I run a small network of 4 machines, it is not really a network, this connection being basicly a handy way of getting data between machines. Because of this there is no name server or mail server running on any machines For out going mail I have always ssh'ed to the machine with the internet connection and used pine, which has inbuilt support for outgoing mail. Unfortuantely this no longer works as I now do not have direct access to my ISP's mail server and access via the internet requires authentication and pine does not support that. How is outgoing mail set up done on a standard desktop system, a text based email client on the internet access machine is the only one that will be used. Hopefull something simple. Although I have been running linux now for well over twenty years, network connections between my machines has always just worked and I have always used pine, as a consequency I have learned little of this side of Linux configuration. Kernel and X server config are different stories though Lindsay