Hello:

On 15 Sep 2025 at 13:12, Haines Brown via Dng wrote:

> thanks ...
You're welcome.

> Didn't occur to me ...
Yes.
In my case, I didn't even know that there was an MTA, what it was and
that it was [in this case] called [exim].

It was *that* transparent to me as a desktop / workstation user.
I just received system mail to notify* me of whatever was not working
properly when I opened a terminal.

I find it uncanny that such a complex application as [exim] is the
default Debian (and as a result Devuan) MTA.

There has been some debate about that but I have not seen its
conclusions.

If interested, see:
https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/DefaultMTA
https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/DefaultMTA/DMA
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/05/msg01517.html

> ... purge exim4 before trying to use dragonfly?
> Or merely stop it?
I have only ever used the MTA for getting local notifications so all
I did was nuke [exim] (with extreme prejudice) and install [dma], no
reservations.

If you stop [exim] (making sure it does not start again after a
reboot) and install [dma], configure and reboot, I expext that you
should not have any issues.

I am sure you have proper backups, so I would not worry.

> ... a specific box number to handle messages ...
> ... need to configure dragonfly.
> ... can't find any reference to configuration ...

There is an online man page (1) and an electronic mail handbook (of
sorts) from the chaps at FreeBSD (2) which covers [dma]:

1. https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=dma
2. https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/mail/

Bear in mind that besides needing to be in the [mail] group, you will
also need to install the [mailutils] package. Otherwise doing mail at
the command line will not work.

That said, you may want to consider using an old (ca. 1995), small
and absolutely unobtrusive application to let you know when system
mail arrives.

It is called Coolmail 1.3 and you will find it in the Devuan
repository. Sits quietly on your desktop doing *one* thing and doing
it *well*.

https://packages.debian.org/stable/mail/coolmail

https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=coolmail&sektion=1&manpath=F
reeBSD+14.0-RELEASE+and+Ports

https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=30487#p30487 and subsequent
posts.

Best,

A.