6 Excellent mail transfer agents under Linux

Guide

On the internet, the mail client sends mail to the mail server and then routes the message to the correct destination (other customers) , which Mail server Use of the a network application is called the message transfer agent (MTA).

The best Linux Mail Transfer agent (MTAs)

What is the message transfer agent (MTA)?

An MTA is an application that routes and transmits e-mail from one node to another, using a protocol called SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) to perform its tasks.

On a network node, there is an e-mail client that is used to send and receive messages to the mail server, and the e-mail client makes use of the SMTP protocol, but not necessarily the MTA.

The MTA is installed on the mail server, and some email clients, such as (Mozilla Thunderbird) Thunderbird, (Evolution), Microsoft Outlook And Apple Mail have a mail client installed.

In this article, we'll cover several common mail servers under Linux, all of which use the MTA.

1. Sendmail

Sendmail now known as Proofpoint (after Proofpoint, Inc acquired Sendmail, Inc.) is by far the most popular and oldest MTA on Linux server platforms. Sendmail There are a lot of restrictions relative to some mtas now. Due to its complex configuration steps and requirements, and weak security mechanisms, many new MTA began to replace Sendmail.

sendmail Installation

#检查软件是否安装

Rpm-qa | Egrep "Sendmail|dovecot|cyrus"

#安装邮件服务器

Yum-y Install SendMail SENDMAIL-CF

#安装pop3/imap Services

Yum-y Install Dovecot

#安装用户认证软件

Yum-y Install CYRUS-SASL cryus-sasl-md5 cryus-sasl-plain cyrus-sasl-lib

Official website: http://www.sendmail.com

2. Postfix

Postfix is a cross-platform, popular MTA that was developed and designed for the company's mail server at the time of Wietse Zweitze Venema in IBM Research.
It develops the main purpose in order to replace the public, the popular SendMail MTA. Postfix runs on Linux,mac Osx,solaris and several other Unix-like operating systems.
It borrows a lot of sendmail external properties, but it has a completely different internal operation. In addition, it has the advantage of convenient configuration and security mechanism of the functional modules, and has the following key features:

1. Junk e-mail control
2. Supports multiple protocols supports multiple protocols
3. Support Database
4. Support Mailbox
5. Support address operation, more functional reference official documents

Postfix installation

Rpm-qa | Egrep "POSTFIX|MAILX"

Yum-y Install MAILX postfix

Service postfix start && chkconfig postfix on

Website address: http://www.postfix.org

3. Exim

Exim is a free MTA developed for UNIX-like operating systems such as Linux, Mac Osx,solaris, and other operating systems. Exim provides great flexibility for mail routing on the network, including good mechanisms and the setting to accept mail monitoring.

Notable features include, but are not limited to:

1. POP and IMAP protocol not supported
2. Supported protocols, such as RFC2821 SMTP and RFC2033 lmtp e-Mail transfer
3. Configuration includes access control lists, content scanning, encryption, routing control
4. Excellent documentation
5. It has utilities such as lemonade are a variety of SMTP and IMAP extensions

Exim Installation

#安装最新的epel源

RPM-IVH http://mirrors.aliyun.com/epel/epel-release-latest-6.noarch.rpm

# Install Exim

Yum-y Install Exim-mysql MAILX

Service Posftix Stop && chkconfig postfix off

Chkconfig Exim on && service Exim Start

# test Mail

echo "This was test from Exim" | Mial-s "Exim"

Tailf/var/log/exim/mainlog

official website : http://www.exim.org/

4. Qmail

Qmail is another free, open-source, modern Linux MTA that, compared to other MTA, it is simple, reliable and efficient, thus providing a wide range of security features to secure MTA packages.

It is small but feature-rich, and some features include:

1. Run on multiple Unix-like operating systems, such as FreeBSD, Solaris, Mac OSX Plus, and more
2. Easy and Quick Installation
3. Automatically configure each host
4. Address, the separation between the file and the program is clear
5. Full support for address groups
6. Let each user manage their own mailing lists
7. Supports an easy way to build mailing lists
8. Support Verps
9. Support for automatically preventing the loop of mailing lists
10. Mail List Manager with EZMLM support

#Qmail Installation

wget http://infobase.ibase.com.hk/qmail/netqmail-1.06.tar.gz-p/USR/LOCAL/SRC

Tar xpf netqmail-1.06.tar.gz && cd netqmail-1.06 &&./collate.sh

Make setup check &&./config

More qmial installation details please visit their official website Wiki:http://lifewithqmail.org/lwq-cn.html#download, the text does not too much to repeat

Official website: http://www.qmail.org

5. Mutt Command line mail client

Mutt is a UNIX-based operating system with a small and powerful email client.

As a text-based e-mail client, it has some exciting features, notable features include:

1. Message subject
2. Support for IMAP and POP3 protocols
3. Supports multiple mailbox formats, such as Mbox,mh,maildir,mmdf
4. Support Delivery Status
5. Multiple message Tokens
6. Support Pgp/mime (RFC2015)
7. Various features to support mailing lists, including list replies
8. Full control of message headers during composition
9. Easy installation
10. Active Community Development

official website : http://www.mutt.org/

6. Alpine

Alpine is a fast and easy-to-use terminal-based email client for Linux, which is based on the Pine messaging system. It is ideal for beginners and power users, and users can easily learn how to use it with context-sensitive help.

Importantly, it can be highly customizable with Alpine commands.

# Alpine Installation

wget ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/alpine/alpine.tar.gz

Tar zxvf alpine.tar.gz && cd Alpine &&./configure && make && make install

Note: For more apline installation details, please refer to: https://www.washington.edu/alpine/tech-notes/installation.html (self-FQ)

Official website: https://www.washington.edu/alpine/

Summarize

The article briefly describes how the mail is sent from the mail client, through the network to the mail server, and through the mail route to the specified client, more importantly, the way the MTA works have some understanding, if you need to build a mail server, the above several MTA is a good choice.

6 Excellent mail transfer agents under Linux