linuxgeek: Re: [LINUX_Newbies] Two users on one computer

On 14Aug2013 09:23, highskywhy@yahoo.de <highskywhy@yahoo.de> wrote:
| | > Yes. I use mutt myself, also text based.
| | *
| | Is there a homepage with a detailed manual for mutt?
|
| www.mutt.org
|
| I was reading:
| Mutt doesn't talk smtp

No longer the case.

| Is there a textbased software
| for
| pickup emails pop
| and
| send emails smtp.

Yes to both.

Firstly, if you fetch mutt-1.5.21 from http://www.mutt.org/download.html,
unpack it and run:

./configure --help

you'll see it has many optional parts. Running configure with the
--enable-smtp option will make the built mutt capable delivering
email directly with SMTP.

Likewise there are --enable-pop and --enable-imap for fetching
email, and many other options. Also, the versions of mutt shipped
with most Linux distributions will be compiled with many of these
options turned on.

Therefore, Scott's instructions for SMTP setup will probably work
for the mutt that comes with your Linux distribution.

However, mutt was originally written to live in a larger ecosystem,
and many of us do not use its pop or smtp features directly.

Instead, we run a separate program to collect email, usually using
POP. Programs such as fetchmail and getmail are common choices for
this. I run "getmail" regularly to collect my email and deliver it
to my "spool" folder. (And run a mail filing program to move messages
out of there into various mail folders for various lists etc.)

Likewise, we do not always send email directly using SMTP with mutt.
If you're a "client" user then SMTP is a natural choice, but it
doesn't work when you're offline (nowhere to deliver your email).

Instead, we run a real mail system on our machines: exim, postfix,
qmail and sendmail are the common choices here. Your Linux system
will come with one of these preinstalled (but not very configured).

_All_ of these provide a command called "sendmail" whose purpose
is to accept an email message and queue it in the mail system. Mutt
(by default) expects to send messages that way. The mail system
itself will take care of delivery. This has the advantage that you
can compose and dispatch messages while offline, and not worry. The
mail system will catch up when it is next online.

Of course, this still leaves you with the need to configure the
mail system for SMTP; the default will expect to do direct delivery,
and most consumer ISPs do not permit that these days; they expect
you to deliver to their SMTP server.

Cheers,
--
Cameron Simpson <cs@zip.com.au>

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