Configure mail server

Configure mail server Organic Design procedure

Exim

Exim4 is the default mail transfer and delivery agent for Debian. Exim is designed to move messages from one e-mail server to another and to deliver messages to local users mailboxes. It has nothing to do with POP3 or IMAP as those are protocols relating to the retrieval of the mail by a user and their mail client software. The default Exim configuration allows the server to send mail, but if you plan on running an IMAP or POP3 server on your server, then other configuration will also be required as follows:

not done yet...

• Exim4 server setup how-to - Chris' blog

DoveCot

The organicdesign-server package installs DoveCot, an IMAP and POP3 server. DoveCot responds to mail client requests by retrieving the mails from file and returning them to the client. It does not deal with the receiving the mails or storing them to disk.

We go with a configuration which is as close to default as possible and gives us both POP3 and IMAP services which both work with either TLS or SSL but not plain text. The users are by default the native linux users and passwords on the system. The minimal configuration necessary is a couple of edits to /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf.

First, specify which protocols to use (you may like to only allow imaps and pop3s for extra security).

protocols = imap pop3 imaps pop3s

Next, add a section defining the ports for each protocol as follows (you may like to change to non-standard ports for extra security):

protocol imap {
   listen = *:143
   ssl_listen = *:993
}
protocol pop3 {
   listen = *:110
   ssl_listen = *:995
}

Any standard mail client such as Thinderbird or Outlook should connect with no trouble, but our procedure doesn't yet include a the generation of a valid SSL certificate, so you'll get a warning initially which you can specify to be ignored for subsequent connections.

See also

• Mail Server Overview - in DoveCot manual