Tom, Sendmail is unbelievable complex, but the below is how it is most commonly used: Sendmail accepts e-mails, looks at the address and forwards it to its destination. Normally 2 instances of sendmail are used with every e-mail that is sent. The first one is the one the sender is using as an SMTP server. i.e. I'm sure your ISP provided you an SMTP server name or IP. They are likely running sendmail on that machine. Once the first sendmail program gets the e-mail, it looks at the destination address and gets the matching MX record from DNS to figure out where to send the e-mail, and sends it off. Often, there is another instance of sendmail running at the destination as well. This copy receives the e-mail, looks at the destination address and says "That's me!!!", so it forwards it to the local POP mail box. == Since you are using your ISP to provide you with POP services, you don't need sendmail to act as a target, but that does not mean you don't need it to allow sending of e-mail. Quite often sendmail is run on the local machine purely to accept e-mail from local programs and forward the mail to wherever it needs to go. Greg
What does sendmail do?
WAIT!
Before everyone shoots me a "it sends mail, stupid!" email, let me clarify. Do I need sendmail if I'm using evolution to access an email server from my ISP? I thought sendmail was something that was used if my machine was an email server.
How far off am I?
Tom
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Greg Freemyer Internet Engineer Deployment and Integration Specialist Compaq ASE - Tru64 Compaq Master ASE - SAN Architect The Norcross Group www.NorcrossGroup.com
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Greg Freemyer