sendmail ... virtusertable and virtualdomains

[Maaz]

Hello Dear gurus,

1 what is purpose/usage of /etc/mail/virtusertable ?
2 what are the virtualdomains ?
3 what is purpose/usage of /etc/mail/domaintable ?
4 what is MDA(mail delivery agent) ? and plz give me a name of MDA, available at rhel 3.0
5 what is MSP(mail submission Program) and plz also give me the name/example of MSP available at rhel 3.0 systems ?
6 what is procmail ?


Regards
Maaz

[Rick Garland]

All of these questions can be answered at http://www.sendmail.org

This site has more information than you can shake a stick at.

[xyko_1]

HI Maaz,

if you will have to deal with mail servers, as it seems, I suggest you not use sendmail. Instead of it use Postfix that is easier to implement and configure and is equal or more reliable then sendmail.
Almost all distros have Postfix as it's MTA default application or as a second choice.
Postfix's site => www.postfix.org

regards,
xyko

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

1) virtusertable is a database of email addresses to allow virtual hosting of more than one domain on a server

username@virt.com addresses to local user username.... geneticstable is the reverse. Between the two you can full handle virtulized domains inbound and outbound.

2) Kind of explained in 1, more than one domain name on one server.
3) domaintable also is used to handle multiple domains, though I've never had to use it even on a webhosting server.
3) MSP mail client. firefox, netscape has one.
4) procmail, an alternate mta mail transfer system. Differeent feature set for specialized tasks.

SEP

[Stuart Browne]

For 4 and 5, using the acronyms MTA and MUA is more appropraite (Mail Transfer Agent, and Mail User Agent).

As for 6, I'll expand a little on what SEP said.

Procmail is a local-only-MTA. It is what actually puts mail in the mailboxes on a Linux system running Sendmail. It has very powerful rule-sets that can do an awesome amount of filtering and funkyness.. ;)