So, Dovecot was way easier to setup than Courier IMAP 
It’s also really fast, and the website is nice and up to date/modern and easy to use. I think this will be my choice in the future!
Exim is holy-crap-complicated to get started with (compared to Postfix, at least). I think it might be an artifact of the way Debian/Ubuntu packages things - there are 73 files and directories in the /etc/exim4 configuration directory, and (as far as I’ve found) no straight forward guide to what goes where.
To their credit, to get exim4 to work as I initially wanted, I only had to edit /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf after running dpkg-reconfigure. Exim4 by default delivers to mbox mail spools in /var/mail, rather than to Maildir folders in /home/user. Luckily, it’s simple to switch - just add the line ‘dc_localdelivery=maildir_home’ to the update-exim4.conf.conf file.
Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to be a straight forward and simple to get ClamAV and SpamAssassin setup - unless Ubuntu has a surprise waiting for me in the apt-get configuration process!
Another item I’m working on, is getting an LDAPS address book server running, to centralize my address books - boy is that a nightmare Different schemas for different clients (that’s the best idea I’ve seen!), different SSL capabilities with different clients (it appears Thunderbird wont use a self-signed SSL certificate by default for Address Book). I’ll be sure to post something useful once I get it working, assuming I ever get it working!
August 20th, 2006
So, in an effort to finally consolidate my online ‘presence’ (blog, websites, photos, RSS feeds, email, etc) into something under my total control (i.e., not dependent on friends, family, luck, job, etc., aside from my hosting company), I’ve started the arduous process of moving my email and web stuff into my new domain (uptill3.com).
In order to move email, I’ve got to figure out a mail server setup that works for me - the hosts I’m using today are running postfix, exim, and courier. I’m looking at migrating my stuff to Dovecot + Exim. It sounds straight forward enough, but I’d like to be able to run Hula in the future. And Hula doesn’t do Maildir, which is kind of important for non-Hula apps.
I’ll probably end up with Dovecot + Exim on uptill3.com and run Hula alone on maryandadam.com (so that Mary and I can share calendars, and she can have pretty web-mail access). So many domains, so little time!
I’m also looking at moving from Bloglines to Gregarius, because I love the idea of self-hosting my stuff, and not having to rely on Bloglines to be up and not charge or plaster me with ads (which they currently do not - it’s a great service, just not what I’m looking for in the end).
I’m currently running Up Till 3 in a VMWare Server 1.0 VM, along with a few of my other sites (such as maryandadam.com), so moving around in the future is as easy as stopping the VM, and SCP’ing the disk image to the new host!
Now that things with Alanne appear to be wrapping up, I should have plenty of extra time to research stuff for this blog, as well as write more - I’ve got tons of ideas for posts, I just haven’t had the time to write them all.
August 9th, 2006