What''s MTA? Some kind of mailer? I was booting my Linux box today and it kept stopping during the boot process on "Starting MTA..." After a couple of tries I booted Windows and discovered my Linksys router had konked out like it alway does, so I had to reset it. I''m still in Windows, and I''m sure I could boot Linux now and it''d work, but it''s a little annoying to have Linux not boot whenever the network is down. What is MTA? Do I need it? How to I kill it? Did the problem even have anything to do with the network at all?

MTA = Mail Transfer Agent = mail server .
You probably don't need it.
It runs as a daemon. Check your init scripts/runlevels.

[edited by - Fruny on May 9, 2004 4:09:41 PM]

As the previous poster said, MTA =Mail Transfer Agent, although most distros that install them(and run as daemons by default), usually do it so that the systems can send messages to the root account on that computer. The MTA is probably relying on your computer having a valid IP address/Hostname on a network in order for it to function though, so yes, it will rely on the network, unless you remove it from your init scripts.