Minimal skills

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 00:20:11 -0600, Brandon helsley wrote:
> I see, but don't I need to configure sendmail or postfix to have
> access to my mailboxes offline?

Correct - this is not needed. The MUA manages this for you.
You don't need to deal with sendmail or install postfix.
MUAs like Thunderbird will make your mailboxes available
offline, and only synchronize your changes (you delete a
message in the MUA - the MUA tells the server to delete
the message on the server, and deletes the locally cached
file, for example).



> Or can I just transfer email using mbox with thunderbird and have
> it displayed on the command line without an MTA? offline.

That doesn't sound useful. You could use fetchmail to get your
messages via IMAP. This results in a mbox-formatted file, typically
located in your local user's mail queue, /var/mail/<username>.
>From this file, other mail programs can read, "incorporate from
spool" - in fact, that's what I'm doing with fetchmail + Sylpheed.
You still need your MUA configured for IMAP or SMTP to _send_
messages, though, so splitting those functions is not optimal.
(Sidenote: I'm not doing this because I like it, but because
I have changed ISPs and can no longer submit messages myself
though their MX. If I setup a new system, I use IMAP only,
from the MUA.)



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...