Courier Email Server - ArchWiki

# Courier Email Server

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Reason: rc.d references. Needs update to Systemd. (Discuss)

This is a small howto on how to install an imap-Server with Courier-Imap, SSL-Encryption and grabbing all the other mail-accounts with fetchmail. Procmail is responsible for delivering the Mails to the different Users.

You can fetch your Mail from this IMAP-Server with every Mail-Client capable of communicating with IMAP.

For testing purposes you should create an own email-account, e.g. www.gmx.de.

For more complex setup see Creating a Linux Mail Server (Postfix, Procmail, Fetchmail, SpamBayes, Courier-imap, Mutt, SquirrelMail)

#### Installing Packages

     pacman -S fetchmail procmail courier-imap

#### Using fetchmail

Just make .fetchmailrc in your home-directory and add the following lines:

    poll pop.gmx.de with proto POP3
     user "username" there with password "passwd" is "morphus" here
    mda "/usr/bin/procmail -d %s"

- username - Your username on the pop3-server
- passwd - Your password on the pop3-server
- morphus - Your local account where the mail belongs to

#### Using procmail

Create and edit .procmailrc in your home-directory

    PATH=$HOME/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/bin:.
    MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir/
    DEFAULT=$HOME/Maildir/
    LOGFILE=$MAILDIR/procmail.log

Now secure your .fetchmailrc since they contain passwords

     chmod 600 .fetchmailrc

#### First Try with procmail and fetchmail working together

Send some bulk-mails to your test-account. Then run

    fetchmail -av

Fetchmail echos the communication with the pop-Server and after the run finished you should find some files in your Mail-Folder with the Mails.

#### Configuring Courier Imap

Run the command

    maildirmake Maildir

with each user you want to have an imap-account

And now just start courier imap with

    /etc/rc.d/courier-imap start

You should be able to connect from your console with telnet like this:

    [morphus@spielemorph ~]$ telnet 192.168.6.1 143
    Trying 192.168.6.1...
    Connected to 192.168.6.1.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    * OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UIDPLUS CHILDREN NAMESPACE THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT
     THREAD<code>REFERENCES SORT QUOTA IDLE ACL ACL2</code>UNION STARTTLS] Courier-IMAP ready.
    Copyright 1998-2004 Double Precision, Inc.  See COPYING for distribution information.
    1 login morphus passwd
    1 OK LOGIN Ok.

This means everything is okay and you can connect. Your mail should be delivered to this Maildirectory and you should be able to connect with any imap-capable program.

#### Doing some cron-jobs

Just add the fetchmail -av command to the users cron-list, e.g. every 10 minutes he should grep the emails

    '/10 ' ' ' * /usr/bin/fetchmail -av

Add /etc/rc.d/courier-imap to your rc.conf in the DAEMONS section.

Category:

- Mail Server