slimta is a configurable MTA based on the python-slimta libraries. While the purpose of the python-slimta library is to avoid configuration files and allow full control via Python code, the slimta project recognizes that not everyone will want or need that level of control. Setup, configuration, and execution of slimta is designed to be familiar to non-programmers.

The slimta project is released under the MIT License.

Install slimta from PyPi:

$ sudo pip install slimta

Pip should pull in all the required dependencies. Next, we create the basic configuration files:

$ slimta-setup config

This creates 3 files, in ~/.slimta/ or wherever you specified. The sample configs are designed to work out of the box, so lets give it a shot:

$ slimta

In another terminal, let's connect to port 1025 to see if it's working. After the banner (the line beginning with 220 ), type in QUIT to end the session:

$ telnet localhost 1025
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 localhost.localdomain ESMTP example.com Mail Delivery Agent
QUIT
221 2.0.0 Bye
Connection closed by foreign host.

Port 1025 is fully capable of accepting mail in the SMTP session, but is configured by default with the blackhole relay to silently discard messages. You can also try it out with the built-in Python SMTP libraries:

$ python
>>> import smtplib
>>> smtplib.SMTP('localhost', 1025).sendmail('test@example.com',
                                             ['postmaster@example.com'],
                                             'test message')

At this point, we're still a little ways off from where you'd probably like to be: actually sending and receiving email to the Internet. Please check out the Usage Manual for information on configuring slimta to your liking, including more advanced and custom setups.