Bug 79552 - direct SMTP to MX transport
Summary: direct SMTP to MX transport
Status: RESOLVED WAITINGFORINFO
Alias: None
Product: kmail
Classification: Applications
Component: sending (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: RedHat Enterprise Linux Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: kdepim bugs
URL:
Keywords:
: 83556 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2004-04-13 12:19 UTC by David Anderson
Modified: 2012-08-19 00:53 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Version Fixed In:


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Description David Anderson 2004-04-13 12:19:19 UTC
Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.2.0)
Installed from:    RedHat RPMs
OS:          Linux

Sometimes I need to send mail by sending it direct to the MXs for the receiving domain. This is either because:

- I have an essay for my college which I need to know has been received by a certain time. If I send via my ISP, I cannot be sure that it'll get there; but if it goes direct to the college's MXs, I know it's in their system.

- My ISP's mailservers are down - but I still want to send mail!

When this happens, I have to drop to the shell and do an MX lookup, and type in the mail server in KMail's transport line.

What would be handy would be if KMail had a transport option of "Direct to MX", whereby KMail would look up the MX record for the receiving domain, and use one of the listed servers as a transport.

In this case KMail would need to do separate deliveries for each recipient domain, and there could be complications if some fail and others succeed - I guess KMail would need to internally mark which recipients have already succeeded if this transport is selected, and not try to redo those recipients.
Comment 1 Brad Hards 2004-04-14 12:47:39 UTC
KMail can already use a local sendmail install - it appears to be the default.  Are you suggesting that KMail should not rely on this, but instead include a copy?
Comment 2 David Anderson 2004-04-15 10:21:44 UTC
I could use the local sendmail install, you're right. But that would mean (remember, I'm a dialup user and am sending essays as PDFs which are about 200k) dropping to a terminal and running mailq until I know it's gone out before I can cut my connection. Not very user-friendly.

Also not all platforms on which KMail runs can be assumed to have a local sendmail installation (e.g. Cygwin).

Of course I'm not suggesting that KMail should have all the capabilities of a fully fledged MTA. Just that it should have the feature of being able to choose its transport dynamically by looking up MX records.
Comment 3 Andreas Gungl 2004-04-15 10:50:12 UTC
On Thursday 15 April 2004 10:21, David Anderson wrote:
> Of course I'm not suggesting that KMail should have all the capabilities
> of a fully fledged MTA. Just that it should have the feature of being
> able to choose its transport dynamically by looking up MX records.

How many percantage of the KMail users would use that feature?

IMO those who know about MX records etc. have also the knowledge for better 
workarounds. It's only a question of imagination, be creativ!

Look, you do look up the MX record manually. Why don't you create a filter 
script which does extract the target domain, looks up the MX record and 
adds a "X-KMail-Transport: smtp://<mx-server-ip-addr>:25" header to the 
message. Some lines of your favourite scripting language should do the job.

Then go on and create a filter, add an "pipe through" filter action and 
choose your script as executable. Select "Add this filter to the Apply To 
menu" and optionally select a nice icon.

That is the setup part. Here comes what you will do in case sending fails:

If a message gets stuck in your outbox, select it and use "Message | Apply 
Filter | <your filter>". You might want to open the message again and check 
"View | Mail Transport" to verify the changes. But simply using "Message | 
Send Now" should do the job.

It would be nice if you would contribute your script to the community, just 
send it to the kmail-devel mailing list. ;-)

Comment 4 David Anderson 2004-04-15 11:30:07 UTC
Andreas, there's a good idea there. The main problem is that if a message has multiple recipients, then it needs to be delivered separately to different hosts, which can't be done with this technique, as it still only allows KMail to deliver to a single SMTP host. If there are two recipients at different domains, it wouldn't work.

I'm not adverse to writing scripts to extend KMail - I wrote one to scan incoming mail to see if the sender was in my address book and if so skip spam-scanning, because KMail doesn't appear to have this feature yet.

I can't be the only one whose ISP's mail server is sometimes down and who would find this useful. We'd need to find some appropriate terminology that wouldn't confuse less technical users by mentioning "MX records". Say, a transport called "Direct to Recipient" with a tooltip that explains that it cuts out your ISP and is useful for if your ISP is down or if you need to confirm immediate delivery.

This feature would also be useful for road-warriors - it would mean they don't need to find out where a local SMTP server is each time they connect. (I realise that technically competent road-warriors can set up local sendmail installations - but I'm looking at the less technically-minded, or the person who can't spare the time!)
Comment 5 Matt Douhan 2005-07-20 15:49:26 UTC
*** Bug 83556 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 6 Myriam Schweingruber 2012-08-18 08:03:34 UTC
Thank you for your feature request. Kmail1 is currently unmaintained so we are closing all wishes. Please feel free to reopen a feature request for Kmail2 if it has not already been implemented.
Thank you for your understanding.
Comment 7 Luigi Toscano 2012-08-19 00:53:53 UTC
Instead of creating a new feature request, please confirm here if the wishlist is still valid for kmail2.