IMAP server that handles its own accounts?

Question

I have a Windows email server (not exchange) that I want to migrate away from. The Windows email server caused me some trouble in the past, and its time for it to go. I want to try a Linux email server.

I began setting up up a test server according to Ubuntu's Setting up an Ubuntu System as an Email Server. After installing postifx and courier, I found I cannot add users to the courier imap service. The docs state I need to add users to the local machine's user database. See, for example, Courier. Re-running dkpg for the additional configuration options was not helpful.

Local system accounts kind of kills the whole idea of a migration, where I want to provide the admin password to both IMAP servers, and then run a tool to perform account creation on the new server, then IMAP reads from the existing server and IMAP writes to the new server. Additionally, it makes backups more complicated because mailbox data is sprayed all over the file system.

What Linux IMAP server fully supports itself without being tangled in other components? Ideally, I'm looking for something "that just works" without a lot of hassles. (This is why I went with the Windows email server in the first place).

Answer 1

I've no experience with courier, but it seems that it has multiple auth modules, among them authuserdb module http://www.courier-mta.org/authlib/README_authlib.html#authuserdb

It basicaly use similar to /etc/passwd file format, but in another file.

There are also authmysql, authpgsql, authsqlite and authldap modules which can use databases or LDAP as authentifacation backend.

I've used dovecot as IMAP server and it seems to be quite similar in authentication features, see http://wiki2.dovecot.org/PasswordDatabase if you want to try dovecot instead.