Home IMAP server

[Martin Marcher]

Hi,

trying to give you an overview. I don't mean to insult you but if you  
don't understand it it's

a) Probably not your fault - it's not the easiest topic
b) better to read some documentation ahead because if you have an  
open relay (but it works for you) spammers will detect it within 48h  
and abuse your server. (I had that case once and send over 20000  
Mails within 30 minutes out to the world)

Am 26.12.2006 um 22:47 schrieb Dotan Cohen:

> Also, will I absolutely need postfix? I'm not even sure what it does-
> all the documentation seems to assume that one is familiar with it. I
> _think_ that postfix will pull mail from my POP3 server and deliver it
> to the IMAP server. Is this correct?

What postfix (or any other MTA - Mail Transport Agent) is for:

postfix is a server that will listen on port 25 for incoming mail.

That means:

If (and only if) you own a domain - like dotancohen.com and want to  
administrate your own email service you need to setup a smtp server  
(such as postfix) that will listen on port 25 (this is assigned by  
IANA - someone correct me please with the acronyms i tend to horribly  
mix them up).

It is important that it indeed is port 25 because all other  
mailservers on the net out there expect your sever to accept  
connection on that port. (Like your browser expects a webserver to  
listen on port 80)

My guess is you won't need it because:

  * You said you only want to pull mail (actively receive mail with  
fetchmail or any other tool that you choose)
  * You still want to use your providers outgoint mail server (which  
is what you would need postfix for, think of it as thunderbird - or  
any other mail client being a mail server that only knows about one  
other server and submits the mail to it so that this server will take  
care of the mail)
  * A simple mail system doesn't exist, mail delivery on the net is  
by definition complicated. IMHO the lowest level of complexity that  
is available in a mail system is "complex". Going only upwards with  
complexity.

(this is subjective):
Reasons for this are: If you need to debug (as in debug if the  
configuration fits your needs) it you will have to work with  
asynchronous stuff (and I do mean asynchronous, I had times when I  
used gmail, gmx and several other outside accounts for testing where  
half of them would nearly immediately - smaller than a minute - bring  
in the mail and the other half needed up to 2 hours).

If you set up your mail server you will want to have a few anti spam  
options which just bring in more components that will make the  
communication even more asynchronous.

All this said:
If you want to set up your own mail server just get yourself enough  
time (the first server I set up was about a week of time invested  
before it worked the way I wanted) and also get a good book that  
specifically handles the mailserver you are using. It's not  
impossible  still all the administrators out there are mere mortals  
(most of them at least) but you need to be aware that you will need  
time for it. Also setting it up once isn't all there is to it you  
will find yourself always uncomfortable with the anti spam setup and  
constantly tweak the toolchain you use to avoid spam.

hth
martin

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