Setting up mail

Setting up mail

[Trey Sizemore]

I have a seemingly elementary question that I can't seem to find an answer
to.  I'm getting into using Emacs (ideally exclusively for things like
editing, email, newsgroups, etc.).  I've gotten gnus to display articles
from a newsgroup server and I've been going through the manual learing how
to mark, score, etc.  However, I don't seem to be able to post or mail from
gnus.  The default is set to use sendmail as the agent (which I thought was
working on my system) but no mail goes out.  So I'd like to change it to
use my ISP's smtp server and was not sure about the syntax and where to put
it (I don't currently have a ~/.gnus file (using SUSE) but I do have a
~/.gnu-emacs file.  Do I need to create a .gnus file?

Thanks for the assistance.

Re: Setting up mail

[Katsumi Yamaoka]

>>>>> In <cmbgat$h6e$1@sea.gmane.org> Trey Sizemore wrote:

> I have a seemingly elementary question that I can't seem to find an answer
> to.  I'm getting into using Emacs (ideally exclusively for things like
> editing, email, newsgroups, etc.).  I've gotten gnus to display articles
>>From a newsgroup server and I've been going through the manual learing how
> to mark, score, etc.  However, I don't seem to be able to post or mail from
> gnus.  The default is set to use sendmail as the agent (which I thought was
> working on my system) but no mail goes out.  So I'd like to change it to
> use my ISP's smtp server

You can find how to change the way to send mails in the Gnus manual.
M-x info RET d m Gnus RET m Posting Server RET:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
   When sending mail, Message invokes `message-send-mail-function'.
The default function, `message-send-mail-with-sendmail', pipes your
article to the `sendmail' binary for further queuing and sending.  When
your local system is not configured for sending mail using `sendmail',
and you have access to a remote SMTP server, you can set
`message-send-mail-function' to `smtpmail-send-it' and make sure to
setup the `smtpmail' package correctly.  An example:

     (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it
           smtpmail-default-smtp-server "YOUR SMTP HOST")
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

You will also need to see the smtpmail.el file.  In order to
know where it is, type the following:

M-x locate-library RET smtpmail.el RET

> and was not sure about the syntax and where to put
> it (I don't currently have a ~/.gnus file (using SUSE) but I do have a
> ~/.gnu-emacs file.  Do I need to create a .gnus file?

> Thanks for the assistance.

I recommend you use the ~/.gnus.el file rather than the ~/.gnus
file.  Anyway, that file is essential to use Gnus, I think.  It
is used to customize most Gnus features including the method for
reading and posting news.  Here's an example which you should
put into the ~/.gnus.el file in order to use the smtpmail package.

(setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)

You will also need to put the following lines in the ~/.emacs
file.  The reason it is not ~/.gnus.el but ~/.emacs is that
smtpmail is not only for Gnus.

(setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "YOUR SMTP HOST")
(setq smtpmail-local-domain "YOUR DOMAIN NAME")
(setq smtpmail-sendto-domain "YOUR DOMAIN NAME")

Where "YOUR SMTP HOST" and "YOUR DOMAIN NAME" should be replaced
with proper ones.