The IMAP Server imap.ifh.de

There is a new IMAP server imap.ifh.de which is now in a testing phase. It does provide all the features the old IMAP servers on mail.ifh.de and mail1.ifh.de were having. According to limited testing by a few users the server seems to be fully operational.

Using the new IMAP server

The new server can be used in addition to the old one by adding mail forwarding to <username>@imap.ifh.de. Then mail is received in the old INBOX and in addition on the imap.ifh.de INBOX

The new server can also be used exclusively by changing the mail routing information from the current maildrop (typically <username>@mail.ifh.de) to <username>@imap.ifh.de. This is currently not recommended

Authentication

Authentication using username and password is allowed only if encryption (TLS) is switched on. Kerberos5 authentication using a valid ticket from the DESY.DE or IFH.DE realm is working as well. Both auth methods have successfully been tested with alpine and thunderbird.

There is no SSL encrypted IMAP server listening on port 993, please use TLS with port 143 instead.

Alpine

Configuring alpine by editing .pinerc

add or modify the following lines in .pinerc:

incoming-folders={imap.ifh.de}INBOX, junkmail {mail.ifh.de}#shared/junk
folder-collections=mail/[],Folders on imap.ifh.de {imap.ifh.de}[]
feature-list=...,tab-checks-recent

Configuring alpine by using the configure screen of alpine

The configure screen can be accessed from the main menu by selecting the setup menu and then select the configure screen.

• Search the keyword "Incoming Folders" and add {imap.ifh.de}INBOX
• Search the keyword "Folder Collections" and add Inbox on imap {imap.ifh.de}[]
• Search the option "Tab Checks for Recent Messages" and activate it

Using alpine

The preceding step has configured an additional INBOX. To check for new mails in all INBOXes you can do the following:

• go in the Index screen to the last mail and press TAB to get the next INBOX with unread mail
• or go to the Folder Collection screen (L), select the folder collection "Incoming Folders" and press TAB to display the number of unread and recent messages in a folder

To move or copy folders from an old IMAP server to the imap.ifh.de server do the following

• select all messages in the folder by pressing ; a

• copy all messages in the folder to a new destination a s {imap.ifh.de} <foldername>

• remove the delete mark if you want to copy instead of moving the folder a u

• unselect all messages ; a

Thunderbird

• Select in the Edit menu "Account Settings" and add a new (email) account
• Enter your Name and Email address in the appropriate place

• in the next screen select "IMAP " as server type and enter imap.ifh.de as server name

• enter your user name in the field "Incoming User Name"
• define an arbitrary account name and press the Finish button

Then in the newly created account change some settings:

• in the "Server Settings" select TLS and Use secure authentication

• click on "Advanced..." and unselect "Show only subscribed folders"

To avoid security warnings about certificates that cannot be verified:

• In the Edit Menu select "Preferences" and there go to "Advanced"
• In the "Certificates" Menu select "View Certificates" then "Web sites and click on "Import"

To have thunderbird look in all folders for new mail:

• Open the Config Editor in Edit - Preferences - Advanced - General
• search for the preference mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new, and change its value to true

TODO: find correct procedure for all users and provide the file (see below) from triton:/var/site/certificates/pem

• ??? (UNIX SL5 only): Select the certificate /etc/pki/tls/certs/imap-ifh.pem
• Click on the newly imported certificate imap.ifh.de, select "Edit" and trust the authenticity of this certificate

Mail Filtering

The IMAP server does have an integrated filter called sieve that is engaged whenever new mail is delivered to the INBOX on imap.ifh.de. The filter language is described in http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5228.txt.

A filter can currently only get installed as root on apollo in the location /var/spool/sieve/<username>.sieve

There is a global filter default.sieve:

require "fileinto";
if header :contains "X-Spam-Level" "*****" {
  fileinto "junk";
}

It filters all spam mails into the folder junk. It is activated only if there is no user defined sieve filter. A more sophisticated filter can be found in leffhalm.sieve. The filter is activated as soon as new mail arrives for the user. If there is no syntax error a (compiled) .sievec file is generated, otherwise a .sieve.err file is written and contains the error message.

Quota

Currenltly there is a global mail quota limit of 500 MB configured. That holds true for each user as long as the attribute mailquota in the vamos account information is not set. The mail quota setting and its current usage can be displayed using the command

  check_inbox -h imap.ifh.de

The displayed usage does include index and cache information for fast retrieval of messages and does not precisely reflect the summed up individual mail sizes.