How to get the basic mail command in ubuntu 10 to work

I am a college lecturer to whom the task of supporting the students' Linux Server has fallen. My students just need to use the mail command to communicate with me and each other. I thought mail would be there by default but it wasn't. I have tried all the advice I found on the Internet and tried to install mailutils, sendmail, mailx, exim4 and postfix. There were more but I can't remember them all now. After installing (if it works – some of them don't), when I try to send a message they all give me:
/usr/sbin/sendmail: file or directory not found.
I don't need anything fancy – we don't need to access remote email, just locally on our server.
Incidentally the same problems are occurring on the physical server and my test virtual machine, installed at different times but both Ubuntu 10.
Can anyone help me?

Best Answer

I can recommend this tutorial:

http://www.notesbit.com/index.php/scripts-unix/sendmail-introduction-and-configuration-a-step-by-step-guide-for-those-of-you-configuring-your-first-e-mail-server/

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to Setup Mail Server with Google Apps

Easiest way to do this is to avoid using exim and to use sSMTP which is a lightweight MTA.

All you need to do is install it:

sudo apt-get install ssmtp mailutils

and configure it (edit /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf) to use your Google Mail servers see:

root=noreply@yourdomain.com
mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:587
UseSTARTTLS=yes
UseTLS=yes
AuthUser=youremail@yourdomain.com
AuthPass=password
FromLineOverride=YES

I've been using this set-up for a while now and it just works - It's also nice to not need to be running exim when it's not necessary and let Google's mail servers handle everything for you.

Simple Mail System for Ubuntu – Setup Guide

Just do a

sudo dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

and pick the "mail sent by smarthost; no local mail" option. Now for the options:

Specify a system mail name, specify to listen for incoming SMTP connections only on port 25 of localhost
Don't specify any other destionations for which mail is accepted
Specify subdomain.mybusiness.com as the visible domain name for local users.
Specify the IP address of your actual mail server -- that's the smarthost. If it requires authentication put the name of the server, your username and password in /etc/exim4/passwd.client

There you go: a complete mail setup for Debian/Ubuntu in under one minute!

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to Setup Mail Server with Google Apps

Simple Mail System for Ubuntu – Setup Guide

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