Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 00:06:55 -0400 From: Kurt Hackenberg <kh@panix.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Minimal skills Message-ID: <e63c4257-a015-bdfc-ad3c-512b19ffcb19@panix.com> In-Reply-To: <20200605023503.50311b56.freebsd@edvax.de> References: <CY4PR19MB0104540FF5E4FDF0B8D12370F9890@CY4PR19MB0104.namprd19.prod.outlook.com> <CY4PR19MB0104A2C03F4D66A1DA251A23F9880@CY4PR19MB0104.namprd19.prod.outlook.com> <20200604005859.ca438474.freebsd@edvax.de> <CY4PR19MB0104C290121BF756D57B2DDBF9880@CY4PR19MB0104.namprd19.prod.outlook.com> <20200604020051.0c02472d.freebsd@edvax.de> <CY4PR19MB0104DD86F8FE6446AD1BF327F9890@CY4PR19MB0104.namprd19.prod.outlook.com> <20200604074134.89eb6518.freebsd@edvax.de> <CY4PR19MB0104DC7541A2154B5C435EA7F9890@CY4PR19MB0104.namprd19.prod.outlook.com> <CY4PR19MB01041DACEFFEF08ADB096BC3F9890@CY4PR19MB0104.namprd19.prod.outlook.com> <CY4PR19MB0104A0D479219642A1853152F9890@CY4PR19MB0104.namprd19.prod.outlook.com> <20200604225938.3baf5056ebd397f4a4acf81c@sohara.org> <CY4PR19MB0104540FF5E4FDF0B8D12370F9890@CY4PR19MB0104.namprd19.prod.outlook.com> <CY4PR19MB01041CDEAA68E236A34A9BE4F9860@CY4PR19MB0104.namprd19.prod.outlook.com> <20200605023503.50311b56.freebsd@edvax.de>
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On 2020-06-04 20:35, Polytropon wrote: > Try to get a better understanding of "what is what" and "what > does what"... Agreed. Here's a start. In the common case, which is probably what you do now with your phone, somebody uses a mail reader (also called mail user agent, MUA) to send a message across the Internet to a mail server (mail transfer agent, MTA), which may send it on to other MTAs, and the message eventually gets to a mail server at, say, hotmail.com, which stores the message in a disk file. Later you fire up K-9 on your phone, which communicates with some server at Hotmail through the network communication protocol IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol), and gets a copy of that message to display on your phone. K-9 doesn't have to put its copy of the message in permanent storage in your phone; it can just hold it in main memory while you read it, and then throw it away. The mail server keeps the disk copy of the message that it has, unless you tell it to delete it. Postfix is a mail transfer agent; Dovecot is an IMAP server. I suggest that, to start with, you don't mess with Postfix, Dovecot, fetchmail. or local storage of received mail. First do one simple thing: install and configure some mail reader on your FreeBSD system to do the same thing K-9 does: talk to Hotmail through IMAP, get a copy of your mail, show it to you. Play around with that, send messages, etc. Send a message to yourself, read it, reply to it. I suggest the mail reader Thunderbird. Then you could do the same thing with some different mail reader on your FreeBSD system, just to compare the two mail readers. Maybe Alpine, Elm, or Mutt. (Mutt is complex; the other two are simpler. All of them run in a terminal emulator, rather than being fully graphical.) You could also try Wikipedia, though this article may not tell you exactly what you want to know right now: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email>; Also see this article about Usenet-style quoting: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet_quoting>;
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