Question: Recommended IMAP server for Debian?
Posted by trimbo on Fri 19 Aug 2005 at 13:30
I'm planning on migrating 40 or so email accounts from a RedHat 9 / Sendmail server to a new Debian Sarge box. Of the three popular IMAP servers included in Sarge (Dovecot, Courier and Cyrus), which one have people had the best experiences with?
Data integrity is the main concern, more so than performance (which is also the reason I opted for putting the maildirs on an EXT3 volume rather than Reiserfs due to a lack of recovery tools for the latter). I've chosen Postfix as the MTA since it seems the most mature and secure than the alternatives.
Any suggestions from other experienced Debian administrators?
Hello, I use dovecot-imapd for about one year and it works absolutely perfect. Good performance, stable (of course). I had no problems with dovecot. I also use postfix as MTA and it works well with dovecot. cheers,
--
Gerald
holl.co.at
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I no longer use it, but I previously had dovecot running for a few months to provide an IMAP server for use in setting up webmail.
It was simple to use, simple to configure and appeared to work very well.
(I used mine with Exim3)
Steve
-- Steve.org.uk
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The only thing I miss in this setup is the ability to use Sieve scripts. good luck mipmip
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I'm also on postfix/ext3.
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Other than that advantage, I don't really see it making a lot of difference which IMAP server you use, as they're all quite quick and standards-compliant enough that small installations will always be fine :)
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No problems at all with that and squirrelmail.
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If you are interested, OpenGroupware has a stable beta available at www.opengroupware.org
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In addition, it seems to require double the amount of available disk space as the folder it is trying to make (something to do with indexing) which has really frustrated users since we implement quotas. We will probably get around that by putting the .imap folder off of the quota restricted file system, but I'd say it's been pretty frustrating.
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Use Cyrus.
Using something as industrial strength as Cyrus is probably overkill given my small (25 user) installation, but it is worth it: Running Cyrus has never given me a minute of pain in the last 8 years I have been using it.
I have never seen it corrupt or lose any mail and MUAs never have any problems connecting to it. It Just Works. Cyrus scales to bejesbus and beyond - it performs great with mailboxes containing tens-of-k messages, and you don't need to have user accounts for each email the machine running cyrus - which is good for security.
The only complaint I have ever had was getting the thing to compile - which you obviously don't need to worry about on Debian - and getting familiar with the way it works i nthe first place, but the docs are much better these days than back in v1.x.
PS: I would say Sendmail is far more mature than Postfix, but then I am just some random wizened old geek. :)
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Decrepit is a better word for sendmail.
Hula is the product for newbie mail admins, with one domain, and 25 users, unfortunately it may not be mature enough.
Hula may never tempt me from Postfix as an MTA, but for the newbie admin wanting just a simple mail server I think Hula may become a "no brainer" type choice.
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"Decrepit"? Nah. People these days just cannot be bothered to learn it (woah, I _am_ sounding old). I still use it and prefer it because a) it works and b) I know how it works.
When you say Hula, are you talking about Novel's opensource groupware thing? Apparently the technology Hula is based on is pretty good; IIRC it was designed to work for anything from a small installation right up to those of big enterprises. I wouldn't call it a "newbie" or "no brainer" choice, just a product aimed at a different kind of sysadmin.
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I guess it's fair to say that most people will choose a solution that they know, regardless of any alternatives. It's probably the best choice too, rather than trying to install something you don't know so well in production, under pressure.
I can handle sendmail if I must, but there are friendlier systems out there I'd use instead when given free reign.
(Not to start a holy war or anything, but I'm an Exim fan .. closely followed by Postfix).
Steve
-- Steve.org.uk
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Yes, good point.
The only contact I have had installing and configuring Exim and Postfix is because they are the default MTAs on new Debian and Ubuntu installs (IIRC).
I keep which of the two above is installed on workstations because beyond the initial debconf questions, I will never have to touch them. It is a pity that the sendmail packages are not similarly configured at installation.
But hey, a heterogeneous approach is never a bad idea.
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Now I use Dovecot almost exclusively, but choosing Cyrus or Courier is no problem. Look around the configuration files, the structure and the philosophy and find out which one you like most. They are all solid products and you can't do wrong if you choose any of them.
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For mail I use courier-imap, maildrop, postfix, and sendmail. I have 5 mail accounts from various services that are brought in to my server via fetchmail, and it has worked flawlessly. configuring courier and maildrop is effortless. Postfix is pretty easy to figure out compared to sendmail (which I still have nitemares about).
I've been considering hula since my needs are small, and it has a purty interface for web access (I have been using egroupware for that and it kinda sucks). Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that support for syncing the calendar with iCal, evolution, kontact and the like is just around the corner, so that's an added bonus for those of us who need an easily accessable calendaring system.
The documentation is limited for hula though. Havent tinkered with it much. Matt Schwartzstein www.mslawaz.com
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http://www.usenix.net/events/lisa03/tech/full_papers/elprin/elpri n_html/index.html
And yes. Delete operations happen quite rarely. If they do happen they are sort of "batched". That's why dbmail is the real winner. Plus backing up is as easy as mysqldump or mysqlhotcopy and you get repluication built in mysql adding additional failover fetures compared to other IMAP servers.
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cm user/john.doe
cm user/john.doe/Drafts
cm user/john.doe/Sent
cm user/foo.bar
cm user/foo.bar/Drafts
cm user/foo.bar/Sent
and so on...
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