[rt-users] fetchmail, sendmail, postfix what to use

[Nate Duehr]

bob wrote:

> I just installed RT got it running so far.. i am using Debian (sarge) 
> and am having trouble getting the emailing to work.. which is the best 
> way to configure the mailing piece and what is the best mail program to 
> use in linux for this task...  What I would like to do is use another 
> server for the SMTP traffic and another for the pop3 receipt.  that is 
> how our email system is currently set up.

Sorry Bob, I'll have to agree with Susan's comments - you'll need to be 
a bit more specific.

The "best" mail program is whatever one you're comfortable with.  If 
you're not using one today, you'll be spending some time in the books on 
just about any of them to get them doing what you want.  Susan mentioned 
she's using postfix, and if I were building a brand new server today, 
I'd probably consider going that route too, as I see benefits to it, but 
I'd be on a big learning curve myself.

Currently on my RT system I'm using exim4 for the MTA on a Debian 
system, and the only reason really is that it was upgraded from older 
versions of Debian over the years and Debian used to use exim3 as a 
default MTA, so I got used to it.

The "use another server" for the traffic part is not a problem or issue 
related to RT in any way, it's your MTA's job to route mail.  Most MTA's 
have the ability to deliver mail to a "smarthost".  That'll be the key 
word for finding out how to do that in your particular MTA's documentation.

On the receipt part of e-mail, if you're hoping to set up multiple mail 
accounts on a remote machine to receive RT's mail and then pull them to 
the RT machine, you'll end up using fetchmail, most likely.

If you've never set up Unix MTA's and fetchmail, you're in for quite a 
long while at the keyboard... that is not the easiest setup for a 
beginner... but if you must, you must... we all understand and have 
probably been there.

Bite off one chunk of the elephant at a time... get your box working and 
your MTA of choice sending and receiving mail for some test user 
accounts.  Once you have that going, you'll be able to integrate RT into 
the mix.

--
Nate Duehr, nate at natetech.com