[Dovecot] Dovecot Setup as just a local IMAP server.

[John and Catherine Allen]

David Terei wrote:

 > Now so far Ive set up Dovecot and Its working fine, but How would I get
 > my email accounts mail to be placed in the Inbox of my IMAP account? I'm
 > think I would need to use either fetchmail or getmail to grab my mail.
 > After that do these programs just save it in the appropriate IMAP folder
 > on disk (which would be new?) or do I need a MTA such as qmail setup and
 >  fetchmail or getmail passes the email to the MTA which just transfers
 > it locally on the same computer?

I have a setup somewhat along these lines which uses:

- fetchmail to pull mail from my ISP's POP3 server
- exim to handle sending of email as well as routing and delivery of mail brought in by fetchmail
- dovecot as IMAP server (I used to use UW-IMAP, but switched to dovecot a few months back, with no regrets)

With UW-IMAP I used mbx format, now I use maildir.

This setup has worked well since July 2000. Some details (not fully up to date) are provided at:
http://www.homepages.lu/allen/linux.htm

For a long time I ran this on an old 25 MHz 486SX with 20 MB of RAM. Actually it worked fine. Now I have a 500 MHz 
Mini-ITX with 256 MB of RAM.

This setup has the additional advantage that several PCs around the house can all read and send mail through the central 
server, and the mail folders are accessible via IMAP to all PCs.

John


-- 
John Allen
Bofferdange, Luxembourg
allen at vo.lu
http://www.homepages.lu/allen