On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 01:13:21AM -0500, Tyler Smith wrote: > > I'm still not clear on the purpose of exim4. I understand that the > system will on occassion send me a message, but in several months on > Sarge this has never happened. I get all my mail via a pop account - > does exim4 know my address? I've never configured anything that I'm > aware of that would do this. Or does mail get sent somewhere else? Or > maybe mail is sent so rarely that I just haven't had any yet...
You're right, depending on what you're using the box for, you don't absolutely need an MTA. I myself have a special purpose light-weight machine setup without an MTA, and it's been running happily for more than two years (first woody, now sarge). Occasionally, something might try to send you a mail (e.g. some cron job), so this will produce an error message. But so what? It doesn't break anything fundamentally. If you're not expecting the system to send you messages, why bother? Typically, you can also configure programs to not send mail. For most purposes, log files are all you really need to keep a eye on how the system is doing... You can even read/send your personal mail from such a machine, if you're using an external account (like a freemail provider or some such). Many MUAs have built-in POP/IMAP and/or SMTP functionality, and are thus capable of handling this kind of mail transfer all on their own. (though this isn't the classic unix way of doing things -- but that's another topic...) Cheers, Almut -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
