30 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
30 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
Courier-IMAP is a server that provides IMAP access to Maildirs
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mailboxes. This IMAP server does NOT handle traditional mailbox files
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(/var/spool/mail, and derivatives), it was written for the specific
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purpose of providing IMAP access to Maildirs.
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The Courier-IMAP implements some extensions to the basic Maildir mail
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storage format in order to support some additional features, such as
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folders and "soft" quotas. This is done in a way that's backwards
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compatible with the standard Maildir users (although, of course, they
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will ignore the additional features). Other software that understands
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and uses the same Maildir extensions is SqWebMail, and maildrop.
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"Maildir" is a directory-based mail storage format originally introduced
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in the Qmail mail server, and adopted as an alternative mail storage
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format by both Exim and Postfix. Courier-IMAP is popular on
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Qmail/Exim/Postfix sites that are configured to use maildirs. The
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primary advantage of maildirs is that multiple applications can access
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the same maildir simultaneously without requiring any kind of locking
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whatsoever. It is a faster and more efficient way to store mail. It
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works particularly well over NFS, which has a long history of
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locking-related woes.
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It is part of the Courier mail server (http://www.courier-mta.org) but
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can be configured as a standalone IMAP server.
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Features include an extremely small memory footprint, abstract
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authentication modules (e.g. /etc/passwd, LDAP, PAM), virtual mailbox
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support, resource controls, SSL/TLS, and IPv6 support.
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