MeTA1

MeTA1 is a cool open-source software project that offers a modularized MTA (Message Transfer Agent). It’s made up of five or more persistent processes, and four of these are multi-threaded! The best part? It’s designed to be secure, reliable, efficient, and super easy to extend. You can even configure it using a simple C-like syntax.

Main Components of MeTA1

So, what’s inside this software? It has five main modules. Here they are in alphabetical order:

• MCP: This is the main component and acts like a control program similar to inetd. It starts all the other MeTA1 modules.


• QMGR: This is the queue manager that handles how emails travel through the SMTP server and client.


• SMAR: The address resolver helps you search various maps for email routing, including DNS.


• SMTPC: This module sends email messages as an SMTP client.


• SMTPS: This is the SMTP server that receives those email messages.

A quick note: only MCP runs as root!

How Does MeTA1 Work?

The way MeTA1 operates is pretty neat! A queue manager keeps track of both SMTP clients and servers to send and receive emails. The main control software kicks off other processes and keeps an eye on them while they run. Plus, the address resolver looks up information in different maps—like DNS—for mail routing!

Installing MeTA1

You might be wondering if you can use MeTA1 on your system. Good news! It comes as a universal source archive, which means you can install it on any Linux kernel-based operating system that has a GCC compiler and essential build tools. It's been tested on both 64-bit (x86_64) and 32-bit (x86) hardware platforms.

Simplified Configuration

When you work with MeTA1, one thing to keep in mind is that its configuration file is pretty straightforward—it resembles BIND 9 configuration files. And it comes with the libpmilter policy mail filter library which works much like the libmilter library from the sendmail project.

If you're ready to dive into this software, check out this link for download!