IMAP mail server for Linux

Question

I have several mail accounts and it bothers me that my set of filtering rules are only applied on the client side. For example, if I receive a mail while I'm on my laptop, the filtering rules automatically put it the intended folder. However, if I read the mail on my smartphone, the mail remains in the general inbox.

That's why I want to set up an IMAP mail server which receives the mails from my several accounts, applies the filter rules and delivers them to the end-devices. Other perks like contact, calendar and notes synchronization would also be nice.

I'm not very informed in this topic, so my question to you guys: Do you know any (open source) software which runs on Linux and cuts my demands?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I'm using a combination of the following tools/packages:

• Horde Collaboration Suite
• Cyrus IMap Server
• fetchmail
• procmail
• sanitizer
• clamav
• spamassassin

The procmail tool is setup to retrieve mail from my mail accounts on public servers. It will feed the mail into the IMap repository using cyrdeliver which is part of the Cyrus package. Locally at home I access the IMap server directly with e.g. Thunderbird. Outside my home LAN I use the web frontend provided by Horde which uses IMap again. Horde is a pretty stable and feature rich suite that also covers e.g. calender integration. It offers the protocol that is used my Microsoft Exchange servers, so accessing it with standard smartphones is usually pretty easy.

The components sanitizer and clamav are used to check the mails for viruses. If required the mails are patched e.g. attachments removed although this is hardly required on a Linux system. I mainly do this so that I don't forward infected mails to others.

The component spamassassin scans the mails for spam. Spam mails are moved to preconfigured folders in my IMap hierarchy.

The component ingo which is part of the Horde suite allows you to define filter rules for your mail. There is a web frontend integration for this. The generated rule set is then executed by procmail. So this allows you to define mail filters even if you are not in your home LAN. Actually, procmail is the glue between most of the components.