IMAP on Oracle Linux 6

Hi there,

To enable IMAP on Oracle Linux 6, the steps are pretty simple.

• Configure postfix. Edit /etc/postfix/main.cf

uncomment home_mailbox = Maildir/

add to the end of the main.cf file :

smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot
smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth
smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes
broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes
smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, permit_sasl_authenticated, reject_unauth_destination

•  restart service

#service postfix restart

• Install dovecot

# yum install dovecot

• enable the imap service

# vi /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

change from:

#protocols = imap pop3 lmtp 

to:

protocols = imap

• edit /etc/dovecot/10-mail.conf

#vi /etc/dovecot/10-mail.conf

add
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir

• edit /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-master.conf

change from:

unix_listener auth-userdb {
#mode = 0600
#user =
#group =
}

to

unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth {
mode = 0666
user = postfix
group = postfix
}

•  edit /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-auth.conf

# vi /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-auth.conf 

disable_plaintext_auth = no 

auth_mechanisms = plain login 

• check the status of the sevice

 [root@ol6 ~]# chkconfig --list dovecot

dovecot         0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off

• enable it in case it was off

 [root@ol6 ~]# chkconfig dovecot on

• start the service 

 [root@ol6 ~]# service dovecot start

Starting Dovecot Imap:                                     [  OK  ]

• check the service is listening on imap port.. tcp 143 for imap, tcp 993 for imaps

[root@ol6 ~]# netstat -anp | egrep ':143|:993'

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:993                 0.0.0.0:*                   LISTEN      26394/dovecot    
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:143                 0.0.0.0:*                   LISTEN      26394/dovecot    
tcp        0      0 :::993                      :::*                        LISTEN      26394/dovecot    
tcp        0      0 :::143                      :::*                        LISTEN      26394/dovecot    

• configure the firewall to allow incoming connections to 143 and 993 tcp if you have iptables running
• done!

Now, let's test the system is running.

Dovecot will use a combination of user and password, so will check access for oracle user

• send a test email to our user

# echo test | mail -s test oracle

• install mutt mail client

#yum install mutt

• set a password to a user, in order to test if you don't have a password yet

#passwd oracle

• test dovecot imap

#mutt -f imap://server/user

•  accept the certificate

(r)eject, accept (o)nce, (a)ccept always 

Done. 

Ok, not so simple, but pretty straightforward.

Dedicated to my friends on tcs india.

Alvaro.