Thank you for the help guys. I have been deep into the reading, and
hair pulling :)
On Apr 5, 2005 1:02 PM, Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic@xxxxxx> wrote:
> GPL wrote:
> > Hi folks, I'm starting my first jump into working with a Linux mail
> > server. So far from what I have read I need sendmail for SMTP and some
> > other service for POP/IMAP. From what I see the thing to use with
> > fedora is Cyrus-imapd. My goal is to run a mail server for a handful
> > of people in a non mission critical environment that can be accessed
> > by outlook/thunderbird, etc.. A learning experience mainly.
>
> There are two IMAP servers distributed with Fedora.
>
> Cyrus IMAPD is very powerfull IMAP server. It is very fast, and has
> many features needed for large installations. It also allows you to
> setup virtual users (in other words, you can setup mail accounts without
> need to create actual system accounts). It implements complete
> separation of system accounts and email store.
>
> Dovecot is simple IMAP server. It is trivial to setup, and uses
> existing system accounts, and user's home directories to store email.
> If you simply want something that is fast and easy to get working, it
> might be better choice. There's not much to learn with that one ;-)
>
> If you want to lear advanced thing about IMAP, Cyrus is the right way to
> go, because Dovecot does not have support for some features. If you
> decide to go Cyrus route, couple of hints to get you going.
>
> The configuration files distributed with Fedora will make use of system
> accounts for authentication. It is easy to change them to use LDAP or
> some other form of athentication if you want to go that way. By
> default, /etc/imapd.conf is setup to saslauthd to perform
> authentication, and saslauthd is configured (in
> /etc/sysconfig/saslauthd) to use /etc/shadow file. If you want to take
> advantage of PAM, you can instruct saslauthd to use pam mechanisms
> instead of directly accessing /etc/shadow.
>
> This will take care of authentication.
>
> Since email store is completely separate from system accounts, you will
> need to manually create mailboxes, or let Cyrus IMAPD create them
> automatically when they are accessed for the first time.
>
> Fire up cyrus-imapd and saslauthd services (and make sure they are
> started on boot using chkconfig command).
>
> To create mailboxes manually, set the password for cyrus account
> ("passwd cyrus" as root). Than execute "cyradm --user cyrus localhost".
> It will prompt you for cyrus' password. Inside cyradm, you can type
> "help" to get list of all commands. To create mailbox for user foobar
> (for example), you would type "cm user.foobar". The "user." part is
> important, since if you type only "cm foobar", you would create shared
> folder, not user's mailbox!
>
> You'd probably want to create mailbox for root, yourself, and all other
> accounts that you want to receive mail for (most system accounts are
> aliased to root, so you don't need mailboxes for them, unless you
> changed /etc/aliases file). You can get list of all mailboxes and
> folders by typing "lm".
>
> To delete mailbox, you first need to allow cyradm to do that.
> Basically, you would grant priviledge with "sam user.foobar +c cyradm",
> and than delete mailbox with "dm user.foobar". It is kind of safety
> mechanism to prevent you from wiping out your entire mail store (yes,
> "dm user" would delete *all* mailboxes). There are many more things you
> can do from within cyradm, including setting up ACLs if you want users
> to be able share folders and so on.
>
> If you want mailboxes to be created automatically, instead of you
> creating them by hand, edit /etc/imapd.conf and add something along the
> lines:
>
> autocreatequota: -1
> autocreateinboxfolders: Drafts|Templates|Sent Items
> autosubscribeinboxfolders: Drafts|Templates|Sent Items
>
> When user logs in for the first time to check email, his mailbox will be
> created, and some common folders will be also created and user
> subscribed to them. Note that user will not be able to receive email
> before he logs in for the first time (since mailbox isn't existing),
> unless you created mailbox manually. I would advise against using
> "createonpost" option, since that would create mailboxes for
> non-existing users too. For more details, check imapd.conf man page.
>
> You also need to instruct sendmail that email is no longer to be stored
> in /var/spool/mail directory. Go to /etc/mail directory, and edit
> sendmail.mc file. Remove (or comment) this two lines:
>
> FEATURE(`local_procmail')
> MAILER(procmail)
>
> And add this three lines:
>
> define(`CYRUSV2_MAILER_ARGS', `FILE /var/lib/imap/socket/lmtp')
> define(`confLOCAL_MAILER',`cyrusv2')
> MAILER(cyrusv2)
>
> Rebuild sendmail.cf (type "m4 sendmail.mc > sendmail.cf"), restart
> sendmail, and off you go.
>
> There are many resources about Cyrus IMAPD. The O'Reilly book is sadly
> out of date, so I wouldn't recommend spending any money on it (until
> there is an updated version). There are some helpfull resources on
> Cyrus web site:
>
> http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/imapd/
>
> Sligtly out-of-date HOWTO (most stuff from it was already done for you
> by Red Hat, but you might want to check it out):
>
> http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Cyrus-IMAP.html
>
> There's also mailing list (you'll find links on Cyrus web site), that
> might be helpfull in some cases (in my experience too many bigshots on
> the list who don't want to be bothered with begginers questions).
>
> --
> Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic@xxxxxx> Pollard Banknote Limited
> Systems Administrator 1499 Buffalo Place
> Tel: (204) 474-2323 ext 276 Winnipeg, MB R3T 1L7
>
