HOWTO for a simple install of Cyrus

[Grosswiler Roger]

Hi list,

i read some statement of cyrus not working. As this is my favourite
imap-server, i couldn't stand this, so i tried the installation. What i
can say: it worked with a little knowledge within 10 minutes.

The example here does authenticate by pam to users locally installed on
the mailserver-machine (needs shadow-accounts)

so, how to do:

1) install it via yum: 'yum install cyrus-imapd' this installs the
daemon and resolves dep's necessary. 

2) the default-authentication in cyrus is via sasldb. i never got this
working properly. but cyrus works fine with pam. so, comment the line
'#sasl_pwcheck_method: sasldb'

3) to authenticate now, just insert 2 lines in /etc/imapd.conf:
sasl_pwcheck_method: saslauthd
sasl_mech_list: PLAIN

..voilà , the configuration is done now. to run cyrus, now do:

4) 'service saslauthd start' this starts the saslauthd-interface for the
authentication
5) 'service cyrus start' this starts the cyrus-imap-daemon

how to test?
a) go in the shell, do 'telnet localhost 143' you should get response
from your cyrus-imap-server, something like this:
Trying 192.168.0.101...
Connected to link.gwch.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK link Cyrus IMAP4 v2.1.16-2 server ready

b) try to login, if you got response from your mailserver.
do 'a01 login username "password" . you should get answer now a positive
answer
c) quit with 'a02 logout'

you can now administer your mailboxes with cyradm. don't forget to
create your users with useradd and doing the appropriate aliases to the
mailboxes created with cyradm.

HTH
Roger