names for devices and can I make mutt receive and send mail without exim?

[Thomas Stivers]

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On Mon, Jul 19 2004 at 10:14:34AM -0700, Sean M McMahon wrote:
> Are you saying it's better to have exim even though I'm not using this 
> machine as a real email server?  The whole mutt thing has been a little 
> confusing to me because it does say on mutt.org, supports imap and
> pop3. 

Yeah pretty much. Both imap and pop3 are only for *receiving* mail. To
send mail something has to understand smtp. Mutt does not do smtp but
instead expects to communicate with a sendmail type program on your
system. This program can be exim or another program with a link called
sendmail wherever mutt expects to find sendmail. If you want to use
exim it usually installs this link. You can ensure that exim won't
allow outside connections by blocking port 25 incoming. This can be
done in a number of ways.

You could add a line to your /etc/hosts.deny file which prevents all
non-local access to your smtp port. The line to add is:

smtp: ALL

That way is a bit clugy, and there are other better ways to ensure
your security, but they get a little more complex and as you progress
with linux you will figure more and more out.

> Thanks for the tip on device naming.

No problem I know it can be pretty confusing at first.

- -- 
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan

Thomas Stivers	e-mail: stivers_t at tomass.dyndns.org
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