E-mail System OPS335 R. Chan
Email: concepts & protocols Mail Systems: User agents, submission agents, Transport agents, Local Delivery agents, Message stores, Access agents Protocols: SMTP (ESMTP) POP3 (POP3S) IMAP (IMAPS) more ...
Email system componets UA: user agent DA: delivery agent MSA: submission Agent AA: access agent
UA: User Agent A.k.a Mail User Agent or email client: Read mail Compose mail Supports: Plain text MIME – multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions e.g. /bin/mail (mailx)
Submission Agent Sits between UA and MTA Uses port 587 Speaks SMTP
Trsansport Agents Speak SMTP (now also ESMTP) See RFC 821 ... RFC 5321 Take incoming email Chek recipents' addresses Rewrite recipent/sender addresses if needed Forward message to next MTA/local DA e.g. Sendmail, Postfix, MS Exchange
Local Delivery Agent Accepts mail from MTA Delivers to recipients' mailboxes Notes: mail recipient could be A person A mailing list A program
Message store Mbox (simple – a single file) Maildir (supports mail folders) Location and access premission /usr/spool/mail Read/write by owner
Access Agent Use to access message in the message store Use POP3 or IMAP to communicate with the message store server Secure version: POP3S and IMAPS Difference between POP3 and IMAP e.g. outlook, thunderbird POP3/IMAP servers: Courier, Cyrus IMAP, Dovecot, Zimbra
Componets of a Mail Message The Envelope The Headers The body of the message Examples
SMTP Simple Mail Transport Protocol A clear text command/response protocol Key commands HELO, EHLO MAIL FROM: RCPT TO: DATA QUIT
A Smaple SMTP Session See the Demonstration
MTA Configuration Postfix /etc/postfix/main.cf (see lab for basic settings) Commands: postfix postcat postconf postsuper
Email and DNS Domain name MX record Mail routing relay
MTA Debugging Postfix Mail Log entries - /var/log/maillog Syslog - /var/log/messages Postfix directory /var/spool/postfix telnet [MTA IP] 25
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