with
Thunderbird.

I see that the postfix process is not started by default. It seems all
I need do is make sure it gets started (further research required) and
make a couple of simple tweaks (maybe, research required) to allow
a cron job to send such mail. I was hoping someone could point me
to the actual short list of steps required. No more, no less.
I'm afraid PostFix enabler (not free, and research required) will
mess things up because it wants to do too much "under the hood".
I'm trying to avoid all the personal "research required" steps,
if possible.

Or is what I want really more complicated than this?

Years ago on large UNIX servers, I had a short list of instructions
for configuring sendmail for our environment on out of the box UNIX
machines provided by a local sendmail "expert". I'm trying to find
similar instructions required without having to learn/relearn all about
sendmail or postfix. I'd think there would be a helpful short tip
sheet for this for Mac OS X users. Yes?

Thanks, John
 >> Stay informed about: configuring /usr/bin/mail 

On 2008-02-12, John <jhy001.DeleteThis@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Hmm. PostFix enabler seems to do much more than I need.

Yes.

If all you're looking for is a way to send mail from the command line
or a shell script, it's much easier to use mutt. See mutt.org. Make
sure you get a recent version -- ignore the "stable" one, which is
ancient. This approach will by-pass all the postfix hacking, and has
many more options, including sending attachments, etc. It builds out
of the box. DO NOT install a porting package like fink or macports
just for this. Mutt is also an outstanding mail reader, probably the
most flexible and powerful one that runs in osx. But that's another
story.

If you still want to, or for some reason have to, use /usr/bin/mail,
keep reading.



> I only need to make "mail" send out messages with my return address
> being my ISP's address.

You want the return address is to be "jhy001@earthlink.net" (or
whatever your real address is)? You should be able to do that by
setting the REPLYTO environment variable. You can also fiddle with a
couple of parameters in /etc/postfix/main.cf, though it's simpler if
your username on the local machine is the same as your username on the
ISP.


> I see that the postfix process is not started by default.

Shouldn't matter, since a launch daemon is watching the queue
directory. If a piece of outgoing mail gets queued, it will start up
and process it. In general you do NOT want postfix running all the
time for your purposes.


> It seems all I need do is make sure it gets started (further
> research required) and make a couple of simple tweaks (maybe,
> research required) to allow a cron job to send such mail.

You don't need to do any of this.

What you do need to worry about when sending mail directly in this
way, instead of going through your ISP's smtp server, is the fact that
some percentage ISPs you're sending to won't accept mail from random
sender hosts. If you run into that you might want to look into
configuring postfix to relay everything through your ISP's smtp
server. See the 'relayhost' setting.
 >> Stay informed about: configuring /usr/bin/mail