From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Apr 23 23:57:56 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mail.ocis.net (mailserver.ocis.net [209.52.173.152]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D53237B427; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 23:57:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dial-142.ocis.net ([209.52.175.132] helo=phoenix) by mail.ocis.net with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1) id 170GiT-0001l7-00; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 23:57:25 -0700 From: "Freddie Cash" To: Nik Clayton , chat@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 23:52:37 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: IMAP server recommendations Reply-To: fcash@bigfoot.com Message-ID: <3CC5F3C5.17529.66E7800@localhost> In-reply-to: <20020424074820.K30474@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v4.01) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > I'm in need of an IMAP server. It's got to support a grand total of 2 > users, and being able to throw an SSL protected webmail system in > front of it would be a bonus. As would easy integration with > Procmail. > Any recommendations? There are several in the ports tree, but I don't > have enough real world experience with any of them to choose one, and > life's too short to try all of them. The easiest to set up and use is UW-IMAP. Runs via inetd and is about as easy to install/run as telnetd. However, it doesn't scale beyond about 100 users, and can be slow with large mailboxes. The hardest to set up and use (IMO) is Cyrus. There's virtually no documentation on it and it is in a constant state of flux. Plus, the whole SASL thing is just mind-boggling. However, those that have put the time in to make it work swear by it, so there must be something to it. Somewhere in the middle is Courier. This can be installed as either a full-blown e-mail server with IMAP, POP, and SMTP, or as just IMAP. Fairly straightforward to setup and use, and is supposed to scale nicely. It uses the MailDir format which is supposed to be the most network friendly (for mailboxes stored via NFS or access by more than one process at a time). Those are the only ones I've come into contact with. I'm currently running UW-IMAP on 11 servers around the local school district (roughly 300-500 users per server) without many problems. However, I'm currently in the process of testing Courier with plans to move to that over the summer. Courier and Cyrus both support using databases for mail storage and IMAP-over-SSL. I believe they both support virtual domains but haven't really looked into that (no need for it right now). If you need it right now, I'd suggest UW-IMAP (especially with only 2 users). Once that's up and running, you'll have time to play with the other ones, if needed. (Please forward this to -chat if it doesn't make it through to the list. Somedays @freebsd.org accepts my ISP, some days it doesn't.) Cheers, Freddie PhoenixTek Consulting fcash@bigfoot.com Unix / Networking Services (250) 314-4029 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message