How to Start Courier-Imap?

[David Kelly]

On Sunday 29 June 2003 06:02 pm, Tomlinson, Drew wrote:
> I've installed courier-imap 1.7.1 using portupgrade on my 4.8 system
> but I can't figure out how to start it.  I'm familiar with
> /usr/local/etc/rc.d and see links to start scripts there but when I
> run them, I get errors about being unable to find files.  Here's and
> example:
>
> blacklamb# ./courier-imap-imapd.sh.sample start
> .: Can't open /usr/local/etc/courier-imap/imapd-ssl: No such file or
> directory
>
> I assume this has to do with the files not being installed where the
> scripts expect to find them.  Next I try a 'whereis' to find the
> file:

The courier-imap port is not as friendly as many other ports. It stumped 
me for a while too. Finally I saw and actually read the last message 
the "make" process emitted (from the tail end of 
/usr/ports/mail/courier-imap/Makefile):

@${ECHO_MSG} ""
@${ECHO_MSG} "You will have to run ${DATADIR}/mkimapdcert to create"
@${ECHO_MSG} "a self-signed certificate if you want to use imapd-ssl."
@${ECHO_MSG} "And you will have to copy and edit the *.dist files to *"
@${ECHO_MSG} "in ${CONFDIR}."
@${ECHO_MSG} ""

Believe this will get you going:

% su
# cd /usr/local/etc/courier-imap
# cp -p imapd-ssl.dist imapd-ssl
# cp -p imapd.dist imapd
# cp -p authdaemonrc.dist authdaemonrc

After copying the following I edited it for my location just in case I 
ever used x509 certificates:
# cp -p imapd.cnf.dist imapd.cnf

and for POP3 (I don't use):

# cp -p pop3d.dist pop3d
# cp -p pop3d.cnf.dist pop3d.cnf
# cp -p pop3d-ssl.dist pop3d-ssl

and finally:
# cd /usr/local/etc/rc.d
# cp -p courier-imap-imapd.sh.sample courier-imap-imapd.sh
# sh courier-imap-imapd.sh start

The final thing which stumped me was Apple's Mail.app connecting to 
courier-imapd ran an infinite loop of repeating connects because 
~/Maildir was only a directory and did not contain cur/ new/ and tmp/ 
directories. See maildirmake(1). Unless you are using quotas it doesn't 
appear to be any different than "( umask 77; mkdir -p ~/Maildir/cur 
~/Maildir/new ~/Maildir/tmp )"

-- 
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly at hiwaay.net
=====================================================================
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
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