[Gllug] Getting technical about email

[Mike Brodbelt]

Martin A. Brooks wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-11-09 at 16:42 +0000, John G Walker wrote:
>> What I need is to understand how an email server would work. I've
>> really got to know this before I can design the optimal setup.
> 
> IMAP is your friend.  Have all you mail delivered to your IMAP server
> (Cyrus, for example), and users pick up their mail from one place.

Indeed - IMAP simplifies things a great deal.

You basically need to choose an MTA to do all the SMTP stuff for you,
and then pick a storage format. Simplest case would be local delivery to
plain old MBOX, then read your mail with mutt or something. A better
option would be to have your store served up with POP or IMAP - IMAP
being the preferred option.

FWIW, my setup uses sendmail as the front end MTA, and mail flows into
that, where it gets run through a ClamAV milter that rejects viruses at
SMTP time, then it going through SpamAssassin, and finally gets handed
off via LMTP to Cyrus, which has inbuilt server side filtering. I can
then read it from anywhere, with whatever IMAP client suits at the time.
You can of course pick whatever MTA and IMAP server suits you, though
you'll have to plan in order to make sure all the pieces fit together
happily.

Mike

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