Dovecot (software)

Dovecot (English for dovecote ) is a mail server that supports the network protocols IMAP and POP3 as opposed to a mail transfer agent.

The software runs under UNIX, BSD and Unix-like systems such as Linux. It is open source with public domain and other parts under LGPL or MIT license in addition to stand-alone licenses.

The first test version came out in July 2002, which in the meantime almost completely reprogrammed version 1.0.0 was released in April 2007.

The main focus in the programming is applied to the safety. Since early 2006, a premium on exploits is exposed. This Dovecot is in the tradition of qmail.

The server can maildir and mbox deal with the mailbox formats and is fully compatible to the Courier server and UW- IMAP. Since version 1.0a4 is also a dovecot- own format called dbox in process, which is intended for high performance applications. So far dbox does not provide compatibility with other software, so you can access stored in dbox format mails only via Dovecot, ie of mail clients using IMAP and POP3; and MTAs through the use of service components in Dovecot.

With version 2.2 Dovecot has been extended to other functions; essentially new IMAP command extensions have been implemented, dsync newly developed and optimized and Shared Mailboxes for extended per-user flags.

Apple uses Dovecot in Mac OS X Server v10.6 generation as the successor of Cyrus.

Dovecot supports, among others, the following features:

  • IMAP4rev1
  • THREAD, IDLE and SORT extension
  • POP3
  • As LMTP protocol for e- mail delivery
  • Sieve
  • TLS / SSL
  • IPv6
  • Maildir Quota
  • Postfix and exim (version 4) can authenticate to the backend Dovecot
Mail Delivery Agent Message transfer agent GNU Lesser General Public License Courier Mail Server Internet Message Access Protocol Post Office Protocol Cyrus IMAP server Local Mail Transfer Protocol Sieve (mail filtering language) Postfix (software)
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