[Mailman-Users] How Mailman related to...

[Charles Iliya Krempeaux]

Hello,

(Thanks J C Lawrence) that clears up alot of things in my mind,
about how all these different pieces of software work together.

I do have couple more question though (down below)....

J C Lawrence <claw at kanga.nu> wrote:

> On Wed, 04 Jul 2001 13:41:46 -0700 
> Charles Iliya Krempeaux <tnt at linux.ca> wrote:
> 
>> Specifically, how it relates to other pieces of software.  For
>> example, how does Mailman relate to pieces of software like
>> Sendmail, Qmail, exim, and PostFix?  
> 
> Sendmail, QMail, exim, postfix et al are MTAs, Mail Transfer Agents.
> Mailman is an MLM Mailing List Manager.  Mailman takes a message
> delivered to it by and MTA, proceses it, generates some number of
> messages addressed to the members of the list, and hands those
> messages back to the MTA.  The MTA then arranges delivery of those
> messages as applicable.


How exactly does a MLM (Mailing List Manager), like Mailman, get
messages from a MTA?

The way I am accustomed to seeing an MTA, like Sendmail work, is that it receives
an e-mail, and then appends that e-mail to a user's mbox file.  (Usually something
like /var/mail/user_name, or something like that.)  So, is there a special
`user account' made for Mailman,... and Mailman then looks at it's mbox file, and
takes `care of business' that way?... or does it get given the e-mail messages
in another manner.  (My guess is that it would be in another manner... but I
am still trying to understand how all this works.)


Also, how does an MLM, like Mailman, handle the e-mail addresses used for the

mailing lists?  I would imagine that it is the MTA that decides what happens
for each e-mail address.  (For example, it could hand it off to the LDA because
it knows the e-mail address belongs to a local user of the system.  Or it could
reject the email address because that email address does not correspond to any
user on the system.)  Do MLMs, like Mailman, simply provide some kind of `front end'
or `abstraction' to the e-mail address handling facilities of the various different
MTAs (like Sendmail, Qmail, exim, PostFix, etc, that) it works with?  (Or am I
missing something?)


TIA

      Charles Iliya Krempeaux