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+MTA
+===
+
+MTA is an acronym for _M_ail _T_ransport _A_gent. It is the software that works
+behind the scenes to transport E-Mail messages from one computer to another.
+MUAs (such as mutt, thunderbird, sylpheed, evolution, kmail) hand off newly
+sent messages to an MTA. MTAs talk to other MTAs, and either deliver mail
+locally or hand it off for delivery to an <MDA/LDA> [MTA.txt] if it was
+destined to the local system.
+
+MTA is a generic term and usually refers to one of these popular software
+packages:
+
+ * Postfix [http://www.postfix.org/] is Wietse Venema's secure, fast and
+   flexible mailer. Default on SUSE Linux and NetBSD.
+ * Exim [http://www.exim.org/] is Philip Hazel's flexible mailer. Default on
+   Debian GNU/Linux.
+ * Sendmail [http://www.sendmail.org/] the original BSD mailer. Default on
+   FreeBSD; a Sun spinoff is used on Solaris.
+ * Courier [http://www.courier-mta.org/] was inspired by qmail, but intends to
+   do things right.
+ * qmail [http://cr.yp.to/qmail.html] is an obsolete and unmaintained server.
+   Its POP3 part can be taken over by Dovecot. Qmail started off boasting about
+   speed and security in the mid-1990s, but has lots of unfixed bugs (this
+   document includes patches where known),
+   [http://home.pages.de/~mandree/qmail-bugs.html] among them security bugs
+   that remain unfixed, and the security guarantee (500 USD) denied. If you
+   really intend to continue using it, read Dave Sill's Life with qmail
+   [http://www.lifewithqmail.org/] which contains instructions to work around
+   some of qmail's security issues.
+ * HALON [https://halon.io/] is a commercial MTA, which supports Dovecot Auth
+   and LMTP. It's based on FreeBSD with anti-spam/virus, DKIM, DMARC, DANE,
+   etc.
+
+Some people also subsume mail fetching utilities under the MTA category, among
+them:
+
+ * fetchmail [http://www.fetchmail.info/] a fast mail retriever for the POP2,
+   POP3/KPOP/SDPS, IMAP2/IMAP4, ODMR and ETRN protocols, SSL and Kerberos
+   capable. It forwards the retrieved messages to SMTP/ESMTP, LMTP servers or
+   into an <LDA.txt>. Developed out of Carl Harris's popclient by Eric S.
+   Raymond. Fetchmail is now maintained by <MatthiasAndree.txt> and Rob F.
+   Funk.
+ * getmail [http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/] a POP3/SDPS and IMAP4 (with
+   SSL) enabled mail retrieval utility written in Python. Developed by Chales
+   Cazabon.
+
+These mail fetching utilities can be used to store mail for later retrieval by
+dovecot.
+
+ Contrast this to the <message delivery agent (MDA)> [MDA.txt], sometimes
+called local delivery agent (LDA).
+
+(This file was created from the wiki on 2019-06-19 12:42)