This article describes how to change FreeBSD's default MTA from Sendmail to sSMTP, and then forward root's mail to Gmail.
Begin by stopping any running Sendmail processes
service sendmail stop
Then disable Sendmail by adding the following to /etc/rc.conf
sendmail_enable="NO" sendmail_submit_enable="NO" sendmail_outbound_enable="NO" sendmail_msp_queue_enable="NO"
Install sSMTP from ports
cd /usr/ports/mail/ssmtp
make install replace clean
Create a new /usr/local/etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf
with the following configuration:
root=This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:587
AuthUser=This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
AuthPass=yourpassword
UseSTARTTLS=YES
Edit this section at the top of /etc/mail/aliases
# Pretty much everything else in this file points to "root", so
# you would do well in either reading root's mailbox or forwarding
# root's email from here.
root: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
To test ssmtp. Enter this command
ssmtp -v This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Type your message.
Send Ctrl-d when finished