Postfix

[Rashkae]

chombee wrote:
> So I installed mutt, and the package depends on postfix, which asks to
> be configured through debconf when being installed. I chose the default
> "Internet Site" configuration option, and left the "mail name" as the
> hostname of my machine, as I'll be overriding the from address in my
> mail client anyway so this hopefully doesn't matter.
> 
> It seems to work, both through Evolution and Mutt. In my .muttrc I put:
> 
> set from=me at mydomain.com
> set use_from=yes
> 
> and that seemed to set the From header correctly, overriding the
> nonsense that postfix would otherwise generate
> (mylocalusername at mylocalhost).
> 
> So is Ubuntu's 'default' postfix setup like this safe to use? What will
> happen in cases of dodgy network connections, like for example I compose
> mails offline, or the connection goes down while I'm sending emails, or
> I'm on some wireless network with crazy settings. Will I be told if the
> mail does not get sent properly? Will mails be held by postfix and sent
> later? I tried unplugging my network cable, and mutt just seemed to hang
> on "Sending..." until I plugged it back in. When mutt says "Mail sent"
> can I safely assume the mail has actually been sent, or could it
> actually be hanging around somewhere in the postfix process on my
> machine?
> 


It can and will sit around, for up to four days I think, if Postfix 
can't make a delivery.  Furthermore, several small e-mail servers will 
reject e-mail from ISP Dynamic IP's.  I happen to use a similar set-up 
myself, despite the downfalls.  But if you want 'reliable' e-mail 
delivery, you should configure mutt to send the e-mails via smtp to your 
ISP smtp server.  (Or you could configure postfix as a 'smarthost', 
which means, it passes off delivery to an upstream smtp server).

Alas, private e-mail servers, though cool and technical a superior way 
of doing things, are victims of war on spam.