What Linux mail server is easiest to setup?

Question

I need to send emails from web application using Gmail accounts. As far as I understand, sending them directly will freeze worker process for quite a long time (it's a Rails app running on Apache/Passenger). So I want to install local SMTP server which will queue the message and send it using Gmail. I have no experience with mail, so I need a server which is extremely easy to set up.

Solution 1

nullmailer is written for exactly this purpose: Just relaying everything to another host.

Solution 2

The easiest one to setup is whatever you're most familiar with. If you're not familiar with any of them, then the easiest is whatever the person you hire to setup your mail server is familiar with. Failing that, I use and recommend Postfix, which has decent documentation and plenty of examples out on the Internet. Other people might recommend Exim, and that's not too bad either.

Solution 3

The statement "I have no experience with mail" and sending bulk emails from web application, taken together, are really a recipe for grief (like being blacklisted for having unwittingly mailbombed some poor unsuspecting schmuck, etc.).

I don't want to preach, but you should really either get a good understanding of what you are getting into or find somebody who already has it.

This said, these days most servers are quite easy to set up for what you want to do. I am partial to sendmail/fedora/redhat/centos, so:

# yum -y install sendmail sendmail-cf

[edit /etc/sendmail.mc and change the line:

dnl define(SMART_HOST',smtp.your.provider')

to look like:

define(SMART_HOST',smtp.gmail.com')

or whatever google says you must use]

# chkconfig sendmail on

# service sendmail start

Cheers.

Comments

[Michael Hampton]

You don't need a mail server at all. Rails Action Mailer can talk to Gmail directly.

[womble]

It'll hang doing the delivery, though, just like doing it directly. Nullmailer and sSMTP are really only useful for something that insists on calling /usr/sbin/sendmail and lacks SMTP capabilities itself.

[FooBee]

Nullmailer has a queue so it won't block the calling application. But if the app requires an SMTP interface, not just the sendmail binary, it won't help.

[pfo]

Sendmail as answer to "easiest MTA to setup" is REALLY an interesting point of view. I guess you're maybe one of the handfull of people on plant earth that hold that view. Sendmail is known to make grown up man cry.

[womble]

Well, knock me down with a feather, so it does. They need more marketing on that feature...

[womble]

Don't gmail's servers require authentication before they'll let you wildly relay through them? You're getting far beyond four shell commands for that...

[Alien Life Form]

The assumption seems reasonable. But then they also make you put stuff in the dns to verify ownership, so I'd have to read up on the FAQs to check and I'm too lazy for that. Assuming they do, and assuming it's sendmail 8.12 or later you need 1 shell command and 1 edit more [continued below]

[Alien Life Form]

(courtesy of [linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/… Insert into /etc/mail/access AuthInfo:your.isp.net "U:smmsp" "I:user" "P:password" Use your ISP, leave "U:smmsp" as is, insert your user and password Then # makemap hash /etc/mail/access.db < /etc/mail/access Restart sendmail. If it's < 8.12 it is longer and the link above has all the gorier stuff. [...continued..]

[Alien Life Form]

IF they also want tls, then it does become hairier and the OP would likely be in medium-depth yoghurt. However that has got nothing to do with sendmail, rather with the cockamamie schemes that are tls, certificates, CAs. I doubt other MTAs can make THAT easier. This is all assuming the pieces fit seamlessly together. The real fun starts when they don't. Cheers.

[rackandboneman]

+1 from me even if that annoys some. The advice to use a service (assuming the service is legit) if you dont want to mess with the gritty details is good. Otherwise, if you want to send locally: ssmtp is another good tool. just do not use non-queueing mailers like ssmtp, nullmailer to send to actual inbound MXes, you will get into issues with greylisting.

[Michael Hampton]

The OP clearly stated that he intends to relay everything through Gmail already. While the other services are certainly useful, they aren't really necessary here.