Re: email

[Francesco Bochicchio <fbochicchio@galactica.it>]

On Wed, Nov 15, 2000 at 10:13:07AM -0000, debian wrote:
> Thanks for that but i am still a little confused. What is the findutils
> package and which file in root/bin do I past in the line you gave.
> > do the findutils package
> > will get you the updatedb function, it is updated 'nightly'
> > by the anacron scripts.  I use the following in my root/bin directory
> > to update after I upgrade the systen
> > ____[ cut here ]____
> > #!/bin/sh
> > # dodb
> > #  Ok lets update the locate database
> >
> > updatedb --prunepaths='/tmp /proc /cdrom /mnt' > /dev/null 2>&1
> > ____[ cut here ]____
> I have used the > find / -iname \*Mail-\*
> but still cant find any of the files
> Mail-HOWTO.txt.gz
> Mail-User-HOWTO.txt.gz
> then for Admin principles,
> Mail-Administrator-HOWTO.txt.gz
> help!!
> much apreciated
> jm

You probably need to install the doc-linux-text or doc-linux-html package
to have the HOWTOs (BTW, all documentation in debian is in /usr/doc,
in the process of migrating to /usr/local/doc ).

Have a look also to info and man pages of the program to use.

Here is what I learned a few months ago, when I switched from the basic
Home-PC solution (Netscape) to a more unix-like (procmail+mutt+exim).
[I'm not an expert nor a sysadmin, just a programmer and PC Linux user]

To do e-mailing 'the unix way', you need software to perform
the following functions:

* A Mail Transport Agent(MTA) - A program which transports mail from one
machine to another 

* A Mail Delivery Agent(MDA) - A program wich distributes the mail
received on a machine to its users (remember:Unix systems are multi-user,
thta is it is supposed that many people use them at the same time ).
 
A Mail User Agent(MUA) - A program which allow an user to see its mail
and to send mail to other users (by communicating via MTA).

Incoming mail usually follows the path MTA->MDA->MUA.
Outcoming mail usually follows the path MUA->MTA

Many programs incorporate one or more of these functions; e.g. exim
can be both a MTA and a MDA.

There are also shortcuts, if your e-mail needs are not big and your
computer is used in single-user mode. The easiest is to use Netscape
to do all mail processing. Or you could ask mutt (or other mail programs)
to fetch directly the mail from your ISP and put in your mail-box.

The 'classical' solution however is the most flexible, IMO.

Ciao  
-- 
FB