Owen Heisler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I don't want to do anything that is not official supported! :) > > But what is fetchmail doing? > > And also: can postfix not act as the MDA? I'm not really clear on all > the M*A stuff, so I looked on Wikipedia for MDA and it says there > that: "[An MDA] is software that accepts incoming e-mail messages and > distributes them to recipients' individual mailboxes (if the > destination account is on the local machine), or forwards to another > SMTP server (if the destination is on a remote server)." > > Okay, so that would be what Postfix does anytime it receives mail.
It doesn't say how it receives the mail. *Usually* an MTA receives mail through the SMTP protocol listening on port 25, while an MDA receives the mail on standard input. > Next: > "[An MDA] is not necessarily a mail transfer agent (MTA), although > on many systems the two functions are implemented by the same > program." > > From what I read, postfix does seem to include an MDA... It certainly can deliver mail. AFAIK exim can also do sorting, but that's not the primary function. > Can I not send mail to the Postfix MDA somehow? What I essentially > want to end up with is for postfix to exist somehow between getmail > and ~/.Maildir so that only Postfix is writing to ~/.Maildir and any > spam filtering I set up with Postfix will check the mail retrieved by > getmail too. And if I change my mail configuration/location, getmail > configuration doesn't need to be changed. Do you run your own mailserver? > Will sendmail (as MDA_external) do want I'm wanting? This is beyond my knowledge. You will have to dig through the postfix docs for this, especially the part about the sendmail replacement. > Also, from a forum > (http://www.zimbra.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5142): "You don't need > the MTA path, getmail should forward it via port 25 to zimbra, the > same way that fetchmail does." I guess he meant MDA not MTA. > Is that what fetchmail is doing? Hey, this is it (fetchmail man): > "As each message is retrieved fetchmail normally delivers it via > SMTP to port 25 on the machine it is running on (localhost), just as > though it were being passed in over a normal TCP/IP link. The mail > will then be delivered locally via your system’s MDA (Mail Delivery > Agent, usually sendmail(8) but your system may use a different one > such as smail, mmdf, exim, or qmail). All the delivery-control > mechanisms (such as .forward files) normally available through your > system MDA and local delivery agents will therefore work > automatically." Hhhm, I tend to believe Charles Cazabon (the writer of getmail) and D.J. Bernstein (the writer of qmail) and avoid this route. The relevant quote has already been posted in this thread. > How can I get getmail to do this? sendmail? I hope you know postfix provides a replacement sendmail binary for compatibility. Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein)
