# Dragonfly Mail Agent (dma) in the base system



## trev (Jan 28, 2022)

From the mailing lists:

From: Ed Maste <emaste@...>
Date: 27/1/22, 4:34 pm 
Subject: Dragonfly Mail Agent (dma) in the base system

The Dragonfly Mail Agent (dma) is a small Mail Transport Agent (MTA)
which accepts mail from a local Mail User Agent (MUA) and delivers it
locally or to a smarthost for delivery. dma does not accept inbound
mail (i.e., it does not listen on port 25) and is not intended to
provide the same functionality as a full MTA like postfix or sendmail.
It is intended for use cases such as delivering cron(8) mail.

Since 2014 we have a copy of dma in the base system available as an
optional component, enabled via the WITH_DMAGENT src.conf knob.

I am interested in determining whether dma is a viable minimal base
system MTA, and if not what gaps remain. If you have enabled DMA on
your systems (or are willing to give it a try) and have any feedback
or are aware of issues please follow up or submit a PR as appropriate.


----------



## chrbr (Jan 28, 2022)

I have tried dma some month ago. It might have been before I have migrated from FreeBSD-11.4 to FreeBSD-12.*. There has been a time frame when either cupy or libreoffice has been kicked out of the latest pkg repository. I wanted to be prepared just in case bad things would happen with the mail stuff around postfix. Additionally I wanted to try dma to have something simpler than postfix.

The dma worked as promised. There has been only one small detail. In contrast to my postfix configuration the certificates for encryption have had to be merged in one file instead of having two separate files.I think dma suits the need for a simple workstation. As far as I remember the documentation has been perfect. The configuration has been easy to setup, I think as simple as to configure nullmailer, ssmtp and such. This is really great.

I still run postfix because there has been no issue so far for my simple use case. In contrast to dma postfix can listen on the lo1 interface used my jails. But I have not yet needed that option. I should be able to switch to dma within a short timeframe is required.



trev said:


> I am interested in determining whether dma is a viable minimal base
> system MTA, and if not what gaps remain.


I think dma fits perfectly. From my point of view there are no gaps.

Kind regards,
Christoph


----------



## hardworkingnewbie (Jan 28, 2022)

Yeah, in case if you are looking for MDA with MTA this might be quite nicely. Of course it doesn't do much, which is its purpose. 

Anyway, since I'm used to Postfix since ages and it doesn't take much ressources by todays' standards I'll stick with what I'm used and know.


----------

