(Preliminary) Envelope contains:
To: michel
Subject: test
Send this message [yes/no, empty: recompose]? yes
❯ mail
mail: /var/spool/mail/michel: No such entry, file or directory
mail version v14.9.23. Type ?' for help (Currently no active mailbox) No more mail. mail: There are messages in the error ring, manageable via errors' command
? errors
1/1 /var/spool/mail/michel: No such entry, file or directory
2/1 There are messages in the error ring, manageable via `errors' command
?
Above is my attempt to test local emails on my fairly fresh install of Garuda. Obviously it fails on this new install of Garuda KDE Dragonified. This is my first attempt at moving to an arch distro and I am impressed, although, I took me a couple of days to set things up the way I needed. The only thing left to do is to implement this mailing issue.
I only need to be able to receive the messages from anacron. In fact I do not need to send messages or receive messages other than from my system. I have looked everywhere, I think, but I am a brand new user of arch, and I cannot find a what ought to be a relatively simple solution to this.
Any help or pointer about how to set this up, would be greatly appreciated.
I did look at the link you gave before, but not in as much detail as I needed to!
Looking at it again, I decided to use opnsmtpd as it was apparently the simplest solution that was very easy to config for local mail only. The instruction I found were very explicit.
Having installed opnsmtpd and setup the config file as follow:
table aliases file:/etc/smtpd/aliases
# To accept external mail, replace with: listen on all
#
listen on localhost
action "local" maildir alias <aliases>
action "relay" relay
# Uncomment the following to accept external mail for domain "example.org"
#
# match from any for domain "example.org" action "local"
match for local action "local"
match from local for any action "relay"
I enabled and started smtp using systemctl and it gave me an error:
Jan 10 12:50:29 eagle systemd[1]: Starting OpenSMTPD...
Jan 10 12:50:29 eagle smtpd[265371]: info: OpenSMTPD 6.8.0p2 starting
Jan 10 12:50:29 eagle systemd[1]: Started OpenSMTPD.
Jan 10 12:50:29 eagle smtpd[265376]: pony express: listen: Address already in use
Jan 10 12:50:29 eagle smtpd[265372]: smtpd: process pony socket closed
Jan 10 12:50:29 eagle systemd[1]: smtpd.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jan 10 12:50:29 eagle systemd[1]: smtpd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
I have absolutely no idea about what pony express is and I cannot find info readily about it either! Again, it may be due to my lack of experience with arch.
I could not find it using octopi and could not find it through a google search first pages.
So I am at a loss about what to do next.
Having spent about 20 hours to convert my workstation to Garuda, it is the last thing I need to do to complete the task.
Sorry, I’m not expert at all on this stuff, anyway, as far as I can see, if you want:
You should comment these two lines
action "relay" relay
match from local for any action "relay"
and get something like the Arch wiki suggests:
listen on localhost
action "local" maildir alias <aliases>
match for local action "local"
Anyway, I’m not really sure this is the root cause of the service problem
Maybe you could give a look at the troubleshooting section in the opensmtpd Arch Wiki, e.g. checking the journal.
I see pony.c is one of the files provided by the opensmtpd package.
I have no idea of what it does, but I guess it should stay there…
If that works you might want to add a start up delay such as sleep 3 in the systemd unit file. You could possibly be encountering a race condition if a restart of the service starts things working properly.
In the first link there are two listen directives in the conf file a generic one ("on all") and a more specific ones (a specific domain). I have only one ("listen on localhost").
The second link, I also checked, and whilst I have two entries (ip4) in the hosts file for the workstation, they are for 127.0.0.1 and 127.0.1.1. Also the first is for localhost, the second for a fully qualified hostname.
I will try to give a shot with an alternative to opensmtpd next, I think.
But I really do not get why it is so arduous. After all it is a very basic requirement, I would have thought. Never had any issues with previous distros although they were not arch based.
I don't see much arch-related in this issue.
The Gentoo forum post linked to this OpenSMTPD - Issue - 1075 which is still open, although commented as solved in this Debian bug, which is not actually solved, but forwarded to this other till open OpenSMTPD - Issue - 1106.
Almost a circular reference. TL:DR - nobody seems to care much, but not really arch-related
Maybe I have not been expressing myself correctly. Sorry about that.
What I meant is that default installation of MTA/SMTP works out of the box on some distros. I am not a distro hopper. But this is the first time I have such an iissue with local mail setup. I am not sure what is the cause.
In the last ten years I have been using debian and derivatives (crunchbang and then BunsenLabs). Every so often, time permitting, I spin another distro on a VM to have a look at it, which is how I came across Garuda. Based on that experience, having looked a bit deeper at it on a VM and looking at availability of relevant software to my use case, I decided to give Garuda a try. I do re-install my workstation from scratch every 9 to 12 months (It had been 15 months this time). I do expect some pain, for a couple of months or so, as I am not familiar at all with arch or KDE (I have been using OpenBox and awesomeWM for the last ten years at least).
My next and last try will be to install Postfix, which I was trying to avoid because of its resources requirements and usage .
If this goes as expected I am ready for my next couple of months of pain, otherwise I will probably go back to what I know.
I noticed that I had KMail installed and kmail has its own smtp which would explain the conflict.
So, I will now try to configure kmail and cron so that they work together as I expect.
Thanks very much for all help that I received. This is a very good forum and I am looking forward to enjoy Garuda after my initial "pain" period due to my inexperience with arch and kde.
Hopefully next time I will be able to install from the barebones edition with the experience I will have gained.
Thanks again to all that were forthcoming with help or helpful advice.