Re: On IMAP servers

[Tom Allison <tallison@tacocat.net>]

Franki wrote:
> Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 12:23:43AM -0300, Rogério Brito wrote:
> >
> > > On Jun 05 2005, Steve Lamb wrote:
> > >
> > > > I'd say go with UW's IMAP server.
> > >
> > >
> > > I'd say go with UW's IMAP server *only* if your computer isn't facing 
> > > the
> > > Internet -- it has a bad security track history and many people don't 
> > > trust
> > > it.
> > >
> > >
> > > > as far as I can tell there is none.  Either it works or it doesn't.  :D
> > >
> > >
> > > Same thing with Courier. There are some things that can be 
> > > configured, but
> > > the defaults are sane, especially those employed by the Debian packaged
> > > version.
> > >
> > > Just to be fair, though, Courier's reputation is *not* that good also
> > > (hint: see what "Binc IMAP" means and you'll get it), but it works fine.
> > >
> > > I hope to find some time to evaluate the many IMAP servers 
> > > side-by-side and
> > > create a good report of my experiences.
> > >
> > >
> > > > Anyway, that is what I use here.  UW for IMAP, squirrel for web based,
> > > > mutt for local when I really need it, Thunderbird through IMAP 99.9% of
> > > > the time.
> > >
> > >
> > > Here I agree with the method for flexibility of reading e-mail.
> > >
> > > Not only Thunderbird, but other MUAs, independently of what platform 
> > > you're
> > > confined to use. That's the beauty of IMAP, IMVHO.
> >
> >
> > Short summary of popular IMAP servers:
> >
> > server          why you would use it
> > ------          --------------------
> > UW IMAP         You are a masochist
> > Cyrus IMAP      You need *serious* scalability (e.g., 100,000 users with
> >                 accounts on 8 clustered servers using Cyrus Murder)
> >                 You want to virtual host or setup mail accounts without
> >                 requiring a corresponding shell account
> > Courier IMAP    You want low maint/like Maildir
> > Dovecot         New kid on the block; you like living on the edge
> >
> > -Roberto
>
>
> Actually, you can do virtual users without shell accounts via courier as
> well.
> I'm running a Postfix/amavisd/spamassassin MTA with courier IMAP/SASL/Mysql
> All users are virtual and administrered via the Postfix admin PHP app.
>
> There are heaps of tutorials around on how to do this, like:
> http://www.webconexion.net/knowledgebase/linux_howto/virtual_mail_server.php 
>
> http://postfixwiki.org/index.php?title=Virtual_Users_and_Domains_with_Courier-IMAP_and_MySQL 
>
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/virt-mail-howto.xml

For what it's worth:
Dovecot has been rather well behaved for me for the last few years.
It's faster than Courier because of caching/indexing.  It's also been 
very low maintenance.