email server concept: what's mail delivery agent

[Simon Matter]

> m wrote:
>
>>You should read a few books and the relevant RFC documents BEFORE going
>> any
>>further!
>>
>>
> Thank you! I still wish to hear some suggestions: If there is delivery
> agent in both postfix and cyrus, what should I lean on? I read the
> virtual(8) and local(8), are these two the so-called 'delivery agent'?

Postfix is supposed to send mail to cyrus-imapd via LMTP protocol. You
don't need any 'delivery agent', just send mail to cyrus-imap like this:

mailbox_transport = lmtp:unix:/var/lib/imap/socket/lmtp
or
local_transport = lmtp:unix:/var/lib/imap/socket/lmtp

Check the LMTP README from postfix for more info.

> If I am going to use the cyrus' delivery agent (sorry I don't know its
> name) I don't have to go through virtual(8) and local(8) any more?
>
> I heard cyrus have different native mail storage structure other than
> maildir, is it true? If I use that format, I cannot use postfix's
> delivery agent, right?

Forget about maildir and such. Cyrus-imapd is a mailserver, not a
fileserver. By mailserver I mean imap, pop3, sieve but also mail storage
or mail searching. You simply don't care about how cyrus-imapd stores
mails and metadata when you configure an MTA to work with cyrus-imapd,
just feed mail to it via LMTP and access it through IMAP, POP3 whatever.
Of course it can be interesting to know how cyrus-imapd stores mails in
case of a desaster recovery procedure or if you want to move accounts to
other servers, but that's another issue which again has nothing to do with
postfix or any MTA.

Simon


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