8.04 MTA?

[Dan Farrell]

On Sun, 27 Jul 2008 22:42:47 -0300
Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:

> Robert Holtzman wrote:
> 
> > I was unaware that an MTA isn't required for a desktop
> > installation. I thought it was neccessary to transfer the mail from
> > the server to the MUA, or in my case to Procmail.
> 
> Procmail can do that itself.

What mail server wouldn't be running POP or IMAP?  The MUA should be
able to pull (or view) the mail directly from(on) th server! 

You don't need a MTA unless you intend to accept incoming mail from the
outside world and send outgoing mail directly to the final
recipient ... and you probably don't want to do that.  At that point,
you basically have a fully functional mail server.   

> > I will probably have to install sendmail or postfix as I want to run
> > SpamAssassin, invoking it thru the MTA rather than thru
> > Procmail. I have documentation on setting this up on sendmail
> > but nothing on postfix.
> 
> I can't believe the documentation wouldn't be _more_ available for
> Postfix...

Yeah, it should be pretty easy to scare up.  I have postfix on my mail
server and strongly considered setting up server-wide spamassassin, but
got lazy.  Honestly, if I were you I would use fetchmail and procmail +
spamassassin if i _really_ wanted to keep all my mail locally.  

Consider this:  if you have a dynamic IP, people are unlikely to accept
your email.  Unless you have a business-type connection, your ISP
probably isn't even going to allow port 25 communication to or from
your server.  Furthermore, keeping your mail locally means that unless
you have remote access, you have to be at home to read your mail.
Finally, who is going to send the mail to postfix?