outbound smtp

ssmtp sounds like what you're looking for. It's a small and simple MTA that gets your mail off the system and nothing more.

You can get the source at ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/s … rig.tar.gz">ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/s/ssmtp/ssmtp_2.61.orig.tar.gz , and there are .deb packages at http://packages.debian.org/stable/mail/ssmtp (although I guess "apt-get install ssmtp" will work too). Gentoo users can just use "emerge ssmtp".

It looks like ssmtp requires a mail hub. Unless linode provides one, I don't think that will work.

What I need is like sendmail light - something where I can use the command line sendmail tool to send mail to send outbound mails, but doesn't support anything else.

Why not configure sendmail as if you're going to invoke it with inetd instead of as a daemon, and then just disable the inetd entry? Then it will only run when you invoke it via command line and at infrequent intervals with cron to processed any queued outbound mail.

Alternatively, find someone who will relay for you and use ssmtp.

I imagine it should be fairly easy to write a Perl script that does what you want. I'll probably give it a go myself, actually.

I found a solution that works - msmtp

It's kind of like ssmtp, allows you to relay mail, except I couldn't get ssmtp working with my gmail account. Actually, I couldn't get msmtp working either - my default gmail account has a "." in it, and I can't seem to authenticate, I created an alternate gmail account with no "." and it works fine.

Oh, BTW, anyone need/want a gmail invite?

> Oh, BTW, anyone need/want a gmail invite?

I'm curious about it. May I have it?

James