Re: Sendmail vs. Postfix vs. ?

[Whil Hentzen <lug@hentzenwerke.com>]

> Historically, a MUA (Mail User Agent) like mailx, elm, pine, mutt,
> etc. accessed the user's mail spool directly, but these days a POP3 or
> IMAP server usually takes care of that part, and the user's MUA just
> connects to the POP3/IMAP service.
>
> So, you actually need to pick two things:
>
>   * MTA
>   * POP3/IMAP server

OK, so let me think this through.... 

Let's suppose that Postfix (MTA) and dovecot (IMAP) are running on a server 
box. 

Say my client is KMail, and I've set it up to talk IMAP (not POP3). A message 
for me comes to the MTA (Postfix) on the server box. Then the message just 
sits there. dovecot then grabs the message from the MTA, and now it owns it. 

I wake up one morning and decide to fetch my mail. Fire up KMail, which 
connects and _reads_ the message. Since it's IMAP, the message physicall 
stays on the IMAP server. It does not download into KMail's folder under 
/home/myusername/mail (or whatever) on the box I'm sitting in front of.

If that's how it works, then I think I understand how the IMAP server and 
KMail talk to each other. I've experimented with that before, until I 
realized that my box running my mail server was rapidly running out of room.

I'm confused, however, about how the IMAP server communicates with the MTA. 
Does it just ping the MTA every once in a while and grab any messages that 
it's supposed to handle?

-- 
Whil

Moving to Linux: Freedom, Choice, Security, Opportunity
http://www.hentzenwerke.com


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