Creating an Email Server with Sendmail and Dovecot - Part 1

I had this requirement for deploying an email system with IMAP. I already had a bit of experience with postfix and cyrus IMAP. But I wanted something different this time. So I started searching for a server which was capable of working with sendmail. Sendmail was already running on the server I was working on and I was not keen on installing another SMTP server from scratch (lazy me). The server OS was Red Hat Linux. After some research I came across Dovecot.

Sendmail is a general purpose internetwork email routing facility that supports many kinds of mail-transfer and -delivery methods, including the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) used for email transport over the Internet.

Dovecot is an open source IMAP and POP3 server for Linux/UNIX-like systems, written primarily with security in mind. Developed by Timo Sirainen, Dovecot was first released in July 2002. Dovecot primarily aims to be a lightweight, fast and easy to set up open source mailserver.

Dovecot can work with standard mbox, Maildir, and its own experimental native high-performance dbox formats. It is fully compatible with UW IMAP and Courier IMAP servers’ implementation of them, as well as mail clients accessing the mailboxes directly. Dovecot also includes a Mail delivery agent (called Local delivery agent in Dovecot’s documentation), with optional Sieve filtering support.

Ok now to the technical part

What do we need?

Sendmail – Already installed with Red Hat. If not can get from http://www.sendmail.org/

Dovecot – We can download Dovecot from http://dovecot.org. I always prefer stable versions.

Name server (DNS) – I assume a name server has already been setup or is available. I will be adding an article on `named` the linux DNS server I use later on.

Installing Dovecot

Once the dovecot sources are downloaded (the version I used is 1.2.10) to the server, we can continue with the installation of dovecot mail server as follows,

# cd /usr/software

# tar -zxf dovecot-1.2.10.tar.gz

# cd dovecot-1.2.10

# ./configure

# make

# make install

Now we need to install the sieve plugin:

# cd /usr/software

# tar -zxf dovecot-sieve- 1.1.8.tar.gz

# cd dovecot-sieve- 1.1.8

# ./configure –with-dovecot=../dovecot-1.2.10

# make

# make install

Dovecot Configuration

The basic configuration file of dovecot should be in /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf and we can create it by doing the following step.

# cp dovecot-example.conf /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf

A description of the main configuration of dovecot is here: http://wiki.dovecot.org/MainConfig

The below is a basic configuration file for these features: IMAP Protocol, Virtual Users from password storage file (authentication file) and support other programs to authenticate with the dovecot mail server.

#Base directory where to store runtime data.

base_dir=/usr/local/var/run/

# protocols = imap pop3

protocols = imap
disable_plaintext_auth = no

# Logging

log_path = /var/log/dovecot.log
info_log_path = /var/log/dovecot.info.log
log_timestamp = "%b %d %H:%M:%S "

# SSL settings

ssl = no

# Login processes

login_dir =/var/run/dovecot/login
login_chroot = yes
login_user = dovecot
login_greeting = 'Hi buddy, have an account ?'
login_log_format = %$: %s

# Mailbox locations and namespaces

mail_privileged_group = mail

# Mailbox locations and namespaces

mail_location = mbox:/var/mail/folders/%u/:INBOX=/var/mail/%u:INDEX=/var/mail/index/%u

# Mail processes

max_mail_processes = 2048
mail_debug = yes
mail_log_prefix = "%Us(%u): "
verbose_proctitle = yes
first_valid_uid = 1000
last_valid_uid = 5000

# Mail Optimaze

max_mail_processes = 512
mailbox_idle_check_interval = 30

# mbox-specific settings

mbox_read_locks = dotlock fcntl
mbox_write_locks = dotlock fcntl

# IMAP specific settings

protocol imap {

listen = *:143
mail_plugins = autocreate
imap_client_workarounds = tb-extra-mailbox-sep

}

plugin {

autocreate = Drafts
autocreate2 = Sent
autocreate3 = Trash
autosubscribe = Drafts
autosubscribe2 = Sent
autosubscribe3 = Trash

}

# LDA specific settings

protocol lda {

postmaster_address = shamly1
hostname = mydomain.org
mail_plugins = cmusieve
log_path = /var/log/dovecot-local-deliver.log
auth_socket_path = /usr/local/var/run/dovecot-auth-master

}

# Authentication processes

auth_verbose = yes
auth_debug = yes
auth_debug_passwords = yes

# Authentication Cache

auth_cache_size = 10240
auth_cache_ttl = 18000

auth default {

mechanisms = plain
passdb passwd-file {

args = /usr/local/etc/dovecot.passdb

}

userdb passwd-file {

args = /usr/local/etc/dovecot.passdb

}

user = root

# It's possible to export the authentication interface to other programs:

socket listen {

master {

path = /usr/local/var/run/dovecot-auth-master
 mode = 0660
 user = dovecot
 group = mail

}

}

}

# plugin

plugin {

   sieve = /var/mail/folders/%u/.dovecot.sieve

}

Next we need to create the dovecot.passdb the authentication file located in /usr/local/etc directory as specified in the dovecot.conf file.

user1:{PLAIN}pass1:1001:1001:User 1 Name:/var/mail/folders/user1:: mail_plugins=cmusieve

user2:{PLAIN}pass2:1002:1002:User 2 Name:/var/mail/folders/user2:: mail_plugins=cmusieve

user3:{PLAIN}pass3:1003:1003:User 3 Name:/var/mail/folders/user3:: mail_plugins=cmusieve

user4:{PLAIN}pass4:1004:1004:User 4 Name:/var/mail/folders/user4:: mail_plugins=cmusieve

dovecot user is used internally for processing users’ logins. It shouldn’t have access to any files, authentication databases or anything else either. It should belong to its own private dovecot group where no one else belongs to, and which doesn’t have access to any files either (other than what Dovecot internally creates).

Dovecot Mail users

You can use one or more system users for accessing users’ mails. Most configurations can be placed to two categories:

1. System users where each Dovecot user has their own system user in /etc/passwd. For system user setups you generally don’t have to worry about UIDs or GIDs.
2. Virtual users where all Dovecot users run under a single system user, for example vmail (just NOT dovecot).

However it’s possible to use a setup that is anything between these two. For example use a separate system user for each domain. In my example configuration I am using the second option.

Now let’s try to run the dovecot server

To verify the config of running dovecot:

# /usr/local/sbin/dovecot –n

To start the dovecot mail server just type:

# dovecot

To check all running process by the user dovecot, do

# ps aux | grep dovecot

If there are any problems just see the log files:

# tail -f /var/log/dovecot.log

If everything till now is running ok, you should check the mail server via telnet. To do this just type the below command:

# telnet localhost 143

Trying 127.0.0.1…

Connected to localhost.

Escape character is ‘^]’.

* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 SORT THREAD=REFERENCES MULTIAPPEND UNSELECT

LITERAL+ IDLE CHILDREN NAMESPACE LOGIN-REFERRALS AUTH=PLAIN] Dovecot ready.

1 login test test

1 OK Logged in.

Wow .. now we have our dovecot server up and running. In the next part I will run through the steps on how to setup the sendmail server.

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