[[!meta  title="sSMTP"]]

[sSMTP][] is a simple [[SMTP]] client for sending mail from your local
client to a mail hub with a more serious [MTA][].  For example, my
main server is running [[Postfix]], but I want to send mail from my
laptop.  I use sSMTP to do this.

Before you use sSMTP, you need to configure it so it knows how to
connect to the mail hub.  My `/etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf` is:

    root=jdoe
    mailhub=mail.example.net
    rewriteDomain=example.com

This sends mail via `mail.example.net`, and replaces my current domain
name with `example.com`.  `jdoe@mail.example.net` will recieve all
system-generated email (i.e. cron job output).

There are other settings available in the config file.  The stock
config contains lots of comments explaining how to use them, and the
`ssmtp.conf` man page contains even more details.

I felt like the [[SSL/TLS|GnuTLS]] handling for sSMTP was a bit sparse
(for example, it doesn't validate the server certificate), so I've
submitted some patches upstream ([662958][] and [662960][]).

If sSMTP doesn't scratch your itch, the next level up in terms of
features is [msmtp][], which I used to use before I setup my own mail
hub.

[sSMTP]: http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/ssmtp.html
[MTA]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_transfer_agent
[msmtp]: http://msmtp.sourceforge.net/
[662958]: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=662958
[662960]: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=662960