Installing SendMail

[Scott Kitterman]

On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:06:38 -0500 Wade Smart <wade at wadesmart.com> wrote:
>06272006 1604 GMT-6
>
>After all these years I have not ever had to write code to send email -
>until now. My php tutorial says that Unix uses sendmail. I looked in
>Synaptic and saw that sendmail is not installed. So, if I install it,
>will that interfere with my email client getting email from my isp
>server or cause any other problems? And, what all do I need to install
>-> sendmail base and???
>
Sendmail is the prototypical Unix Mail Transport Agent (MTA).  There are many available.  My 
personal favorite is Postfix (www.postfix.org).

As a result of Sendmail being the original MTA, sendmail is also a (relatively) standard 
command for sending mail from within a program, which is what I imagine PHP 
is looking for.  Other MTAs, including Postfix, support the sendmail 
command too.

Installing and configuring MTAs in general, and particularly in the case of 
Sendmail, can be complex.  Additionally when mixing php forms and sending 
e-mail a lot of care to avoid becoming a spam source is required.

I'm sure someone here can tell you how to install Sendmail (Postfix would 
be su apt-get install postfix), but there is most certainly much more to it 
than that.  Perhaps if you could explain what problem you are trying to 
solve, you could get more complete advice.

Scott K