[BUGS] Remote backups, imap too

[Andrew]

On 8 Dec 2007, at 08:17, Jerahmy Pocott wrote:

> Right of course, just in the past when I had looked into imap it
> seemed that
> everyone suggested using qmail.. I forget why, and thinking about it
> I see
> no reason why the MTA you use should have any impact on IMAP..

It doesn't - you can use any MTA you like. The only thing is the MTA  
needs a way to get mail into mailboxes which the IMAP server must be  
able to get mail out of and everyone has do agree on locking. I can't  
think of nay combination that wouldn't be possible though with the  
right config. This is where the various delivery agents come in.

Perhaps everyone just suggested qmail because sendmail is awful to  
configure? ;-) I run postfix personally.

> To be honest I'm not completely sure how imap works, but it should  
> only
> require a server and client, no changes to the MTA?

Yes, it's just like POP3 only with more features.

>> I have been using Dovecot (FreeBSD ports: mail/dovecot) as a mailbox
>> server on a couple of different FreeBSD servers for the past year

I agree with whoever said that :-) I haven't used dovecot in extremely  
large installations but I have heard of ppl who have successfully. It  
works well, failry easy to setup and seems to have one of the better  
security records of IMAP servers.

> My main concern is ease of backing up the mail box.. Do you know off
> hand if there is a way to deny deleting of mail?

Dovecot, with a plugin, supports ACLs so you can deny deletes that  
way. I'm not sure if thats what you meant though. Do you mean is there  
a way to temporarily make mail storage read only so you can take  
backups? File system snapshots might help a bit here (snapshot and  
backup the snapshot rather than the FS). I think dovecot can detect  
corrupt and out of date indexes automatically and if you chose a  
mailbox format that does things atomically that might be enough.

HTH,
Andrew