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I am having issues sending email from my Ubuntu OS. I was told I should check my SMTP configuration.

How can I do that on Ubuntu and is there such a concept on this OS?

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You really need to add some more details to your question. –  Zoredache May 26 '11 at 21:05

4 Answers 4

Ubuntu can have an MTA (providing SMTP services), but actual installation is configuration dependent. You can use sudo apt-get install postfix to install a popular and well regarded mail handler. Be warned, running a poorly configured SMTP service can cause problems.

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Keep in mind that installing the postfix package is not even close to everything you need to do to get a working email to the Internet. If you are on a home connection, or firewalled business connection then delivery to anything outside of your own box is almost certainly blocked. –  Zoredache May 26 '11 at 21:09

SMTP configuration exists in your email client (Evolution, Thunderbird etc)

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Thanks - how do I check which one I have? :) –  Genadinik May 26 '11 at 19:47
How are you attempting to send email? –  sreimer May 26 '11 at 19:53
I am trying to send mail from a ruby on rails program. I am invoking their library for sending mail, and it works fine, and tries to send it, but nothing gets sent. So I figured it might be my SMTP –  Genadinik May 26 '11 at 19:55
This is misleading. Your mail client has a configuration to allow it to interact with an SMTP server, but those clients do not (themselves) act as an SMTP server. The OP is actually needing a SMTP Server to process his application generated emails. –  OldTroll May 26 '11 at 20:54

When you send email from any type of system generally it can be done in 2 options:

  1. Software contacts remote server, either on the LAN or outside of it.
  2. Software uses a local SMTP server installed on the system.

Start with the inspection of the software you work on. Where is the configuration of the email there?

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When I needed to send data from a php based system I had a look around and I found a really useful how on this blog, as I was sending from an internal server to our internal smtp server I just had to do step 1.

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