A couple of articles ago, I started with a DoveCot Installation. I managed to download, build, and get a rough installation. I also prepared a userid for the service. It was at that point in the Dovecot installation instructions where they started talking about certificates, and I side-tracked into Certificate Authorities and certificate installation.
In /etc/dovecot, I copied dovecot-example.conf to dovecot.conf. In dovecot.conf, I updated the following lines to get things started:
protocols = imap imaps disable_plaintext_auth = no ssl = no mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir #mail_location = maildir:/%h/Maildir auth_debug_passwords = yes
Dovecot Wiki does a good job of explaining the installation process. In fact, the non-ssl installation process is quite painless, and consists mostly of testing the connection.
Once the basic configuration is tested, then enable the configuration for ssl, and restart Dovecot.
disable_plaintext_auth = yes ssl = yes auth_debug_passwords = no # Same keys from the sendmail installation ssl_cert_file = /etc/ssl/private/mail.example.com.crt ssl_key_file = /etc/ssl/private/mail.example.com.key
Startup an IMAP session with a Mail Client and try IMAP and IMAPS. Try sending email as well through the SMTP Sendmail connection with encryption. Tcpdump can be used to look at packets.
There is a Sample Dovecot init.d script which can be used to start, stop, and reload the service. The sample can be pasted verbatim into /etc/init.d/dovecot. Also do a 'chmod 755 /etc/init.d/dovecot'. Then '/etc/init.d/dovecot start'.
With a successful send and receive of email, that wraps up the rather lengthy configuration of a reasonably protected email solution encompassing Sendmail as an email transport mechanism, Dovecot as an IMAP/IMAPS service, and MailScanner with SpamAssassin/F-Prot for email scanning and protection.