Components of Mail Services
Establishing a mail service requires many hardware and software components.
The following figure shows an electronic mail configuration with related hardware components.
Figure 1 Electronic Mail Configuration
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Mail host – A system that is configured to handle email addresses that are difficult to resolve
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Mail server – A minimum of one system that is configured to hold one or more mailboxes
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Mail clients – Systems that access mail from a mail server
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Mail gateway – A system used to communicate with the networks outside your domain
A mail configuration requires the following hardware components, which can either be combined on the same system or provided on separate systems:
For more information, see Hardware Components for Mail Configurations.
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.forward files – Files that you can set up in a your home directory to redirect mail or send mail to a program automatically
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mailbox – A file on a mail server that is the final destination for email messages
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Mail addresses – Addresses that contains the name of the recipient and the system to which a mail message is delivered
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Mail aliases – Alternate names that are used in a mail address
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Mail queue – A collection of mail messages that need to be processed by the mail server
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Postmaster – A special mail alias that is used to report problems and ask questions about the mail service
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sendmail configuration file – A file that contains all the information necessary for mail routing
A mail service requires the following software components to function:
For more information, see Software Components for Mail Services.