Required Privileges for mtaSend()

Like the MTA SDK routines, privileges are required in order to use mtaSend(). Enqueuing messages requires privileges sufficient to create, open, read from, and write to the MTA message queue directories. On UNIX, this is accomplished by having your executable program owned and run by the MTA account or, alternatively, owned by the MTA and have the setuid attribute set.

In order to submit mail under a user name that differs from that of the calling process, privileges are required. On UNIX platforms, the process must have the same (real) UID as either the root or Messaging Server account.

In some applications, it is important to keep strict control over when privileges are enabled and disabled. To this end, the MTA_PRIV_ENABLE_PROC and MTA_PRIV_DISABLE_PROC item codes may be used to specify the addresses of two procedures to call immediately prior to and immediately after enqueuing a message. This allows the required privileges to be enabled only when they are needed, that is, when the message is enqueued, and to remain disabled at all other times.

The mtaSend() routine does not use a condition handler, so if a fatal error occurs while enqueuing a message, it is up to the calling program to trap the error and, if necessary, disable any privileges that should be disabled. These procedures, if specified, should accept no arguments and return no function result (return value).

The privileges to be enabled must either be granted to the program using mtaSend() (for example, the program may have been installed with privileges), or the process running the program must have the requisite privileges. The mtaSend() routine and the MTA do not provide these privileges.