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How to setup Dovecot

• Audience: Advanced E-Mail setup
• Requires: MacPorts >=1.6, mail/dovecot, shells/zsh-devel

Introduction

Dovecot is a simple IMAP server which uses the standart maildir file format for storrage.

Installation

Install dovecot with

port install dovecot

Configuration

Note: Du not use any of the attached files without checking / changing them with you favorite text editor.

Step 1: create user

Dovecot will drop root privilegs when they are not needed any more so you need to create an user and group for dovecot to run with. You can use the Make_Dovecot_Directories.command​ to do so.

Step 2: create directories

Dovecot need to directories to work with - one to store run status, one where the mail is stored. See howto/SetupPostfix on how to set up postfix to make incomming mail available to dovecot. You can use the Make_Dovecot_Directories.command​ to do so.

Step 3: create certificates

Dovecot supportes encrypted connections and while in a local network it migt not be nessesary you will still neet to create certificate files. You can use Make_Dovecot_Directories.command​ together with dovecot-openssl.cnf​ to create the certificates. Remeber to change dovecot-openssl.cnf​ - there should be no "my_" left in the file and both files need to be in the same directory.

Step 4: setup configuration

Next you need to set up dovecot.conf​. You find the file in /opt/local/etc. As a starting point you can use dovecot.conf​ together with

passwd.dovecot userdb.dovecot

Optional Parts

TODO: What else can be done?

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