| <sect1 id="services-mail-overview"> |
| |
| <title>Overview</title> |
| |
| <para> |
| The mail service provides the software required to let you |
| send/receive mail messages to/from others. The mail service is |
| supported by three basic components: the Mail Transfer Agent |
| (MTA), the Mail Delivery Agent (MDA) and the Mail User Agent |
| (MUA). The MTA is the program your mail client sends mail |
| messages to. The MDA, on the other hand, is the program your |
| mail client reads mail message from (i.e., this is the program |
| that lets you access your mailbox). The saslauthd daemon is |
| used by the MDA to authenticate user's credentials (e.g., the |
| information required to grant access to an specific mailbox) |
| and in some cases by the MTA to authenticate users before |
| sending mail to it. The MTA will listen on all network |
| interfaces it is attached to and will receive mail sent to |
| specific users inside specific domain names. |
| </para> |
| |
| <para> |
| Inside &TCD; there is support for different MTAs (e.g., |
| Sendmail, Postfix and Exim). By default, the |
| <application>Sendmail</application> program is used as mail |
| transfer agent, however, we want to use Postfix for our |
| configuration. This way, to use Postfix as default mail |
| transfer agent and not Sendmail, it is required to use the |
| <command>alternatives</command> command. This command will |
| present you a menu to chose between available mail transfer |
| agents installed in the system, so you can choose Posfix as |
| default option. Now that you've made Postfix the default mail |
| transfer agent, you can saftly remove the sendmail package to |
| avoid unused software to remain inside the computer. |
| </para> |
| |
| <para> |
| Inside &TCD; there is support for different MDA (e.g., Cyrus |
| IMPA and Dovecot). By default, the Dovecot program is used as |
| mail delivery agent (which doesn't require any intermediate |
| daemon for athentication), however, we want to use Cyrus IMAP |
| for our configuration (which does require an intermediate |
| daemon called saslauthd for authentication). |
| </para> |
| |
| <para> |
| Inside &TCD; there is support for different MUA (e.g., |
| Evolution, Thunderbird and Mutt). By default, the Evolution |
| program is used and we stay with it :). |
| </para> |
| |
| <para> |
| In this chapter we describe how to configure each one of these |
| components to let you send/receive e-mails to/from your |
| friends. |
| </para> |
| |
| </sect1> |
| |