However, many people still don’t know that if you want to pull your email into third-party email software, it has to be capable of using secure connections. This means SSL (Secure Socket Layer), and TLS (Transport Layer Security). Both of these protocols use encryption, and are built in automatically to most up-to-date email software. Instead of using ports 25 and 110 to sends and receive, you’ll be using ports 465 and 995, and Gmail won’t work without it.

So what happens when you are asked to set up an email system to talk to Google Mail, which doesn’t allow those ports, and is so old it doesn’t know the first thing about encryption protocols? Well, one answer could be a little program called Stunnel. This little gem sits on your computer and converts standard emails into a format suitable for Google Mail. It can handle incoming and outgoing mail, and is robust enough to use on a network where many people are sending emails at the same time. It also uses very little system memory, and rarely crashes.

Setting up Stunnel is a easy. You simply run thorough the install process which will take all of about 20 seconds, and then edit a small text file which configures the program to use whichever email service you are using. Of course we are talking about Google Mail here, but this program could be used to interface with any email system using secure socket layers.

You can set up port mappings easily, so if your software will only receive emails from port 110, it will automatically translate that to port 995 for you, and the same with outgoing mail. It will also handle IMAP email as well.

You can install Stunnel on any computer running Windows. In a network environment you can install a copy on a server, and point all your workstations to it. Stunnel seems to allow multiple connections with no fuss whatsoever. I’ve seen a single instance of Stunnel handling email for up to 200 workstations. Of course if you have more, there are no reasons why you couldn’t install more than one instance of Stunnel to handle the extra traffic. It also installs itself as a service on server operating systems, which enables it to be started automatically. It can also be installed on individual machines, such as laptops.

This program finds favor with quite a few people. It’s simple and does exactly what it says it does. It’s also flexible enough to fit in with almost any network.

Dovecot is an open source IMAP/POP server that runs on either Linux or UNIX systems. Dovecot is suitable for both small and large installations (I just recently installed Dovecot on a 300+ user system) and will work in the background like a workhorse.

In this article I will show you how to install Dovecot and get it up and running with either IMAP or POP quickly and with as little pain as possible.

Installation

Since we are installing on a Ubuntu machine, installing Dovecot is as simple as running the command sudo apt-get install dovecot-common dovecot-imapd dovecot-pop3d. You can actually install either dovecot-imapd or dovecot-pop3d depending upon which protocol you need to support.

Once installed the executable command is /etc/init.d/dovecot start.

Configuration

There is only one configuration file you need to deal with. That file will be located in either /etc/dovecot.conf or /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf. Believe it or not, the default configuration file is fairly well set up for you. You will only have to make a few modifications. So don’t let the 1,000+ line configuration file look you in the eye and defeat you. You can best this beast with little time.

The first configuration you will need to make is to configure the protocol. Look for the line:

protocols = pop3 pop3s imap imaps

You can just leave this as is, or, if you know you are only using certain protocols, edit to suit your set up. Just remove the protocols you do not need.

The next line you need to look for is:

mail_location =

There are two popular choices here:
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir # (for maildir)
or
mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u # (for mbox)

In other words, if your users’ mailboxes will reside in the home directory, use the former. If the users’ mailboxes will reside in /var/spool/mail, use the latter.

Restart and test

Now restart Dovecot with the command /etc/init.d/dovecot restart and let’s give this system a test. We’ll test this with the help of telnet. Issue the command telent ADDRESS PROTO Where ADDRESS is the address of the server and PROTO is the protocol you want to use (either pop3 or imap). Here’s what the test will look like:
telnet localhost pop3
+OK dovecot ready.
user USER
+OK
pass PASSWORD
+OK Logged in.
list
+OK 1 messages:
1 622

Where USER is a legitimate user on the system and PASSWORD is the password for that user.

If you see the +OK at the end, Dovecot is ready to go. If you have any problems, the best place to look is in /var/log/maillog. And the best way to run that check is by using two terminal windows. In terminal A issue the command tail -f /var/log/maillog and in terminal B run the Dovecot test above. Terminal A should report any issues which will be your starting point for troubleshooting.

Final thoughts

Dovecot really is that easy to install. Of course Dovecot is much more flexible than that. In later articles we will discuss other configuration options for this outstanding server.

Basically what I am asking this time, is do you use POP3, IMAP, or webmail, or maybe even something else? POP is the “oldschool” way of doing thigs. You download the messages from the server, but you are essentially making a copy of your real inbox on the server, the message structure, messages, etc are not changed on the server, no matter what you do in your email client (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc).

IMAP is the method of directly accessing your server real-time from a different application. If you delete an email from your client (Outlook, Thunderbird supports IMAP as well) you selete it from your server too, and vice-versa. Webmail is of course directly accessing your server on a nice graphical interface, like Gmail, Yahoo Mail and all the others.

There are many ways to manage yourself using any of these methods, but which do you think is best? POP is great for managing emails as tasks, and to keep backups, in fact, I think it is the most productive, but since it doesn’t modify your server too, it means your server will be a mess. IMAP is great for not doing double work, but is at times a bit inflexible and harder to use if you also want advanced features like labels, tags, folders, etc. Webmail is probably a mixture of the two if you have a good interface like Gmail. So which do you prefer, how do you manage your email?