Linux Pocket Guide, 2nd Edition

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Beyond Mail Readers

Email is more “transparent” on Linux than on other platforms that merely display your mailbox and send and receive messages. The ability to list outgoing email messages with mailq is just one example. Here are some other options to whet your appetite and encourage you to explore.

• You can process your mailboxes with any command-line tools, such as grep, because mail files are plain text.

• You can manually retrieve messages from your mail server at the command line with the fetchmail command. Using a simple configuration file, this command can reach out to IMAP and POP servers and download mail in batch. See man fetchmail.

• Your system can run a mail server, such as postfix or sendmail, to handle the most complex mail delivery situations.

• You can control local mail delivery in sophisticated ways with the procmail command, which filters arriving email messages through any arbitrary program. See man procmail.

• Spam filtering is sophisticated on Linux: check out the SpamAssassin suite of programs. You can run it personally on your incoming email, or at the server level for large numbers of users.

In short, email is not limited to the features of your mail-reading program. Investigate and experiment!