Developer Forum

I have some mail recepiants that I cannot send to as the ISP for
those people reject my messages. I don't have a rejected header at
the moment, but this seems to be a rejection because mutt on my mac
is sending to the remote ISP directly. I think this might be solved
by having mutt relay through me.com (I use MobileMe from Apple).
Would someone send me a link in the documentation to configure mutt
to forward the messages to my MobileMe account so Apple can send
the messages on to the remote ISP?

Mike

$ mutt -v
Mutt 1.4.2.3i (2007-05-26)
Copyright (C) 1996-2002 Michael R. Elkins and others.
Mutt comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `mutt -vv'.
Mutt is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `mutt -vv' for details.

System: Darwin 10.0.0 (i386) [using ncurses 5.4]
Compile options:
-DOMAIN
-DEBUG
-HOMESPOOL +USE_SETGID +USE_DOTLOCK +DL_STANDALONE
+USE_FCNTL -USE_FLOCK
+USE_POP +USE_IMAP -USE_GSS +USE_SSL -USE_SASL
-HAVE_REGCOMP +USE_GNU_REGEX
+HAVE_COLOR +HAVE_START_COLOR +HAVE_TYPEAHEAD +HAVE_BKGDSET
+HAVE_CURS_SET +HAVE_META +HAVE_RESIZETERM
+HAVE_PGP -BUFFY_SIZE -EXACT_ADDRESS -SUN_ATTACHMENT
-ENABLE_NLS -LOCALES_HACK +HAVE_WC_FUNCS +HAVE_LANGINFO_CODESET +HAVE_LANGINFO_YESEXPR
-HAVE_ICONV -ICONV_NONTRANS +HAVE_GETSID +HAVE_GETADDRINFO
-ISPELL
SENDMAIL="/usr/sbin/sendmail"
MAILPATH="/var/mail"
PKGDATADIR="/sw/share/mutt"
SYSCONFDIR="/sw/etc"
EXECSHELL="/bin/sh"
-MIXMASTER
To contact the developers, please mail to < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >.
To report a bug, please use the flea(1) utility.

* Mike < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >:

You'll need to configure your local MTA to use the MobileMe/me.com's
smart host or install a lightweight SMTP agent such as msmtp and
configure it to do so.

< http://www.yqcomputer.com/ ;


The stable branch of Mutt doesn't have SMTP support found in the
development branch. Otherwise, you could use that.

< http://www.yqcomputer.com/ #smtp>

--
James Michael Fultz < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >
Remove this part when replying ^^^^^^^^

That's the way to go, IMHO. Then it will work when other programs than
mutt send mail, too -- according to the convention
- the MUA drops the mail locally
- the MTA picks it up, decides it must go out of the box and
onto the internet
- the MTA knows that the way to do that is to relay the mail
via smtp.me.com (or whatever the "smarthost"/"relayhost"
is called; I certainly hope they offer one.)

(That's assuming MacOS works like a real Unix, where this is usually
the default MTA configuration for internet-connected home users.)

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .

Note, I use Mutt on an iMac running Leopard but I don't use MobileMe.

I could be wrong, but I don't think your Mutt is sending directly - it
is probably using a local MTA on your machine. Your "mutt -v" output says:


So does mine, but I override that in my .muttrc file with the line:

set sendmail = /opt/local/bin/msmtp

In either case, it is an MTA which is sending the email for you,
presumably in your case sending directly to the recipient's MTA.

I don't think that is a good idea in general because I am lead to
believe that some MTAs are set up to reject email from MTAs on dialup
connections etc.

So what you need to do is set up your MTA (whether that be
/usr/sbin/sendmail or something else) to send via an outgoing SMTP
server that you have access to.

You could presumably use one at MobileMe, but bear in mind that it will
(or at least should) ask your machine to authenticate (to prevent people
using it as an open relay).

If, like me, you only send email from home while connected through your
ISP then you could alternatively use your ISP's own outgoing SMTP server
(since they automatically know that you are one of their customers
authentication is probably not required).

If you are using /usr/sbin/sendmail then you will have to work out how
to configure it.

Personally I prefer to use a "lightweight" MTA, namely msmtp, which I
installed (like Mutt) using MacPorts.

Ian

--
Ian Gregory
http://www.yqcomputer.com/