How To Install ssmtp on Debian 12

Learn how to install ssmtp on Debian 12 with this tutorial. ssmtp is extremely simple MTA to get mail off the system to a mail hub

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install ssmtp on Debian 12.

What is ssmtp

ssmtp is:

A secure, effective and simple way of getting mail off a system to your mail hub. It contains no suid-binaries or other dangerous things - no mail spool to poke around in, and no daemons running in the background. Mail is simply forwarded to the configured mailhost. Extremely easy configuration.

WARNING: the above is all it does; it does not receive mail, expand aliases or manage a queue. That belongs on a mail hub with a system administrator.

There are three methods to install ssmtp on Debian 12. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install ssmtp Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install ssmtp using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install ssmtp

Install ssmtp Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install ssmtp using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install ssmtp

Install ssmtp Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install ssmtp using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install ssmtp

How To Uninstall ssmtp on Debian 12

To uninstall only the ssmtp package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove ssmtp

Uninstall ssmtp And Its Dependencies

To uninstall ssmtp and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 12, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove ssmtp

Remove ssmtp Configurations and Data

To remove ssmtp configuration and data from Debian 12 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge ssmtp

Remove ssmtp configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove ssmtp configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge ssmtp

Dependencies

ssmtp have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install ssmtp package on Debian 12 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.