60 Seconds of WIP, 3 August 2023

Today’s snippet is from Run Your Own Mail Server, discussing LMTP versus dovecot-lda(1).

Once multiple messages start arriving simultaneously it’s much more efficient to use a dedicated daemon for local delivery, via the Local Mail Transport Protocol (LMTP).

Why have a separate protocol for local email? LMTP is a heavily trimmed-down version of SMTP. LMTP doesn’t need queues; either it delivers the message to the user’s inbox and reports success, or can’t deliver and reports an error. All queuin...