Compiling a newer version than the latest .deb package

[Nathan Stratton Treadway]

On Wed, Jun 05, 2019 at 21:30:51 +1200, Frank Watt wrote:
> I wasn't clear.  I'm quite content with an old mutt, but I've come to
> the end of the line with sendmail (which I can't get to work, though
> it used to work).

Ah!  In that case, definitely don't try recompiling anything :)
 
> What I'm thinking of doing is remove the old mutt package; install
> nullmailer (which process deletes sendmail (not sorry to see that go);
> then reinstall the 9-year old mutt package.  I'd assume I'd have to
> make some edits to Muttrc &/or ~/.mutt.rc to specify my ISP's SMTP
> server.  The man muttrc is dated 2002!!

You don't need to uninstall mutt --  the nullmailer package should
simply replace the sendmailer package.  Most likely you would only need
to configure nullmailer (and not make any changes to the mutt config);
mutt will still call /usr/sbin/sendmail as it does now, but that program
will be Nullmailer rather than Sendmail.

(Also, by default the sendmail package will be removed rather than
purged, so your existing configuration files will be left installed, and
you could go back if you decided to for some reason.)

> Would that really work?  It's an attractive idea, avoiding the
> complications of compiling new code with ancient functionality and
> getting rid of sendmail's idiosynchracies. Is there any reason not to
> try?

Well, the first question is "how does your incoming email get
delivered"?  If it's delivered locally to the machine where you are
running Mutt, you will need to be sure that sendmail is not involved in
delivering it (because nullmailer is specifically designed not to
support delivering mail to local mailboxes).

On the other hand, if you do only need "/usr/sbin/sendmail" for sending
outgoing messages, then yes, Nullmailer is very likely to work as a
replacement for Sendmail.

(With the caveat that whether Nullmailer can actually work around your
current problem does depend on what exactly is going wrong with your
current configuration...).

							Nathan