[Asterisk-Users] Voicemail as an email attachement

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2005 at 08:35:04AM +0200, Goran Skular wrote:
> Small.. just app_voicemail.c and a sendEmail script...
> 
> You can download it from here:
> 
> app_voicemail.c
> http://www.migo-systems.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=11&func=f
> ileinfo&id=9
> and
> 
> 
> sendEmail
> http://www.migo-systems.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=11&func=f
> ileinfo&id=10

Project's homepage is
http://caspian.dotconf.net/menu/Software/SendEmail/

(try a google search or a freshmeat search, don't trust my word for it)

Always download programs directly from the homepage or from another
reliable source. Don't just grab programs and scripts from everywhere.

But why not just set mailcmd in voicemail.conf?

Also, quoting the homepage:

> Why not use sendmail?
> Sendmail is a large and complex mail server. Installing this kind of
> mail software on servers (unless it's a mail server) is more of a
> security risk than its worth. 

Not if it only listens on localhost or doesn't listen at all. The
codebases of sendmail is indeed known to be a source of many security
breaches, but exim, postfix and qmail are not so. Most distros come with
either postfix or exim by default nowadays.

> Not to mention it can be a real pain
> messing with configuration files and such. Systems need another simpler
> way to send email from the command prompt, and sendEmail provides this
> functionality. Its a simple, direct way to send email without the
> overhead of other conventional email software.

Most of the pain is caused due to management of messages in the queue.
Other types of pain are due to messages routing. Routing issues can be
easily solved by sending basically all mail to a remote host (excpt,
maybe, some system messages).

However, if the system is disconnected from the net for a while what
will you do? lose all voicemail messages? (and get just ugly warnings 
in the logs as a reminder)

Also note that there are quite a few programs that could use a
sendmail-compatible interface. cron sends its output using mail. So are
many other programs. If you don't provide a sendmail-compatible
interface (even if it one that does not queue, something like
nullmailer) you'll have to reconfigure other parts of your system as
well.

And worst of all: you won't be able to send mail with mutt. The horors!

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Tzafrir Cohen         | tzafrir at jbr.cohens.org.il | VIM is
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