F20 - Unintended consequences of no default MTA - How best to fix

Chris Adams linux at cmadams.net
Mon Dec 30 19:20:04 UTC 2013


Once upon a time, Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com> said:
> On 12/30/2013 01:34 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> >On Mon, 30 Dec 2013 13:24:07 -0500
> >Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com> wrote:
> >If you want logwatch or have cron jobs with output you wish, feel free
> >to install a MTA and configure it.
> been there done that.  Looking to follow the flow of no MTA.  See if
> it can be done.

Well, as it has been said, mailx is not an MTA, and it takes an MTA to
transfer mail (even locally, because it crosses privilege boundaries).
In the "old days", /bin/mail was setuid and could directly write
/var/mail, but there were security issues with that and it is no longer
supported (it also caused confusion when you actually had a local MTA
configured to smart-host to a remote server).

If you want to handle mail in any fashion beyond using a client that
sends/receives via network protocols (IMAP/POP3 and SMTP to a remote
server, like mutt or Thunderbird), install an MTA.  IIRC, at least
Postfix and Sendmail will work for local mail handling (and not
listening on the network) in a default install, so "yum install <your
preferred MTA>" and you should be set.

-- 
Chris Adams <linux at cmadams.net>


More information about the users mailing list