[Techtalk] imap server

Rasjid Wilcox rasjidw at openminddev.net
Wed Mar 24 23:15:23 EST 2004


On Wednesday 24 March 2004 20:57, Kathryn Andersen wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 09:04:46AM +1100, Rasjid Wilcox wrote:
> > Courier imap is easy to setup and by all accounts very good.
>
> I have a question, because I am very ignorant.  I know that IMAP is some
> sort of mail server thingie, but I don't know why people want to install
> it.  What is it good for?  What does it do?  Why do people like it?

This is one question.  :-)

With email via POP, your mail client goes out a picks it up from the 
mail-server a retrieves it.  In most cases it is then deleted from the mail 
server.  You can choose to leave it there, but that is usually because you 
are going to grab it with some *other* POP mail client and then delete it.

With IMAP, the email stays on the server.  You can log in from anywhere, and 
*all* your mail will be there, not just new mail.  All your mail will also be 
shown with the same folder setup and structure, regardless of the email 
client you use.

You can also set up server-side delivery rules, so that your mail is 
pre-sorted before you even log in to look at it.  The best bit about this is 
that it is email client independant.  I can change email client, and all my 
sorting rules continue to work.

The ability to easily use multiple email clients is the main reason I set up 
Courier IMAP with Maildrop on my desktop machine at home.  If someone sends 
me a html formmated mail that I really need to reply to, but Kmail messes up 
(Kmail 1.5.1 on SuSE 8.2 - perhaps newer versions are better with replying to 
html mail) I can close Kmail, open Mozilla mail, and reply to it there.  And 
if I at some point decide to use Evolution, or Sylpheed or whatever, I don't 
have to re-create 30+ mail filtering rules in my new email client to cope 
with all the lists in on, since my existing rules (done with maildrop) 
continue to work.

And for a while I ran a server at home over my DSL connection.  So then I 
could log in from work or from a friends place and check my mail - again with 
all the mail filters already applied, so I didn't see the 50 new email 
messges to the wxPython list unless I wanted to.  If I get around to buying a 
quiet mini-itx system I may do this again, since then I get ready access to 
*all* my mail (even stuff from months or years ago) regardless of where I am.

> Why is it good if it understands maildir?

The standard unix mailbox format used to be mbox.  All the mail in a single 
'folder' was just one big single file.  This has scalability issues and 
reliability issues. It was probably fine in the days when all mail was just 
plain text and therefore small, but not necessarily what you want nowdays.  
Maildir and friends put each mail into a single file, and each 'folder' is 
just a directory.  Many people think this is a good idea. Others are not too 
fussed.  Ultimately it is a personal choice.  I choose maildir, so for me 
having a IMAP server that understands maildir is good.  :-)

>  If I am a geeky Linux user
> who isn't running an ISP, is there any reason for me to install it on my
> own system?  What can one *do* with it?

I hope I've covered that above.  :-)

Cheers,

Rasjid.

-- 
Rasjid Wilcox
Canberra, Australia (UTC +11 hrs)
http://www.openminddev.net


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