Solaris 10: Configuring IMAP

Solaris 10: Configuring IMAP

Abstract:
Solaris has long been shipped with a wide variety of email capabilities, while other commercial operating system require businesses to purchase email. EMail capabilities vary from sendmail to move mail between servers, to various commands to retrieve mail on a command line (i.e. mail, mailx, etc.), to Post Office Protocol (POP) or Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) to retrieve mail from a desktop based email client. The IMAP protocol offers some of the most robust options.

Location:
The IMAP protocol is normally shipped on a Companion CD with Solaris. The Companion CD from Solaris 10 includes a SVR4 package of the IMAP protocol.

Installation:
An old version of a Companion CD IMAP version, which was loaded on a server, is below.

# pkginfo -l SFWimap
PKGINST:  SFWimap
NAME:  Imap - mail server daemon and utilities
CATEGORY:  system
ARCH:  sparc
VERSION:  2002.4,REV=2005.01.05.17.49
BASEDIR:  /opt
VENDOR:  http://www.Washington.EDU/imap
DESC:  Imap - mail server daemon and utilities
PSTAMP:  freeware20050105201031
INSTDATE:  Dec 19 2005 14:52
HOTLINE:  Please contact the owners of this software
STATUS:  completely installed
FILES:       34 installed pathnames
        7 shared pathnames
        8 directories
        7 executables
     9605 blocks used (approx)

The binary can be easily found using the find command.

# find /opt -ls | grep /imap
...
772 776 -r-xr-xr-x 1 root bin 783408 Jan  5 2005 /opt/sfw/sbin/imapd
719   1 drwxr-xr-x 2 root bin    512 Dec 19 2005 /opt/sfw/doc/imap
721  19 -r--r--r-- 1 root bin  19296 Jan  5 2005 /opt/sfw/doc/imap/BUILD
722   8 -r--r--r-- 1 root bin   7941 Jan  5 2005 /opt/sfw/doc/imap/CONFIG
723 152 -r--r--r-- 1 root bin 146914 Jan  5 2005 /opt/sfw/doc/imap/FAQ.txt
724  18 -r--r--r-- 1 root bin  17522 Jan  5 2005 /opt/sfw/doc/imap/RELNOTES

Configuration:
If there is no service loaded, then imapd service will need to be configured.

# svcs | grep imap
# inetadm | grep imap
#

One of the easiest ways to configure a Solaris 10 Service, if you are used to using the old "/etc/inetd.conf" configuration methodology, is to use "inetconv" utility. Add the "imapd" entry to "inetd.conf", validate it, and perform the conversion.

# vi /etc/inetd.conf
# grep imap /etc/inetd.conf
imap stream tcp nowait root /opt/sfw/sbin/imapd imapd
# inetconv
imap -> /var/svc/manifest/network/imap-tcp.xml
Importing imap-tcp.xml ...Done

Verification:
After the import of the service, you can check to see it running.

# svcs | grep imap
online 14:11:40 svc:/network/imap/tcp:default
# inetadm | grep imap
enabled online svc:/network/imap/tcp:default

Usage:
Go and configure your Mozilla integrated web & messaging browser (now called SeaMonkey) or modern Thunderbird client!