Dovecot Revision as of Sunday, 20 December 2015 at 19:56 UTC
Written for CentOS 6.4, Dovecot 2.0.9. Users are system users, mailbox
style is Maildir (in their home accounts.)
Pre-Flight
Meant to be Part II of my mailserver installation log. Getting your mail
is not something which can always be done via SSH (e.g. in the case of
virtual accounts.) Dovecot allows you to get
your mail using the POP3 and/or IMAP protocols. It’s fast and secure out
of the box.
On SSL
The Dovecot instance will use POP3S and IMAPS in addition to POP3 and
IMAP. When TLS properly implemented with the latter pair, there’s really
no reason why the former would be required. Seems to be
some
confusion.
Installation
yum install dovecot
Configuration
Turn off SSL (for now) in /etc/dovecot/10-ssl.conf.
ssl = no
Initial Configuration
Edit /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf and set the protocols you want to serve
protocols = imap pop3
Listen on IPv4 and IPv6 interfaces
listen = *, ::
Location for run time data
base_dir = /var/run/dovecot/
Now, in /etc/dovecot/10-mail.conf, tell Dovecot where to find the
messages
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
Start the service and make sure it’s running
[root@example ~]# service dovecot start
[root@example ~]# netstat -tulpn | grep dovecot
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:110 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 7183/dovecot
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:143 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 7183/dovecot
tcp 0 0 :::110 :::* LISTEN 7183/dovecot
tcp 0 0 :::143 :::* LISTEN 7183/dovecot
Testing
You can now telnet to either ports 110
(POP3) or 143
(IMAP).
The syntaxes differ quite a bit.
Make sure firewall is poked :)
Securing
Now we use TLS with the POP3 and IMAP ports. All authentication and
message transfer will be done only after STARTTLS.
Edit /etc/dovecot/10-ssl.conf to enable SSL
ssl = yes
And configure the certificates and keys you will use (ssl_cert and
ssl_key). If, like me, you’re using self-signed certificates from
StartSSL, you’ll need to specify the CA bundle as well (ssl_ca).
Now disable plaintext authentication in /etc/dovecot/10-auth.conf
disable_plaintext_auth = yes
Restart the dovecot service. You’ll see ports 993 and 995 in the
netstat output. Use OpenSSL to test the POP3S service first:
openssl s_client -connect example.com:995
You should be able to log in and check some test messages. The IMAP
service should work fine as well.
Importantly, you should not be able to authenticate insecurely.
[root@example ~]# telnet example.com 110
Trying 96.126.123.32...
Connected to example.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK Dovecot ready.
user testuser
-ERR Plaintext authentication disallowed on non-secure (SSL/TLS) connections.
This is good. Test like crazy!