Preface
This book is both an overview of the IMAP protocol as well as a comprehensive installation and management guide for the two leading Unix-based IMAP servers. The University of Washington IMAP server, written by Mark Crispin, the father of the IMAP protocol, is an easy-to-install server that auto-detects and adapts to numerous mailstore formats on an individual user basis. The Cyrus IMAP server, from Carnegie Mellon University, is a high-performance, scalable server embraced by many larger sites.
As important as IMAP is to the growth of email, we were very surprised to find that a book on IMAP hadn’t already been written—at least we couldn’t find one. There was a lot of disconnected information out on the Net in various documents in documentation included with source distributions, on web sites, buried inside archives for mailing lists, and in Usenet newsgroups, but there was very little centralized assistance for the system administrator who wanted information on IMAP protocol, server administration, system design, and troubleshooting all in one place.
This book is directed at Unix and email system administrators who are (or might be) using IMAP to get email from their central mailstore to their users’ client software. If you have five email users or five hundred thousand, we describe a system in this book that would meet your needs. If your users are all using a common platform like Microsoft Windows, Solaris, or Mac OS, or if none of your users have access to anything but ...