Thank you for that. That mostly rules out Cyrus, as it seems much the lesser of Dovecot and UW-IMAP.

But, it mostly just declares it's statements about accordance with the standards. While I appreciate that, I'm more interested in how it behaves with common mail clients. And, the note about dovecot Expunge Fetch says "depends on storage", but gives no more information. What sorts of storage options are available, and what the pros and cons of them are, was one of my original questions.

Is there some "give me all the details to read through" document somewhere? What it does, it's capabilities, and how it does things?

Thanks again to all for any help.

         - Chris

On Dec 17, 2012, at 07:48 , David Morsberger <dave@morsberger.com> wrote:

Check out:

http://imapwiki.org/ImapTest/ServerStatus

-- David Morsberger 301-758-7387 Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 17, 2012, at 2:00 AM, Chris Ross <cross+dovecot@distal.com> wrote:

...

I've been using UW-IMAPd for neigh on forever (at least since 2001). But, as it's basically stalled, and I'm about to update the hardware that is my mail server, I thought it was time to review existing open-source IMAP servers. Dovecot is the top three in my looking.

The other of the top three candidates, because I know of people who've used it, is Cyrus IMAP. So, I should note that my thoughts are "uw-imapd, because I already know how to use it", "Cyrus, because someone I know/trust liked it years ago", and dovecot, because "it seems stable, professional, and to meet all of my needs".

I guess the biggest question I have is how files/folders are stored in the filesystem. uw-imapd has a "mbx" format that all of my folders are in, and also has support for mbox and maildir (i think). mbx had some advantages for speed access, which would be unimportant I assume with dovecot's indexes, but IIRC there was also some reason the mbox format coped poorly with multiple clients accessing the same folder at the same time.

So, am I right that dovecot supports only the "one big full file" mbox format, and the maildir format? And if so, is it known to allow multiple simultaneous IMAP clients to access and monitor and/or modify the same folder simultaneously?

After those questions, it's just a "what do you think the pros and cons of each are?" I know asking in this forum, that I will get most if not all votes for Dovecot. And that's fine, as long as you have specific reasons why it would be better for someone with only a handful of users and minimal time available to administer the systems in question.

Thanks! I appreciate any and all feedback.

                    - Chris

God, that's ancient data for Cyrus. I should go update that.

Cyrus 2.4.17 fails a couple of edge cases (searching for "" and some complex list-extended cases where we're not iterating both the mailboxes and subscriptions databases concurrently correctly). Cyrus git master only fails the list-extended.

In other words, don't believe every wiki you read on the internet!

Bron.

On Tue, Dec 18, 2012, at 07:19 AM, Chris Ross wrote:

Thank you for that. That mostly rules out Cyrus, as it seems much the lesser of Dovecot and UW-IMAP.

But, it mostly just declares it's statements about accordance with the standards. While I appreciate that, I'm more interested in how it behaves with common mail clients. And, the note about dovecot Expunge Fetch says "depends on storage", but gives no more information. What sorts of storage options are available, and what the pros and cons of them are, was one of my original questions.

Is there some "give me all the details to read through" document somewhere? What it does, it's capabilities, and how it does things?

Thanks again to all for any help.

         - Chris

On Dec 17, 2012, at 07:48 , David Morsberger <dave@morsberger.com> wrote:

...

Check out:

http://imapwiki.org/ImapTest/ServerStatus

-- David Morsberger 301-758-7387 Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 17, 2012, at 2:00 AM, Chris Ross <cross+dovecot@distal.com> wrote:

...

I've been using UW-IMAPd for neigh on forever (at least since 2001). But, as it's basically stalled, and I'm about to update the hardware that is my mail server, I thought it was time to review existing open-source IMAP servers. Dovecot is the top three in my looking.

The other of the top three candidates, because I know of people who've used it, is Cyrus IMAP. So, I should note that my thoughts are "uw-imapd, because I already know how to use it", "Cyrus, because someone I know/trust liked it years ago", and dovecot, because "it seems stable, professional, and to meet all of my needs".

I guess the biggest question I have is how files/folders are stored in the filesystem. uw-imapd has a "mbx" format that all of my folders are in, and also has support for mbox and maildir (i think). mbx had some advantages for speed access, which would be unimportant I assume with dovecot's indexes, but IIRC there was also some reason the mbox format coped poorly with multiple clients accessing the same folder at the same time.

So, am I right that dovecot supports only the "one big full file" mbox format, and the maildir format? And if so, is it known to allow multiple simultaneous IMAP clients to access and monitor and/or modify the same folder simultaneously?

After those questions, it's just a "what do you think the pros and cons of each are?" I know asking in this forum, that I will get most if not all votes for Dovecot. And that's fine, as long as you have specific reasons why it would be better for someone with only a handful of users and minimal time available to administer the systems in question.

Thanks! I appreciate any and all feedback.

                    - Chris

-- Bron Gondwana brong@fastmail.fm