Sending mail from 'current user' in Python

[Mike Meyer]

Marcus Alanen <marcus.alanen at abo.fi> writes:
> Mike Meyer wrote:
>>>Finally, if at all possible I'd also like to get this working on
>>>Windows, so I'd rather stick with the standard smtplib if I can.
>> smtplib needs an SMTP server to connect to. For unix systems, this is
>> typically localhost. What do you use for Windows systems? Or are you
>> connecting to your machine to deliver the mail?
> I'd be very surprised if the typical SMTP server is localhost on
> unix-like computers.

On reflection, you're right. It was the way I described when I started
working with Unix, and I still configure all my Unix systems that
way. But recently there's been move to have no servers configured by
default. I've been bit by this, now having to enable TCP on Postgres
by every time I upgrade the server. So most modern Unix systems
probably come out of the box without a local SMTP listener.

> Rather, sendmail is configured to transport the message to
> company/university mailserver(s).

Sendmail? Don't you mean qmail/postfix/exim?

> If that happens to fail,
> the mail is put on the queue at localhost, and transported later
> (e.g. via a cronjob) to the server. At no point is there a server on
> localhost involved. Of course, not everybody's computer is on such a
> network and a sendmail server may indeed be running on localhost, but
> that's not a very informed guess. Let the sendmail program take care
> of those details.

Well, maybe you do mean sendmail. The other MTAs typically aren't that
configurable. qmail, for instance, always queues messages to the local
disk if they are bound for another host.

In lieue of the current discussion, this stuff doesn't matter. All of
these MTAs come with a "sendmail" program designed specifically so
that programs that invoke sendmail to arrange delivery of a message
will continue work if you replace the system sendmail with their
version. On FreeBSD, this has been carried a step further: the system
sendmail is a wrapper that reads /etc/mail/mailer.conf to figure out
what sendmail binary to invoke, so that users don't have to deal with
replacing the system sendmail, or worry about accidently overwriting
the replaced system sendmail if they upgrade their system.

    <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.