Best distro for Exim/Cyrus

[Andrew Morgan]

On Mon, 10 Feb 2014, Paul O'Rorke wrote:

> Hi again Cyrus list,
>
> still trying to find a definitive resource to use to get this mail server up 
> and running.  Does anyone know of a good howto for setting up 
> Debian/Exim/Cyrus?  I think this is the combination I want to move from the 
> Centos/Exim/Dovecote box I inherited but I must confess to really struggling 
> here.
>
> It seems there are lots of different variations on the set up, what config 
> files are used for different distros and even versions of Debian. I'm not 
> finding consistency between what I am seeing on my system and the things the 
> guides I'm using are suggesting I should see.
>
> I appreciate that setting up such a mail server does require significant 
> knowledge, more of which I hope to acquire through this project.  I am 
> surprised however at the difficulty I am experiencing here.  I would be more 
> than happy to get this started with a simple config and spend more time 
> building a better server down the road if anyone can point me in the right 
> direction for a good guide/howto.
>
> Maybe I've bitten off more than I can chew with Exim/Cyrus. Surely it should 
> be possible to set such a mail server up in a day or so?
>
> Hoping to find a bone here...  :-(

I'm using Debian here, although I am compiling from source rather than 
using the Debian Cyrus packages.  Back when I started, the Cyrus packages 
were very out of date in Debian.  However, it appears that Debian packages 
in Wheezy (stable) are Cyrus v2.4.16 (plus patches), so I recommend using 
Debian's Cyrus packages for your situation.

I suggest installing the following packages:

cyrus-admin
cyrus-clients
cyrus-doc
cyrus-imapd

which should give you an IMAP server.

One of the tricky things with Cyrus is authentication.  It is very 
flexible.  I'm not sure how the Debian packages will configure 
authentication.  Perhaps they default to local unix authentication or 
cyrusdb (cyrus-only auth).

After that, you need to get Exim to deliver mail to Cyrus via LMTP.  I 
don't use Exim, so I can't comment on that part.  There must be a howto 
out there somewhere!

 	Andy