Simple mail server for web application

Question

I have a web application that needs to send outgoing mail. Instead of connecting directly to the SMTP server (I'm using AuthSMTP), I'd like to setup a local mail server. This is to reduce the time the web application has to wait to send the email, and to automatically store and retry the mail of the AuthSMTP server is down.

What mail server will be simple to setup and manage? All it needs to do is relay all mail from localhost to a specific server. I'd also like to be able to monitor the server, to see when some messages cannot be delivered.

I have some experience with Apache James, and I'm trying out Postfix currently.

Answer 1

My current Linux web servers are Debian based, and in the one case I wanted the server to be able to send mail I just stuck with the default exim4-daemon-light package (http://packages.debian.org/lenny/exim4-daemon-light) which required very little extra configuration. It keeps logs that you should be able to parse with standard tools to monitor for failed delivery at the level of the initial SMTP connection. To be notified of errors that happen after that point you need to make sure the messages go out with valid from and reply-to headers so the receiving mailer knows where to send bounce messages (this last point is the same what-ever MTA you chose).

Answer 2

If you don't want a daemon running , and just a sendmail replacement, try ssmtp [http://wiki.dreamhost.com/SSMTP

Easy config & no daemon running. I didn't remember, but it saves a log somewhere, so you can check for problems.

Another options would be nullmailer or putmail.

I thought the tree works as sendmail replacements, so you can change your "/usr/lib/sendmail" for one of these), or you can configure apache/php to use them.