Sending and Reading Email Get familiar with mailx, alpine, mutt, and mail. Creating a Signature file Automatically forwarding incoming messages Announcing an absence with vocation Configuring and managing email with procmail Using the Email An email message is identified by a sender and a receipt, both of which appear as headers in the message. mailx is a mail user agent for moving mails between users on the same host. Depending upon whether both sender and receipt are on the same host, an email address can take the following forms: 1. henry – user henry is on the same host 2. henry@saturn – henry is on a different host 3.
[email protected] –henryis on the internet Internet Email Handling (1/3) Internet mail handling requires the works of at least three agencies: 1. Mail user agent –for reading the mailbox and sending mail, like mailx and pine. 2. Mail transport agent –for transporting mail between machines 3. Mail delivery agent –for delivering mail to the recipients’ mailboxes. MUA reads incoming mail from the mailbox and hands over outgoing mail to the MTA. MTA sends and receives mail. At the sending end, it identifies the recipient’s address and delivers the message directly to the MTA at the other end. At the receiving end, the MTA passes on mail to MDA. Internet Email Handling (2/3) MTA’s sending and receiving functions are handled universally by the simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP). The MTA doesn’t deliver mail. MDA does the delivery, like procmail. If the user’s host connects to the mail server intermittently, the user typically uses his ISP’s facilities to handle his mail.