2008/10/9 Mark Rogers <mark@quarella.co.uk>
I have a basic box installed with Ubuntu-server (8.04), pretty much a
default install. I want to send a couple of files from that box as
attachments by email.

I'm looking for the minimum necessary to do this. I don't really see the
need for a mail server (it just needs to do a DNS lookup for an MX
record then SMTP direct to that). I have so far installed mutt but
that's unable to send without something extra being installed.

Try installing nullmailer.  That queues and forwards mail to a specified external smarthost.

JD