On 19-Feb-99 Robert-Jan Kuijvenhoven wrote: > I have installed Linux and now I would like to start sending and > receiving mail. I would like to send and receive mail to the smtp > server and from the pop server from my ISP. My computer is a > stand-alone machine, so there is no local mail. > > What is, in my case, the best package for mailing? > > The book 'Running Linux' (O'Reilly) suggests using smail and elm, but I > have the feeling smail is for setting up a mailserver. Which I don't > need because I connect to my ISP's mailserver. I can use netscape for > this, but I would appreciate a mail system a mail system that receives > mail in the background, without me having to start X and netscape every > time.
Be careful not to get confused here. I think, when you are using Netscape to connect to your ISP's mailserver then you are in effect using it as a browser which happens to be reading your mailbox on the ISP's mailserver, much as it would read another URL or a newsgroup. If you want to have mail handling facilities on your own machine, then there are two aspects to deal with. You need a "Mail User Agent" (MUA) like elm, pine, mutt, ... (which don't need X) or my favourite (see below) XFMail (which only works in X). This is the friendly interface you interact with when you compose, read or administer mail messages. Netscape can also function as an MUA (and of course needs X). You also need a "Mail Transport Agent" (MTA) like smail, sendmail, exim ... This is the software which sits in the background and handles the transmission of mail. For instance, when you finish composing a mail in your MUA and "send" it, this really invokes MTA activity; the MTA sorts out what headers to attach to the mail and stacks these, and the message text, in the outgoing queue directory. Depending on your connectivity, it may then immediately pick it up and open up a Mail transport dialogue with your ISP's mail-router, thereby transmitting it, or will leave it hanging until you have a connection open and then (perhaps under an explicit command such as "mailq" which for both smail and sendmail starts the "queue run" to send off all the batched mail to the ISP) send it out. Netscape does not function as an MTA. For receiving mail, if your ISP's mailhost knows about your IP address at the time it receives a mail for you, it may try to transmit it to your machine immediately (depending on configuration). More likely, it will stack your incoming mail in your mailbox on the ISP's mailhost and wait for an explicit mail-pulling exercise using popclient or fetchmail which will invoke its popserver facility; your own machine is responsible for starting up popclient or fetchmail. Mail thus received by your machine is stored in the first instance in your local "mailbox" file (/var/spool/mail/userid). Some MUAs handle this mailbox directly (elm, pine, ... ); others (XFMail, ... ) copy it down and split it into several files, one for each message, in your personal Mail directory (/home/userid/Mail/... or -- for Netscape -- /home/userid/nsmail/...) and only after this can you "see" the mail in the MUA. It is not a good idea to use different MUAs promiscuously, because of these different mail-handling methods. Again, depending on your connectivity, you may decide to program popclient or fetchmail activity to happen at set intervals (as a cron job) or when you deliberately decide to open up a connection. As to choice between smail and sendmail: in terms of what they do and how they are invoked, they are very similar (smail is deliberately designed to be a "plugin replacement for sendmail"). However, there are some differences of interface. The major difference between them is in the organisation of their configuration files, sendmail's being much more obscure. However, a modern Linux system should incorporate straightforward s[end]mail configuration for standard purposes as part of its system administration utilities. Once you have you MUA and MTA set up on your own machine, then you can read and write mail "in the background" whether or not you are connected to your ISP. As I am doing at this moment. Hope this helps, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 19-Feb-99 Time: 14:45:06 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
