## 8.5.2. Sending E-Mails Outside The System 

As mentioned earlier, the installed Ubuntu system is only set up to handle e-mail local to the system, not for sending mail to others nor for receiving mail from others. 

If you would like exim4 to handle external e-mail, please refer to the next subsection for the basic available configuration options. Make sure to test that mail can be sent and received correctly. 

If you intend to use a graphical mail program and use a mail server of your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or your company, there is not really any need to configure exim4 for handling external e-mail. 

Just configure your favorite graphical mail program to use the correct servers to send and receive e-mail (how is outside the scope of this manual). 

However, in that case you may need to configure individual utilities to correctly send e-mails. One such utility is reportbug , a program that facilitates submitting bug reports against Ubuntu packages. 

By default it expects to be able to use exim4 to submit bug reports. 

To correctly set up reportbug to use an external mail server, please run the command reportbug --configure and answer “no” to the question if an MTA is available. You will then be asked for the SMTP server to be used for submitting bug reports. 

## 8.5.3. Configuring the Exim4 Mail Transport Agent 

If you would like your system to also handle external e-mail, you will need to reconfigure the exim4 package$^{4}$: 

# dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config 

After entering that command (as root), you will be asked if you want split the configuration into small files. If you are unsure, select the default option. 

Next you will be presented with several common mail scenarios. Choose the one that most closely resembles your needs. 

internet site 

Your system is connected to a network and your mail is sent and received directly using SMTP. 

On the following screens you will be asked a few basic questions, like your machine’s mail name, or a list of domains for which you accept or relay mail. 

mail sent by smarthost 

In this scenario your outgoing mail is forwarded to another machine, called a “smarthost”, which takes care of sending the message on to its destination. The smarthost also usually stores incom- ing mail addressed to your computer, so you don’t need to be permanently online. That also means you have to download your mail from the smarthost via programs like fetchmail. 

In a lot of cases the smarthost will be your ISP’s mail server, which makes this option very suitable for dial-up users. It can also be a company mail server, or even another system on your own network. 

