OSDev.org

Off-forum request but I hope it's ok for General Ramblings

I'm looking for the above (I invented the terminology).

I'm looking for a very basic Linux email programme that will receive Emails and dump the raw input in a file and similarly take a file and send it out again. No indexing, no email database, no contacts, no classification, no frills...

I thought this was the sort of nerdish spec that some inhabitant of OSDev might just know all about. Anyone any suggestions?

[I've found it quite a difficult thing to search for, perhaps cos I don't know the proper name for this aspect of an Email application. Anyway searches return the 'best' programmes which have all these features I don't want - that wouldn't matter if they didn't also stick the emails in a private format database that it's hard to get at].

My first thought would be procmail - I used it for some more or less similar tasks.

The term you are looking for is Mail Delivery Agent, though the part about using a simple directory-based mail spool is usually more a factor of the Mail User Agent - you would use the format your email reader (the MUA) can read.

The aforementioned procmail is probably the one you would want to use. The spool format that is closest to what you seem to want would probably be maildir, though mbox might suit as well.

You will probably want a local mail reader such as Thunderbird,
Balsa or Mutt as well, unless the idea is that the mail is being dropped off for some program you are writing.

Prior to the mid-1990s, MDA functions would usually have been handled by a Mail Transfer Agent such as Sendmail or Postfix, as most users would have had timesharing accounts on the same system as the mail server, while those who didn't would usually have hosted their own mail servers locally. After the start of The September That Never Ended, however, most users were picking up their mail remotely using a POP3 server on their ISPs system, or later, on a dedicated webmail host such as Hotmail or GMail.

Thanks to you both for these ideas which I shall look into but perhaps not immediately (other concerns are popping up like the UK self-employed tax deadline ).

Thunderbird is my usual Email programme, but I actually use very few of its facilities. What I'm experimenting with is the ability to (easily) keep Emails with the projects to which they relate. There's actually no reason why both applications can't co-exist without even knowing about the others existence (provided the rules governing removal at the server end are properly sorted).

Thanks