msmtp 1.8.0 is released

2018-09-04

This is the first release of the new stable release series. Noteworthy changes since 1.6.8:

• A minimal SMTP server called msmtpd was added that listens on the local host and pipes mails to msmtp (or another program). It is intended to be used with system services that cannot be configured to call msmtp directly. You can disable it with the configure option --without-msmtpd.
• Using OpenSSL is discouraged and may not be supported in the future. Please use GnuTLS instead. The reasons are explained here.
• As using GNU SASL is most likely unnecessary, it is disabled by default now. Since everything uses TLS nowadays and thus can use PLAIN authentication, you really only need it for GSSAPI.
• If your system requires a library for IDN support, libidn2 is now used instead of the older libidn.
• The CRAM-MD5 authentication method is marked as obsolete / insecure and will not be chosen automatically anymore.
• The passwordeval command does not require the password to be terminated by a new line character anymore.
• The new logfile_time_format command allows to customize log file time stamps.
• Builtin default port numbers are now used instead of consulting /etc/services.
• Support for DJGPP and for systems lacking vasprintf(), mkstemp(), or tmpfile() is removed.

msmtp 1.8.0rc1 is released

2018-08-20

This is a release candidate for the upcoming 1.8.x stable release series. The following changes were made:

• A minimal SMTP server called msmtpd was added that listens on the local host and pipes mails to msmtp (or another program). It is intended to be used with system services that cannot be configured to call msmtp directly. You can disable it with the configure option --without-msmtpd.
• Using OpenSSL is discouraged and may not be supported in the future. Please use GnuTLS instead. The reasons are explained here.
• As using GNU SASL is most likely unnecessary, it is disabled by default now. Since everything uses TLS nowadays and thus can use PLAIN authentication, you really only need it for GSSAPI.
• The CRAM-MD5 authentication method is marked as obsolete / insecure and will not be chosen automatically anymore.
• If your system requires a library for IDN support, libidn2 is now used instead of the older libidn.
• Builtin default port numbers are now used instead of consulting /etc/services.
• Support for DJGPP and for systems lacking mkstemp() or tmpfile() is removed.

Using msmtp with OpenSSL is discouraged, please use GnuTLS

2018-08-19

It is recommended to use msmtp with GnuTLS instead of OpenSSL. The upcoming version of msmtp will not use OpenSSL automatically anymore, and if you choose it manually, you will get a warning.

The reason for this is that the OpenSSL-related code in msmtp is essentially unmaintained. I don't work on it myself anymore, and the last time somebody sent a patch was 8 years ago. As a result, if you use msmtp with OpenSSL today, you don't get support for TLS SNI, --tls-priorities, --tls-crl-file, or --tls-min-dh-prime-bits.

The code is hard to read, maintain, and improve due to severe limitations in the usability and documentation of the OpenSSL API. A few examples:

• With OpenSSL, we need to write our own functions to verify host names and convert ASN1 times to time_t. This is insane, as both actions are required by virtually all TLS clients and are hard to get right, see e.g. here and here. Any usable TLS library must provide such functions. I understand that OpenSSL 1.1.0 finally added support for host name verification, but it still leaves you alone with the terrible ASN1 time representation.
• Just initializing the library is a complex topic. The OpenSSL wiki has a 1800 word long Wiki page on library initialization. Again, this is insane. If any explicit initialization is required at all, it should be done with one single simple function call.
• We have a function in msmtp that does nothing but try to find out why an OpenSSL input/output error occurred. It has 50 lines of code and has to consult three different error codes from various parts of the OpenSSL API to do just that. Insane.

Complexity is the enemy of security. I have given up on OpenSSL years ago and will not work to improve and update the OpenSSL-related code in msmtp. If someone wants to do that work, I will accept patches, but I will continue to recommend using GnuTLS instead. If the OpenSSL support in msmtp remains in its current state, it will eventually be removed.

New experimental feature: msmtpd, a minimal SMTP server

2018-08-14

There is an experimental new feature in the git repository: msmtpd, a minimal SMTP server that listens on a local interface and pipes each incoming mail to msmtp (or a different program).
It is intended to be used with system services that expect an SMTP server on the local host and cannot be configured to use the sendmail interface that msmtp provides.
If you are interested, use configure --with-msmtpd to enable it, and let us know what you think.

msmtp 1.6.8 is released

2018-06-28

New in this release:

• Support for TLS Server Name Indication (SNI)
• Support for binding the outgoing connection to a source IP, using the new --source-ip option or source_ip command

msmtp 1.6.7 is released

2018-06-15

New in this release:

• Support for ~/.config/msmtp/config as configuration file
• Network timeout handling on Windows
• Fixed command line handling of SHA256 TLS fingerprints
• Fixed SIGPIPE handling (affects at least Mac OS X)
• Add french translation, and update german translation

Repository mirror

2018-06-14

The main git repository at gitlab.marlam.de/marlam/msmtp is now mirrored at github.com/marlam/msmtp-mirror.

Project moved

2018-06-12

After many years, this project moved from Sourceforge to a self-hosted gitlab instance: https://gitlab.marlam.de/marlam/msmtp.

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