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Re: What are MUA, MTA, MDA? (Was Re: Linux Mail Client)



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.
-- 
huiac@camtech.net.au
john@huiac.apana.org.au
http://www.mdt.net.au/~john Debian Linux admin & support:technical services



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