[Savannah-hackers] Re: Using ssmtp in the chroot

[Mathieu Roy]

Sylvain Beucler <address@hidden> tapota :

> On Thu, Sep 30, 2004 at 04:37:56PM -0400, James E. Blair wrote:
>> Sylvain Beucler <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > The change in the frontend to use SMTP instead of PHP mail() is not
>> > welcome in Savane, and has some issues (like missing Date: field).
>> >
>> > It would be better to still use the PHP mail() function.
>> >
>> > I did not found documentation on why the SMTP code was used in the
>> > first place; I assume it was meant to avoid installing exim in the
>> > apache root.
>> 
>> Indeed.  The main requirement is to "keep the chroot simple".
>> 
>> There's not much point in making a chroot with as much software
>> as the actual system.  Savannah's chroot has very little software (not
>> much more than savannah and CVS).  We can keep a close watch on such a
>> system.  
>> 
>> Normal MTAs do things like host lookups, and we intentionally didn't
>> want to bring the system libraries into the chroot, so that's why we
>> moved to SMTP.
>> 
>> Using the SMTP module we can just send all mail to 127.0.0.1 and then
>> exim handles it from there.  In short -- it's the easiest and safest
>> way out of the chroot.  No additional software needed.
>> 
>> > I suggest we instead install ssmtp (or a similar tool) in the apache
>> > root, that will forward mail to localhost. It will ease the merge with
>> > Savane and work like exim.
>> >
>> > Is anybody against this?
>> 
>> I'm not in against it in principle.  Certainly "/usr/lib/sendmail" has
>> a history of being a widely compatible interface.  I think that a
>> simple program that emulated that and sent mail on to 127.0.0.1 would
>> be okay.  But I think we might run into problems:
>> 
>> When we tried to use an MTA to get mail out of chrooted savannah, it
>> wanted to do a host lookup.  Even when statically compiled, programs
>> that use gethostbyname invoke nss which insists on using dlopen for
>> its libraries.  So suddenly this simple MTA needs a bunch of
>> supporting system libraries to function.  I think ssmtp might have the
>> same problem.
>> 
>> I like the simplicity of the SMTP method and would prefer to keep it.
>> Can we fix the SMTP code and bring it up to standard?

PHP allows SMTP distant host configuration when running on Windows:
    http://fr2.php.net/manual/en/ref.mail.php

Cannot you compile PHP to behave in regard of SMTP just like if it was
running on Windows?


-- 
Mathieu Roy

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