How to SMTP (Email) Server Fedora 6?

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> 
>> It is also reasonable for a machine to only need to deliver locally
>> generated mail.
> 
> It wouldn't be much fun if all machines did that.
> 
But that doesn't change the fact that it is reasonable for some
machines. Or are you saying that because some machines need to
receive mail from the outside, that by default all machines should
be configured to receive outside mail? Why should my laptop accept
incoming mail when it does not have a valid domain name, or a fixed
IP address? It makes a lot more sense for Thunderbird to talk to the
IMAP server to get mail, and to ether the ISP's or my hosting
company's SMTP server to send mail. This is especially true when I
am using a WiFi hotspot.

It would be interesting to what percentage of machines running Linux
actually need to be configured to accept incoming mail connections
from the outside. Most WEB servers probably do not. Most desktops
are not going to need to ether. Unless a file server is also a mail
server, it does not need to accept outside mail. Granted, most
servers are going to need to be able to send mail someplace, but
only machines that are a mail server are going to need to accept
incoming connections, and not being able to accept incoming mail
connections by default is what you are complaining about, right?

Now, if you were arguing that Sendmail should not be the default
mail server, then I could maybe see having the default Sendmail
configuration accept incoming mail connections. Realistically, most
machines probably do not need most of the features of Sendmail. Then
again, if it were not the default mail server, you would not really
need to supply a default configuration because you are going to have
to configure the mail server anyway.

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
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