Re: [exim] Mail server rejection

On Sun, 2008-03-23 at 21:43 -0400, Haines Brown wrote:
> Graeme, thanks for pointing me to the solution of my problem.

No problem... I'll chop and change the order of your email a bit here.

> It never occurred to me to set up authentication manually. But I had
> done it before and forgotten that it was necessary. When I entered a
> necessary line into /etc/exim3/passwd.client, I was able to send out a
> message without difficulty. Problem solved!

Excellent. Glad we bottomed that one!

> If I understand correctly, you are saying that technically I do not
> have an MTA application installed, but Exim can fulfill that
> function. So a question is, if one wants reliable mail communications
> and ease of installation, is relying on Exim sufficient, or are there
> good reasons on a home office system to install and use of of the
> common MTAs: procmail, sendmail or maildrop?

[warning: lots of TLAs ahoy!]

No, that's not what I was saying. Exim can be configured to be many
things - MSA, MTA, MDA (submission, delivery, transport agents
respectively). In your case you're using it as a local MSA (submission
agent) for your local MUA (user agent).

Sendmail can also act as all three.
Procmail is a delivery agent.
Maildrop is a delivery agent too.

For something to act as a fully-fledged MTA it ideally needs to be
reachable over TCP/IP or some other, remote, protocol so that it can
accept connections from remote systems to move messages between them and
potentially other remote systems - your ISP's outbound mail server is a
good example, but to muddy the waters further it probably acts in remote
submission mode (ie. as an MSA) for outbound mail from customers.

Confused yet? ;-)

Graeme