Configuring electronic mail systems can be quite a complicated
subject.  Often far more complicated than, say, setting up
a Usenet news feed.  This is because, unlike news, email is
expected to traverse multiple types of networks using their own
protocol, whereas, Usenet news tends to be a single protocol
supported by hook or by crook on different networks.

This document is intended for system administrators who need to
know how to set up their UNIX systems for email communication with
the outside world.  It is intended for the email-naive SA
who gets more than a little confused by the acronyms, RFC's and
plethora of software.

This is intended to be a general survey of the software available,
so I won't spend too much time on some of the details.  Most of
the available software comes with documentation that can
explain things much better than I can.

Additional detail can be obtained from several sources, such as:

    Quarterman, John S.: "The Matrix -- Computer Networks
	and Conferencing Systems Worldwide", Digital Press 1990,
	(Order No.  EY-C176E-DP), ISBN 1-55558-033-5.

    Adams, Rick and Frey, Donnalyn: !%@:: A Directory of Mail
	Addressing and Networks, 3rd Ed., O'Reilly & Associates 1993,
	Provides a good reference for people seeking information
	on how to access the various email networks.
	ISBN 1-56592-031-7.

    Kehoe, Brendan P.: Zen and the Art of the Internet: A
	Beginner's Guide, Second Edition, Prentice Hall 1992,
	ISBN 0-13-010778-6.  Edition 1 is available via FTP on
	cs.widener.edu in the tar file zen-1.0.tar.Z. [I think]

    Krol, Ed: The Whole Internet: User's Guide & Catalog.
	First edition, O'Reilly & Associates Sept. 1992.
	ISBN: 1-56592-025-2.  Very good introduction to
	the Internet, history, facilities, uses, services,
	etc.  I learned a lot.
    
    Albitz, Paul & Liu, Cricket: DNS and BIND, First edition,
	O'Reilly & Associates, October 1992.  ISBN: 0-56592-010-4.
	Describes in great detail everything from what a domain
	is, to how to install and configure BIND.  A *MUST* for
	people setting up large networks, or connecting
	machines to the Internet.  It has become mandatory reading
	for network administrators in a large corporation for
	good reason.

    Costales, Bryan and Allman, Eric and Rickert, Neil: Sendmail.
	O'Reilly & Associates, Nov (?) 1993. ISBN 1-56592-056-2
	(ISBN from galley proof, which I've had a preview of).
	An absolute necessity for anyone diving into the configuration
	of sendmail.  The material is presented in a very clear
	form, and is quite exhaustive in its coverage.  Perhaps a bit
	too wordy and overlong, but that's a more than welcome contrast
	to previous documentation (or lack thereof) on sendmail.

Further, this is primarily oriented towards UNIX email systems.
This is unfortunate, because it would be nice to have a general
document covering email in all of its forms.  However, each
operating system tends to have radically different email mechanisms,
so it would be difficult to do justice to any other environment.
It seems more useful to cover one environment well here, and have
companion documents for other environments.  Speaking of which,
why hasn't anybody else stepped in to do FAQs on other environments?
Like DOS, Mac etc.

And finally, this document is not intended to be pedantically
correct.  Knowledgeable readers will know that I'm glossing
over a lot of detail, and absolute precision has been balanced
against readability and effectiveness in helping people get
going.