Bruce writes:

> Maybe I should mention: the mail doesn't have to be sent - the software will
> be written with the philosophy: "if the mail goes through, that's an added
> bonus, if not, no problem."

I'm confused.  If you just want to send mail from an application, just
send it with /usr/sbin/sendmail and cross your fingers.  This can be
as simple as:

    echo "to: user@example.com" | /usr/sbin/sendmail destination@example.net

Optionally you might want to use -f to specify an envelope sender and
maybe -t if the destination address(es) are in the mail header.  In
case the mailer is "real" sendmail -i is a good idea as well.

> So is your suggestion my best bet? Any recommendations on what documentation
> I should read on setting up sendmail, mailer.conf etc?

Installing and configuring mail transports is a can of worms: everyone
has a favourite, and the debates about the merits of each are usually
religious flame wars rather than measured rationale debates.

My own preference is for qmail, but postfix is OK and then there's
sendmail, which I've said rude things about in the past but which is
widely understood and is available on any even vaguely Unix-like
system.  Today I'm not going to make a recommendation. :-)

NetBSD's mailer.conf(5) is documented by its manual page.  That's
the easy bit!

Cheers,

Giles