Mail

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---
title: Mail
---

# Mail service configuration

## Components

*   MTA 
*   POP/IMAP server (MDA?)

## Requirements

*   Send and receive mail for domain 
*   Secure remote mail retrieval 
*   Secure remote mail send via MTA 
*   Security before performance

### Send and Receive

Supported by all MTAs

### Secure Remote Retrieval

*   IMAP or POP with TLS 
*   See [Security][2] for authentication

### Secure Remote Submission

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMTP-AUTH>

## Available Mail Transfer Agents

### Sendmail

Ruled out because of complexity, lack of security

### Postfix

### Qmail

DJB

*   <http://cr.yp.to/qmail.html> 
*   <http://www.lifewithqmail.org/lwq.html>

### Exim

### Resources

*   <http://www.journalfen.net/userpic/40602/337>

From 2001. Postfix beats qmail in performance.

Softupdates benefit performance at risk of mail loss on crash

*   <http://www.journalfen.net/userpic/40602/337>

TLS & DNS security issues

*   [http://www.tummy.com/journals/entries/jafo\_20050120\_010505][3]

Postfix can't run filters on message body?

## Mail Retrieval

### POP & IMAP

*   Dovecot (<http://www.dovecot.org/>) 
*   uw-imap

### IMAP only

*   cyrus-imap 
*   courier 
*   bincimap

Two main contenders are Courier and Dovecot.  
Originally installed Dovecot, but it supports neither quotas nor STARTTLS.  
Will stay with it for the moment. Courier-imap needs perl. Don't really want to bbloat the jail.

### POP only

*   qmail-pop3 
*   tPOP3 
*   teapop 
*   popa 
*   vmpop 
*   qpopper

## Configuration

## Filtering

See <http://acme.com/mail_filtering/>

*   SpamAssassin (<http://spamassassin.apache.org/>)

circumvented by spammers according to acme

*   Bogofilter (<http://bogofilter.sourceforge.net/>)

conservative

*   BMF (<http://sourceforge.net/projects/bmf/>)

aggressive

*   QSF (<http://www.ivarch.com/programs/qsf/>)

aggressive

# Q&A

## Local disk encryption?

Encrypt mail spools? Protect against seizure? Does that matter?

* * *

# Log

## **2006-04-14**

Ok. First task. Decide on an MTA and remote retrieval daemon.  
Ruled out Sendmail. Insecure, complex.  
Would like to have the ability to reject at SMTP time

### IMAP or POP?

IMAP requires a decent quota on the mail server as well as backups. Single location for mail. Single point of failure. Definitely preferable to POP

### Filtering

SpamAssassin is widely used but apparently a target of spammers.  
Bogofilter is less widely used.  
Bogofilter it is then (at least initially).

## **2006-04-16**

Decided on Postfix. Actively maintained (unlike qmail+patches). Full-featured.

## **2006-04-19**

<http://wanderingbarque.com/howtos/mailserver/mailserver.html>   
<http://jamm.sourceforge.net/howto/single-html/mailserver.html>

[2]: Security

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