I conceptualize the process in terms of 1) physical locations of the files (user home directory, /var and remote send and receive directories) and 2) unidirectional, address and port specific movements between the physical locations.
What was confusing was that in my prior implementation of fetchmail, the pop3 part put the messages into /var/mail/user as did sendmail. Incoming messages all passed through /var/mail/user and that is where they sat until I accessed them with mutt. My prior email MUA (Claws-Mail) bypassed /var/mail/user and used an inbox file at /home/user/Mail/inbox. The other confusing part was that I had the idea that sendmail+sasl would perform the same function as fetchmail in the same way. Fetchmail does not require a DynDNS account.
With mutt, messages do not exist in my home directory unless I either save them, save a copy of sent messages or park them there as unsent drafts. In Thunderbird/Claws Mail they are sitting in the equivalent of a saved file until they are deleted or "moved".
You put a lot of time into this - thanks. Hopefully this will help someone in the future.
Last edited by shep; 14th March 2013 at 07:49 PM.
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