Send/receive mail in text mode in ubuntu

[Derek Broughton]

Sauro Cesaretti wrote:

> First of all, I'd like to avoid postfix and sendmail.

You can't avoid "sendmail".  You're going to need _some_ mail transfer
agent, and they all implement sendmail.

> I made some tests and this is rhe result.
> As I told you before I installed nbsmtp to handle outgoing mails and after
> I thought to install
> Exim4 to  solve the error of fetchmail.

Exim isn't going to solve any fetchmail errors.  The error you were getting
was caused by the fact that no SMTP server was running and fetchmail, by
default, delivers mail to the SMTP server on localhost:25.

> After that, I could receive the mail without any problem but when I tried
> to send one message I discovered that apt have removed the nbsmtp package
> by itself.

Naturally.

> Maybe because they couldn't live together but what should I do now?
> How can I fix this problem?

Install the MTA you want, and configure it properly.  The reason that Ubuntu
_doesn't_ do this is that it really isn't something that can be done
without a little thought on your part.

All that said, I don't know nbsmtp, and can't tell from its description if
it is capable of _local_ mail delivery.  If it isn't, then you need a mail
delivery agent (MDA) - generally either procmail or maildrop.  If you use
one of those, you have fetchmail pipe the mail to the MDA rather than using
SMTP.  Most MTAs (like postfix and exim) have an MDA built in.
-- 
derek