On Wed, Aug 23, 2000 at 03:42:16PM -0400, David Teague wrote
>
> On Wed, 23 Aug 2000, John Pearson wrote:
> [snip]
>
> > I differentiate between MUAs, MDAs, and MTAs; examples are:
> > MUA: mutt
> > MDA: procmail
> > MTA: exim
>
> John,
>
> 1) What do MTA, MUA, MDA stand for?
>
MTA - mail transport agent, responsible for machine-to-machine
routing of mail messages;
MDA - mail delivery agent, responsible for local delivery of
mail messages to the user's mailbox/whatever. Most MTAs
include at least a rudimentary MDA.
MUA - mail user agent, responsible for providing a user access
to his mailboces/folders.
> I know that mutt is a mailer, not unlike exim and smail, but has
> other functionality. procmail filters mail, but what else? exim
> seems to be a drop in for smail and sendmail, so has similar
> functionality.
>
> 2) What are the words for these acronyms? I have a bit of the
> answer:
>
> MTA is probably Mail Transport Agent (guess). MDA is Mail Delivery
> Agent. (from procmail man page, I can guess it delivers mail)
>
> man mutt doesn't tell much and there no exim man page on my system.
>
Exim has extensive documentation in info format; install exim-doc
and run info exim, or use dwww to browse it.
> What is MUA?
>
> 3) What is the function of these?
>
> 4) Where would I look this up? What is TFM I should R?
>
NRS which FM these came from; I think I picked them up from
some HOWTO or other. It's not a hard and fast separation
(as witness the common blurring of MTA and MDA), but provides
a convenient conceptual division along functional lines.
John P.
--
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