Re: [Evolution] Many mails never reach the recipients - Evolution 3.10.4

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

On Thu, 2014-02-20 at 14:29 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-02-20 at 01:26 +0100, Ángel wrote:
> > to route through your smtp server
>
> JFTR I don't run my own SMPT server, I don't have got my own domain.

It doesn't matter, you can run an SMTP server on your local machine, it
doesn't have to be associated with a unique domain.  To be honest with
Evolution it doesn't even need to be an SMTP server, all that is needed
is, in effect, an external program that can send emails to your ISP's
mail gateway.

Historically the program that you use is sendmail, although there are a
number of alternatives that mimic sendmail and look, to all intents and
purposes, like sendmail.  Unfortunately those programs are all
configured differently. So, do you know what you have installed on your
machine?

If it's sendmail, then the configuration is a little odd.  The main
thing you have to do is to tell it where to send emails - the same as
you do when configuring Evolution.  The main thing is that you need a
mail relay that doesn't require authenticated login - it needs to be on
your DSL network, so I presume it will be smtp.alice-dsl.net - this, in
SMTP terms, is called a smart host (it's smart because it knows how to
get mail to destinations).

The configuration of sendmail is the file sendmail.cf - but the syntax
of that file is bizarre and trying to work with it leads to madness.
The configuration is defined in the file sendmail.mc - you need to look
for a line in there that says something like 

   dnl define(`SMART_HOST', `smtp.your.provider')dnl

change that line to uncomment it and set the mail relay:

   define(`SMART_HOST', `smtp.alice-dsl.net')dnl

Now you need to parse the file with m4 to produce the sendmail.cf file:

   # m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf

Your sendmail.cf should now have line defining the DS macro:

   # grep ^DS sendmail.cf
   DSsmtp.alice-dsl.net

Test the setup using the 'mail' command

   # mail your own address

and look at the headers when you get it, there should be a received
header for your localhost.  The logs of the transaction should be
in /var/log/maillog 

You can get a listing of the mail queue with

   # sendmail -bp

to make sure it has actually gone out.

Good luck

P.