OMTA Frequently Asked Questions
===============================

Generic Questions
    
    * Why OMTA?
    * What platforms does OMTA work on?
    * How stable is OMTA?


Setup Questions

    * OMTA uses my local email address instead of the email address my
      mail agent uses
    * No mail is sent / OMTA says (in syslog): Cannot queue <id>; no
      sender and/or recipients
    * How can I make OMTA to use SENDMAIL for local delivery?
    * How can I use OMTA with multiple ISP's?
    * Can I use OMTA with ETRN-capable SMTP servers?
    * Can I share my queue directory over NFS?
    * OMTA doesn't work!


Generic Questions

    Question: Why OMTA?

    Answer: I started the then called OfflineMailer project when I got fed
            up with using Netscape's mail client and wanted to use Mutt
            (note that I only have dialup at home).

            But Mutt uses SENDMAIL for it's mail delivery, and I didn't
            succeed in getting SENDMAIL to queue mail for remote sites
            locally and only attempt to transmit it when I got online. So
            I tried a program called Bero Offline Mail, but it coredumped
            on the first message I tried it with.

            OfflineMailer was essentially a re-implementation of Bero
            Offline Mail, aimed at stability and usability, and of course
            some nice features. I was later convinced by someone else to
            rename it to OMTA, because that sounds much better.


    Question: What platforms does OMTA work on?

    Answer: OMTA, being similar to SENDMAIL in handling mail, is of course
            primarily targeted at UNIX systems. In theory, it should work
            on any modern, self-respecting UNIX.

            OMTA has been verified to work on:
             * Linux (any recent version)
             * OpenBSD (tested on 2.6)


    Question: How stable is OMTA?

    Answer: OMTA is in a 'it-works-for-me' stadium. I do all of my mail
            with OMTA. But OMTA is still work in progress, so your mileage
            may vary.


Setup Questions

    Question: OMTA uses my local email address instead of the email
              address my mail agent uses

    Answer: Well, that's actually a feature :^). There are 2 ways to get
            around it:
             1. alter the SENDMAIL setting in your mail agent to
                something like this:

                /usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -oem -f your@email.address

             2. put the following line in your user-specific OMTA
                configuration file (~/.omtarc):

                FromAddress "your@email.address"


    Question: No mail is sent / OMTA says (in syslog): Cannot queue <id>;
              no sender and/or recipients

    Answer: See the previous question


    Question: How can I make OMTA to use SENDMAIL for local delivery?

    Answer: Well, this was sort of anticipated, as my original setup did
            use SENDMAIL for local delivery. Just set the LocalMTA
            configuration command to the following:

            "/usr/sbin/sendmail.orig -oi %t"

            The '%t' string will be replaced by the full email address of
            the recipient currently being processed. I assume you've saved
            your old SENDMAIL binary as /usr/sbin/sendmail.orig.


    Question: How can I use OMTA with multiple ISP's?

    Answer: Create multiple OMTA configuration files, one for each ISP.
            Then use some sort of script to determine the correct ISP to
            use. You can use the '-C' option to tell OMTA what
            configuration to use.

            If this is all too much work for you, of you're using
            MasqDialer, I suggest you take a look at MasqMail
            (http://www.innominate.org/~oku/masqmail/), as it intergrates
            nicely with MasqDialer and was written especially for this
            purpose.


    Question: Can I use OMTA with ETRN-capable SMTP servers?

    Answer: Yes, you can. A program is included with your OMTA
            distribution called etrnquery, which connects to your SMTP
            server and sends an ETRN query for every host mentioned in
            your configuration file as being local.

            See the file README.etrnquery in the OMTA source directory for
            more information and installation instructions.


    Question: Can I share my queue directory over NFS?

    Answer: Yes, you can. Starting with OMTA 0.5, files in the queue
            directory have names that are NFS safe (they're guaranteed
            unique). However, it's still recommended to use RelayTo instead
            of sharing the queue directory over NFS.


    Question: OMTA doesn't work!

    Answer: Firstly, see if you're actually running the latest version. If
            upgrading doesn't solve your problem, or if you're already
            running the latest version anyway, send your bug report, along
            with an exact description of what you where trying to do, and
            a description of your machine to omta-devel@omta.runlevel.net
