fetchmail & pine

[Jared Bernard]

Sorry, I really don't mean to be a pain but I'm trying to understand how all 
this works so I can get Pine to work. Maybe I don't fully understand how MTA, 
MUA and POP3 email all inter-relate or work....

On Monday 11 April 2005 8:43, Byron Clark wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 08:32:52PM -0600, Jared Bernard wrote:
> > On Monday 11 April 2005 7:27, Byron Clark wrote:
> > > My guess is that you either don't have an MTA
> > > (Postfix/Sendmail/Qmail/etc) running on the box
> >
> > I thought that's what fetchmail was?
>
> From fetchmail(1):
> fetchmail  is  a mail-retrieval and forwarding utility; it fetches mail
> from  remote  mailservers  and  forwards  it  to  your  local (client)
> machine's  delivery  system.
>
> In other words, you need an MTA for fetchmail to send the mail to, all
> the MTA needs to be configured to do is local delivery.

 According to this site when I googled MTA, just to get an understanding: 
" A Mail Transport Agent (MTA) is essential for sending email. A Mail User 
Agent (MUA) such as Evolution, Mozilla Mail, and Mutt, is used to read and 
compose email. When a user sends an email from an MUA, the messages are 
handed off to the MTA, which sends the message to a series of MTAs until it 
reaches its destination.."
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-3-Manual/sysadmin-guide/ch-switchmail.html

It seems that an MTA is only for sending email not retrieving. I'm having 
problems retrieving (or viewing email in Pine). As far as I can tell 
fetchmail is not having problems, unless I'm misreading the output posted on 
my original email. I can currently send a test email fine in pine. (hey, that 
rhymes) Let me know if I'm missing something here.

If I understand correctly, fetchmail retrieves the email and places it 
locally. What I don't understand is, where does it put it so I can point Pine 
to it? I haven't been able to find an answer to that by googling. Pine then 
should be able to read that pulled email. 


If I'm misunderstanding how all this works please let me know what I'm 
missing?

thanks,
Jared