# Selecting the right mail forwarding configuration



## Toolforger (Sep 16, 2018)

Hi all,
I am new to FreeBSD, and setting up a NAS with somewhat elevated security requirements (meaning I do not want a compiler and stick with packages).
My problem is is the inverse of the usual: I find too much advice on doing this, and some of it is conflicting.
I understand that the go-to place is https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/mail-changingmta.htm, but then I read that the handbook is not always 100% up-to-date, and the ssmtp installer gave me advice that (slightly) conflicts with the page (some override mailq, others don't, for example), plus it tells me to `make replace` but I don't know in which directory the Makefile is, and a find command didn't show me a Makefile anyway so I guess that is available in the port only.

I'm after multiple things actually:
* The link of the authoritative best practice for selecting and installing a simple forward-to-server-only MTA (if it exists). (One advice page recommended `msmtp` over `ssmtp` but gave no reasons. Are there relevant advantages?)
* How to find out how authoritative a Handbook page is.
* How to find the Makefile, or any other artifact that is part of a port, even if I'm using a package. (I wanted to refer to the Makefile to find out what the ssmtp authors considered relevant.)


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## Lamia (Sep 16, 2018)

Toolforger said:


> plus it tells me to  make replace but I don't know in which directory


All you need run are:

```
% pkg install ssmtp OR portmaster mail/ssmtp OR cd /usr/ports/mail/ssmtp && make install clean
```
If you used the last command 
	
	



```
cd /usr/ports/mail/ssmtp && make install clean
```
, you will be asked to run 
	
	



```
make replace
```
 in the ssmtp directoty in order to replace the default MTA from Sendmail to ssmtp.

And the next thing would be for you to config ssmtp.conf and revalias (I think). There are tonnes of sample configs online for that.


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## Toolforger (Sep 23, 2018)

(Sorry for responding so late, for some reason I didn't get the alert - probably something I need to set up in my forum settings.)

I'm using pkg, I don't have /usr/ports/mail/ssmtp. I'm trying to be frugal with what I install on the box, it is supposed to run a really minimal system, so installing a C compiler is a no-go.
But nevermind; I found the ports collection online and could take a look in the Makefile, so I could figure out what I needed.

ssmtp.conf and /etc/aliases are being done. Working on finding out whether ssmtp even can do STARTTLS (right now it tries SSMTP it seems, which is unsupported on the mail server). Ah well, the joys of configuring a system from the ground up...


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