nullmailer is a minimalistic and easy to configure MTA (mail transport agent). It is described on the homepage as follows:
Nullmailer is a mail transport agent designed to only relay all its messages through a fixed set of “upstream” hosts. It is also designed to be secure.
nullmailer is a good choice for systems that do not receive, but send mails like for example web servers.
To setup nullmailer to relay the mails to a smtp server that needs smtp authentication, just add the login credentials to the configuration file (/etc/nullmailer/remotes on Ubuntu systems)
[YOUR-SMPT-SERVER.COM] smtp --auth-login --user=[USER] --pass=[PASSWORD]
and (for security reasons) set the permissions as follows:
# sudo chown mail /etc/nullmailer/remotes
# sudo chmod go-rwx /etc/nullmailer/remotes
Finally, restart the nullmailer service
# sudo /etc/init.d/nullmailer restart
To test the configuration, just use the mail command to send an e-mail:
# echo "This is a test e-mail..." | mail -s "Test e-mail" [YOUR-E-MAIL-ADDRESS]
3 responses to “Configure nullmailer to use SMTP authentication”
That’s all good advice, but…
If security is important, you should add this:
chmod go-rwx /etc/nullmailer/remotes
otherwise your smtp-auth password is readable by any process
and any user on your machine.
– Pat
P.S. your spam protection should accept the answer spelled out 😉
Hi Pat,
Thanks for your comment. I’ve updated the post and added your tip.
I am trying to configure nullmailer with Fastmail, the details I require configuring are:
Mail Host – mail.messagingengine.com
Server Port 465
Use SSL
Authentication Password
any help on this would be appreciated as I am unable to make this work.