Spam: HELP with Cyrus POP3 + IMAPD

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

Michael Leung wrote:
> Hi all,
>  I have install a new fedora Core 3 server, it comes with Cyrus imap and pop3.
> But I can't get it working.
> 
> For POP3,
> Unable to locate the maildrop
> 
> For imap,
> I cannot create any INBOX under every user
> 
> Please help me.

FC3 comes with two IMAP/POP3 servers.  Cyrus and Dovecot.  Cyrus is 
advanced IMAP server with many feauteres and requires a bit more 
administration.  Dovecot is the simpler one (replacement for old uw-imapd).

If you already have Cyrus installed, and want to continue using it, this 
is what you need to do:

You need to tell Sendmail that you are using Cyrus.  In sendmail.mc 
place these lines.  Place two define lines where all other defines are 
(somewhere around beggining of the file, and the MAILER line where other 
MAILER lines are (somewhere around end of file).

define(`CYRUSV2_MAILER_ARGS', `FILE /var/lib/imap/socket/lmtp')
define(`confLOCAL_MAILER',`cyrusv2')
MAILER(cyrusv2)

Remove (or comment out) the line that says "MAILER(procmail)".  Create 
sendmail.cf (m4 sendmail.mc > sendmail.cf), and restart sendmail.

This is needed because Cyrus stores emails in /var/spool/imap (not in 
/var/spool/mail and user's home directories like wu-imapd and/or 
Dovecot).  Also, it stores emails one mail per file.  This allows Cyrus 
to save disk space, if more than one user receives same email, Cyrus 
will store it on disk only once, and create hard links on the disk.  If 
you have several users subscribed to large volume mailing lists, this 
can save a lot of disk space.

Now, in Cyrus, mailboxes are independent of system user accounts.  You 
need to create mailbox for the user, so that he/she can receive and read 
email.  I will assume you use default authorization scheme which is to 
use /etc/shadow file.  To create mailboxes for users, set a password for 
cyrus user (passwd cyrus), and execute:

    cyradm --user cyrus --auth login localhost

(if you login as user cyrus, you can simply type "cyradm").  Type 
password for user cyrus when prompted.  You'll get prompt.  If you type 
"?" or "help", you'll get short list of commands.  The one you need is 
to create mailbox for a user.  For example, if you want to create 
mailbox for user foobar, you need to type:

   cm user.foobar

As soon as you press enter key, mailbox will be created and user foobar 
will be able to receive and read mail using both IMAP and POP3 protocols.

This might seem a bit complicate at the beggining, but really it is very 
simple once you get a feeling how system works.  All this is needed 
bacause Cyrus dosn't really use system accounts (other than for 
authentication in default Fedora configuration).  If you want, you can 
delete all user accounts from mail server, and create only mailboxes 
(using cyradm command).  However in this case, you would need to use 
different authentication mechanism (since there are no system accounts, 
there are no entries for users in /etc/shadow file).  For example, you 
would use LDAP or Kerberos, or /etc/sasldb2 file (managed by using 
saslpasswd2 command) to store passwords, and simply tell Cyrus to use 
alternate authentication mechanism.

-- 
Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic at pbl.ca>    Pollard Banknote Limited
Systems Administrator                           1499 Buffalo Place
Tel: (204) 474-2323 ext 276                     Winnipeg, MB  R3T 1L7