I need an email server, or something

[Michael Hipp]

Lonni J Friedman wrote:
> On 10/19/07, Michael Hipp <Michael at hipp.com> wrote:
>> I support Linux servers scattered hither and yon. I'd like for them to
>> send me various emails when bad things happen or to report on this or that.
>>
>> Problem is, many of them are served by ISPs whose smtp server requires
>> authentication. I often do not have access to the login credentials. I
>> don't want to store login credentials for my own email server on these
>> servers owned by clients (and not under my physical control).
>> Additionally, lots of these ISPs block outbound port 25.
>>
>> Any ideas on how I can get my servers to send me things?
>>
>> Is there an email server somewhere I can use?
>>
>> Surely I'm not the first to bump up against this.
> 
> Maybe don't use email?  Can you do snmp or ssh instead?

I hadn't thought of using snmp. How exactly would that work? Which 
direction does it go?

I can ssh into all these boxes. But I wanted something "active" to alert 
me of problems or to just report on routine things (cron jobs, disk 
usage, etc.)

Thanks,
Michael