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IMAP

Note

This is a technical overview of our IMAP configuration, for guidance on setting up and using IMAP, check the Mail Clients documentation.

We use a mostly standard Dovecot configuration, with the primary difference being that we make use of the LDAP integrations to provide our userdb.

Our IMAP configuration automatically creates the following folders:

Folder Name Purpose
Inbox Newly received mail
Archive Message archive
Drafts Draft (postponed) messages
Junk Mail marked as spam1
Trash Mail deleted by users2
Sent/Sent Messages Messages sent by the user

Mail is delivered into the /var/vmail/%USER directory, owned by the vmail non-privileged user.

Dovecot then exposes this folder over IMAP and allows user mailbox modification using IMAP-compatible mail clients.

  1. We have not yet implemented a spam filtering solution and so for now this box contains only mail the user has explicitly marked as junk. ↩

  2. Mail in this folder is automatically wiped after 60 days. ↩