The reason there's no pretty complete how-to is because what you're doing seems completely insane to the vast majority of people who'd look at your problem and select your way of approaching solving it.
Yeah, you can also host your own website off of a DSL line, using a rasp-pi connected via a ham data relay which is faxing pages back and forth over a couple of soup-cans and string - etc, etc, etc.
While I get, at least in principle, why you want to do it your way - you've selected a particularly painful, and super time-expensive way, IMO.
A VPS for like $10 a month would do everything you want to do. Run Ubuntu on it, and allow Ubuntu to do security updates and restarts and you'll almost certainly be fine. If you want, get a fully managed VPS for a little more, and they'll do all that for you.
Or, one of a hundred other ways to accomplish handling mail - but you've picked one of the oddest, most difficult ways...and then "complain" that there's no examples. Yeah, 'cause no-one wants to do it your way because it's crazy.
Sorry dude - I kinda get it, but no, I'd never pick your way of doing it, and I'm not surprised that there's almost no one who has cranked a complete example of it either.
Not trying to make fun of you, but dang, the time wasted in this thread could probably have paid for 5 years of hosted mailcow.
Cheers! Do have fun.
-Greg
- install and configure OfflineIMAP to synchronize the IMAP folders between your ISP IMAP server and your Dovecot server; see for example http://www.offlineimap.org/doc/quick_start.html
RD> OfflineIMAP is not the way to go. Many ISPs have very low size RD> limits for the mailbox sizes. The one I am looking at right now does have this problem RD> (unless you pay extra).
RD> From what I have gathered now, your hints about Postfix and RD> fetchmail are correct. The trouble is that those doc pages are not real-life, complete RD> examples with Dovecot of the two possible ways: 1) RD> multidrop/catch all, and 2) one mailbox per user.
RD> Yes, I should be able to piece it all together. I will probably RD> try. I just find it surprising that there is no such a complete guide yet. Because I RD> am sure that there are a few gotchas along the way.
RD> Yes, getmail is an alternative, and that looks like a good way RD> too. But it's the same problem: the article is not complete. It states "how you could RD> arrange it". It would be nice that you did not have to manually RD> write a getmail config file per user. And an example for multidrop is missing. There RD> is a note at the end that you should carefully plan the transport RD> ways, but I wouldn't know yet what to do in that respect.
RD> It's just not a guide that I can follow from top to bottom to get RD> a first working mail server to play with. That makes it pretty hard for me at this RD> time. I will need much more time to learn and test every little RD> detail myself. I'm not promising anything, but I may actually invest the time if I RD> don't find anything else more interesting in the meantime. 8-)
RD> In any case, thanks for the hints. I know now what the way to go RD> is. Those pesky port 25 people are not going to get me! ;-)
RD> Regards, RD> rdiez