Sequence of events with mail

From: srm (user_at_example.net)
Date: 08/26/04 

Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 09:02:59 +0200

Okay, I've got the mail system running fine. But I'm struggling a little
to understand the exact sequence of events - particularly, when Procmail
gets invoked.

Here's the set-up:

Let's call the box 'mailserver'. It has two users, 'mailman' and
'crichton'. The machine has Postfix, Fetchmail, Qpopper, Procmail and
Spamassassin all working fine.

Fetchmail is run by 'mailman'. Most of the incoming mail is for
'crichton'. This is where I get fuzzy and Googling hasn't helped so far.

Incoming mail is stored in /var/spool/mail, with one file per user. At
what point is it transferred to each user's ~/Mail directory and when
does Procmail kick in? Does this happen when a user checks mail?

Also, if I were to pick up chrichton's mail from another machine, using
POP, do I only pick up the mail still sitting in /var/spool/mail, or do
I pick up from crichton's inbox? And where is that inbox (it's not in
~/Mail, so is the file in /var/spool/mail the inbox? We're talking mbox
format here, I guess).

Any help, or pointers to good articles would be appreciated. Like I
said, the system's working fine, but I'd just like to understand it a
little better.

@+
srm

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