A mail delivery agent or message delivery agent (MDA) is computer software that transfers the responsibility for the management of e-mail messages from the message transfer agent (MTA) within the message handling service (MHS) to a recipient's environment, commonly transferring them into a mailbox.[1]
Within the Internet mail architecture, message delivery agents consist of two components, the message handling service side that accepts messages from the message transfer agent, and a component in the recipient's environment that affects message storage in a mailbox or other customized mechanisms.
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Implementation
Many MHS software products bundle multiple message delivery agents with the message transfer agent component, providing for site customization of the specifics of mail delivery to a user.
Unix
On Unix-like systems, procmail and maildrop are the most popular MDAs. The Local Mail Transfer Protocol (LMTP) is a protocol that is frequently implemented by network-aware MDAs.
Invocation
The mail delivery agent is generally not started from the command line, but is usually invoked by mail delivery subsystems, such as a mail transport agent, or a mail retrieval agent.
List of message delivery agent software for Unix-like platforms
- fdm (e-mail utility)
- binmail
- courier-maildrop
- delivermail
- maildrop
- postfix-maildrop
- procmail
- maildirproc
See also
- Message transfer agent (MTA)
- Mail retrieval agent (MRA)
- Mail submission agent (MSA)
- Mail user agent (MUA) a.k.a. email client
References
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