[CentOS] system smtp server question

[mouss]

Joseph L. Casale wrote:
> If I have a production mailserver and a series of Linux servers that all develop mail from logging etc, it seems slightly redundant to have so many smtp servers installed on each of those boxes simply forwarding mail as I choose to not have local delivery. Is there a mechanism possible in CentOS to setup a pointer to a different mailserver such that programs like mailx could still send mail?
>
> Currently I have postfix setup with maps so that root on server A has mail sent from root at server-a.fqdn<mailto:root at server-a.fqdn> and that is relayed to my production box. It just seems like it is an additional service to manage on so many hosts?
>   

you don't need an smtpd server (listener) but you need a daemon that 
queues mail and sends it to the relay host. programs such as cron cannot 
handle mail delivery failures.

it is a wrong approach to try to minimize daemons. having many daemons 
that do only one task is better than a monolythic service that does 
everything. In other words, look at the plan9 side, not at the windows 
side.